CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

In vain the New Thomist proclaims his readiness to suffer martyrdom rather than allow this, and to maintain the great doctrine of St Thomas to the death.  His allusion to the importance of the doctrine only calls forth more severely the indignant eloquence of the Jansenist, and he brings the Letter to a close in a passage which forestalls the graver and loftier tone of the later Letters.