"
A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare the
most sacred retreats. For who can be safe after a calumny of this
nature? For shame, fathers! to publish in Paris such a scandalous
book, with the name of your Father Meynier on its front, and under
this infamous title, Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most
holy Sacrament of the Altar, in which you accuse of this apostasy, not
only Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, but also Mother
Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of that monastery, alleging that
"their faith, in regard to the eucharist, is as suspicious as that
of M. Arnauld," whom you maintain to be "a down-right Calvinist." I
here ask the whole world if there be any class of persons within the
pale of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an abominable
charge with less semblance of truth. For tell me, fathers, if these
nuns and their directors had been "in concert with Geneva against
the most holy sacrament of the altar" (the very thought of which is
shocking), how they should have come to select as the principal object
of their piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination? How
should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacrament? taken the
name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament? called their church the
Church of the Holy Sacrament? How should they have requested and
obtained from Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right
of saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in which
the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if they had
conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from the Church? Why
would they have bound themselves, by a particular devotion, also
sanctioned by the Pope, to have some of their sisterhood, night and
day without intermission, in presence of the sacred host, to
compensate, by their perpetual adorations towards that perpetual
sacrifice, for the impiety of the heresy that aims at its
annihilation? Tell me, fathers, if you can, why, of all the
mysteries of our religion, they should have passed by those in which
they believed, to fix upon that in which they believed not? and how
they should have devoted themselves, so fully and entirely, to that
mystery of our faith, if they took it, as the heretics do, for the
mystery of iniquity? And what answer do you give to these clear
evidences, embodied not in words only, but in actions; and not in some
particular actions, but in the whole tenor of a life expressly
dedicated to the adoration of Jesus Christ, dwelling on our altars?
What answer, again, do you give to the books which you ascribe to
Port-Royal, all of which are full of the most precise terms employed
by the fathers and the councils to mark the essence of that mystery?
It is at once ridiculous and disgusting to hear you replying to
these as you have done throughout your libel.
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