CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

“I went straight,” adds the writer, “to the Jacobins, at whose door I found a good friend of mine, a great Jansenist—for you must know I have friends amongst all parties— page 126who was inquiring for another father, different from the one I wanted.  But I persuaded him to accompany me, and asked for one of my New Thomist friends.  He was delighted to see me again.  ‘Ah, well,’ I said to him, ‘it seems it is not enough that all men have a *proximate power* by which they can never act with effect; they must also have a *sufficient grace*, with which they can act just as little.  Is not this the opinion of your school?’  ‘Yes,’ said the good father, ‘and I have this very morning been maintaining this in the Sorbonne.  I spoke my full half-hour; and had it not been for the sand-glass, I bade fair to reverse the unlucky proverb which circulates in Paris—“He votes with his cap [merely by nodding his assent, without speaking] like a monk of the Sorbonne.”’  ‘And what about your half-hour and your sand-glass?’ said I.  ‘Do they shape your discourses by a certain measure?’  ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘for some days past.’  ‘And do they oblige you to speak half an hour?’  ‘No, we may speak as shortly as we like.’  ‘But not,’ I said, ‘as much as you like.  What a capital rule for the ignorant—what an excellent excuse for those who have nothing worth saying!  But to come to the point, my father—this grace which is given to all, is it sufficient?’  ‘Yes,’ said he.  ‘And yet it has no effect without *efficacious* grace?’  ‘Quite true,’ said he.  ‘And all men have the *sufficient*, but not all the *efficacious*?’  ‘Exactly so.’  ‘That is to say,’ I urged, ‘that all have enough grace, and yet not enough—that there is a grace which is *sufficient*, and yet does not *suffice*.  In good sooth, my father, that is subtle doctrine.  Have you forgotten, in quitting the world, what the word *sufficient* means?  Do you not remember that it includes everything necessary for acting? . . .  How, then, do you leave it to be said, that all men have *sufficient* grace for acting, while you confess that another grace is absolutely necessary for acting, and that all have not this? . . .  Is it a matter of indifference to say that with sufficient grace we can really act?’  ‘Indifference!’ said he; ‘why, it is *heresy*—formal *heresy*.  The necessity of efficacious grace for effective action is a point of *faith*.  It is heresy to deny this.’  ‘Where, then, are we now? and what side must I take?  If I deny page 127sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist.  If I admit it, like the Jesuits, so that efficacious grace is no longer necessary, I shall be a heretic, you say.  And if I admit it, as you do, so that efficacious grace is still necessary, why I sin against common-sense, I am a blockhead, say the Jesuits.  What can I do in this dilemma, of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist?  To what a strait are we come, if it is only Jansenists, after all, who are at variance with neither faith nor reason, and who preserve themselves both from folly and error?’”