So long as I believed that you were debating the truth or
falsehood of the propositions, I was all attention, for that quarrel
touched the faith; but when I discovered that the bone of contention
was whether they were to be found word for word in Jansenius or not,
as religion ceased to be interested in the controversy, I ceased to be
interested in it also. Not but that there was some presumption that
you were speaking the truth; because to say that such and such
expressions are to be found word for word in an author, is a matter in
which there can be no mistake. I do not wonder, therefore, that so
many people, both in France and at Rome, should have been led to
believe, on the authority of a phrase so little liable to suspicion,
that Jansenius has actually taught these obnoxious tenets. And, for
the same reason, I was not a little surprised to learn that this
same point of fact, which you had propounded as so certain and so
important, was false; and that, after being challenged to quote the
pages of Jansenius in which you had found these propositions "word for
word," you have not been able to point them out to this day.
I am the more particular in giving this statement, because, in
my opinion, it discovers, in a very striking light, the spirit of your
Society in the whole of this affair; and because some people will be
astonished to find that, notwithstanding all the facts above
mentioned, you have not ceased to publish that they are heretics
still.
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