" Is it, then, for his having said
"that without grace we can do nothing"? Why, is not this just what St.
Augustine says in the same place, and what St. Chrysostom had said
before him, with this difference only, that he expresses it in much
stronger language, as when he says "that his fall did not happen
through his own coldness or negligence, but through the failure of
grace, and the withdrawment of God"?
Such considerations as these kept everybody in a state of
breathless suspense to learn in what this diversity could consist,
when at length, after a great many meetings, this famous and
long-looked-for censure made its appearance. But, alas! it has sadly
baulked our expectation. Whether it be that the Molinist doctors would
not condescend so far as to enlighten us on the point, or for some
other mysterious reason, the fact is they have done nothing more
than pronounce these words: "This proposition is rash, impious,
blasphemous, accursed, and heretical!"
Would you believe it, sir, that most people, finding themselves
deceived in their expectations, have got into bad humor, and begin
to fall foul upon the censors themselves? They are drawing strange
inferences from their conduct in favour of M. Arnauld's innocence.
"What!" they are saying, "is this all that could be achieved, during
all this time, by so many doctors joining in a furious attack on one
individual? Can they find nothing in all his works worthy of
reprehension, but three lines, and these extracted, word for word,
from the greatest doctors of the Greek and Latin Churches? Is there
any author whatever whose writings, were it intended to ruin him,
would not furnish a more specious pretext for the purpose? And what
higher proof could be furnished of the orthodoxy of this illustrious
accused?
"How comes it to pass," they add, "that so many denunciations
are launched in this censure, into which they have crowded such
terms as 'poison, pestilence, horror, rashness, impiety, blasphemy,
abomination, execration, anathema, heresy'- the most dreadful epithets
that could be used against Arius, or Antichrist himself; and all to
combat an imperceptible heresy, and that, moreover, without telling as
what it is? If it be against the words of the fathers that they
inveigh in this style, where is the faith and tradition? If against M.
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