CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

to suspicion. He must have recourse to those who invented the expression, and is referred to a M. le Moine, on the one hand, as representing the Molinists or Jesuits; and a Father Nicolai as representing the Dominicans or “New Thomists.” Both of these were real characters: the former a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a violent anti-Jansenist, who had written on the subject of grace; the latter a Dominican, who is said, however, by Nicole to have abandoned the principles of his order and embraced Pelagianism. The bewildered seeker after theological knowledge resorts, not to these worthies themselves, with whom he professes to have no acquaintance, but to certain disciples of theirs. In this manner he gets a definition of “proximate power,” from which it is apparent that, while the Jesuits and Dominicans are only agreed in using the same expression—the meanings they put into it being entirely different—the Jansenists and Dominicans agree in substance, while only differing in the use of words. The passage in which the result of his successive interviews is described is one of the happiest in the letter. On receiving from the Dominicans, whom he terms “Jacobins,” from their association with the Rue de St Jacques, where the first Dominican convent in Paris page 123was erected, an explanation of the doctrine of grace, he exclaims:—