And I frankly own that, at one time, I believed you myself.
You had given me precisely the same idea of these good people; so
that, when you pressed them on these propositions, I narrowly
watched their answer, determined never to see them more, if they did
not renounce them as palpable impieties.
This, however, they have done in the most unequivocal way. M. de
Sainte-Beuve, king's professor in the Sorbonne, censured these
propositions in his published writings long before the Pope; and other
Augustinian doctors, in various publications, and, among others, in
a work On Victorious Grace, reject the same articles as both heretical
and strange doctrines. In the preface to that work they say that these
propositions are "heretical and Lutheran, forged and fabricated at
pleasure, and are neither to be found in Jansenius, nor in his
defenders. " They complain of being charged with such sentiments,
and address you in the words of St. Prosper, the first disciple of St.
Augustine their master, to whom the semi-Pelagians of France had
ascribed similar opinions, with the view of bringing him into
disgrace: "There are persons who denounce us, so blinded by passion
that they have adopted means for doing so which ruin their own
reputation. They have, for this purpose, fabricated propositions of
the most impious and blasphemous character, which they industriously
circulate, to make people believe that we maintain them in the
wicked sense which they are pleased to attach to them.
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