"The Society," he continued, "is quite satisfied with their
complaisance. It does not insist on their denying the necessity of
efficacious grace, this would be urging them too far. People should
not tyrannize over their friends; and the Jesuits have gained quite
enough. The world is content with words; few think of searching into
the nature of things; and thus the name of sufficient grace being
adopted on both sides, though in different senses, there is nobody,
except the most subtle theologians, who ever dreams of doubting that
the thing signified by that word is held by the Jacobins as well as by
the Jesuits; and the result will show that these last are not the
greatest dupes."
I acknowledged that they were a shrewd class of people, these
Jesuits; and, availing myself of his advice, I went straight to the
Jacobins, at whose gate I found one of my good friends, a staunch
Jansenist (for you must know I have got friends among all parties),
who was calling for another monk, different from him whom I was in
search of. I prevailed on him, however, after much entreaty, to
accompany me, and asked for one of my New Thomists. He was delighted
to see me again. "How now! my dear father," I began, "it seems it is
not enough that all men have a proximate power, with which they can
never act with effect; they must have besides this a sufficient grace,
with which they can act as little. Is not that the doctrine of your
school?" "It is," said the worthy monk; "and I was upholding it this
very morning in the Sorbonne.
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