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Pascal, Blaise

"The Provincial Letters"

" Your
falsehoods regarding that book have already been triumphantly refuted,
in the defence of the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris
against Father Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of
answering; and yet you do not scruple to abuse it in a more shameful
manner than ever, for the purpose of charging women, whose piety is
universally known, with the vilest blasphemy.
Cruel, cowardly persecutors! Must, then, the most retired
cloisters afford no retreat from your calumnies? While these
consecrated virgins are employed, night and day, according to their
institution, in adoring Jesus Christ in the holy sacrament, you
cease not, night nor day, to publish abroad that they do not believe
that he is either in the eucharist or even at the right hand of his
Father; and you are publicly excommunicating them from the Church,
at the very time when they are in secret praying for the whole Church,
and for you! You blacken with your slanders those who have neither
ears to hear nor mouths to answer you! But Jesus Christ, in whom
they are now hidden, not to appear till one day together with him,
hears you, and answers for them. At the moment I am now writing,
that holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds nature and
consoles the Church. And I fear, fathers, that those who now harden
their hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear him, while he speaks
in the character of God, will one day be compelled to hear him with
terror, when he speaks to them in the character of a judge.


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