CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

have exercised a powerful influence over his older companion. The great bond of their union and common enthusiasm was the study of St Augustine. For the purpose of pursuing this study undisturbed, they retired to the seaside near Bayonne, and here they established themselves in scholastic seclusion. Smitten with the desire of attaining theological truth, they found the Schoolmen constantly appealing to St Augustine as their authority, and they consequently resolved to examine this authority for themselves, and so ascend to what they believed to be the source of their favourite science. Had they taken only one step further, they would have approached Protestantism; and as it was, the favourite charge which the Jesuits afterwards made against them was, that they were Calvinists in disguise. Unconsciously they were so, notwithstanding all their disclaimers. The Jesuits were unscrupulous; but their penetration here, as in many other cases, was not at fault. The doctrines so warmly espoused by Jansen and St Cyran were the old doctrines of grace, which Calvin page 105and they alike borrowed from St Augustine, and he in his turn found in the Epistles of