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Pascal, Blaise

"The Provincial Letters"


Conscious, however, of the wretched deficiency of your proofs, you
have had recourse to a new artifice, which is nothing less than to
falsify the Council of Trent, in order to convict M. Arnauld of
nonconformity with it; so vast is your store of methods for making
people heretics. This feat has been achieved by Father Meynier, in
fifty different places of his book, and about eight or ten times in
the space of a single page (the 54th), wherein he insists that to
speak like a true Catholic it is not enough to say, "I believe that
Jesus Christ is really present in the eucharist," but we must say,
"I believe, with the council, that he is present by a true local
presence, or locally." And, in proof of this, he cites the council,
session xiii, canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th. Who would not
suppose, upon seeing the term local presence quoted from three
canons of a universal council, that the phrase was actually to be
found in them? This might have served your turn very well, before
the appearance of my Fifteenth Letter; but, as matters now stand,
fathers, the trick has become too stale for us. We go our way and
consult the council, and discover only that you are falsifiers. Such
terms as local presence, locally, and locality, never existed in the
passages to which you refer; and let me tell you further, they are not
to be found in any other canon of that council, nor in any other
previous council, not in any father of the Church.


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