Prove it, then, fathers.
Name that "worthy clergyman" who, you say, attended that assembly at
Bourg-Fontaine in 1621, and discovered to Brother Filleau the design
there concerted of overturning the Christian religion. Name those
six persons whom you allege to have formed that conspiracy. Name the
individual who is designated by the letters A. A., who you say "was
not Antony Arnauld" (because he convinced you that he was at that time
only nine years of age), "but another person, who you say is still
in life, but too good a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to
him." You know him, then, fathers; and consequently, if you are not
destitute of religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious
wretch to the king and parliament, that he may be punished according
to his deserts. You must speak out, fathers; you must name the person,
or submit to the disgrace of being henceforth regarded in no other
light than as common liars, unworthy of being ever credited again.
Good Father Valerien has taught us that this is the way in which
such characters should be "put to the rack" and brought to their
senses. Your silence upon the present challenge will furnish a full
and satisfactory confirmation of this diabolical calumny. Your
blindest admirers will be constrained to admit that it will be "the
result, not of your goodness, but your impotency"; and to wonder how
you could be so wicked as to extend your hatred even to the nuns of
Port-Royal, and to say, as you do in page 14, that The Secret
Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament, composed by one of their number, was
the first fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ; or, as in
page 95, that "they have imbibed all the detestable principles of that
work"; which is, according to your account, a lesson in Deism.
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