But, as you continued obstinate in your refusal to
make this explanation, I endeavored, as a last resource, to extort
it from you, by hinting in my last letter that there was some
mystery under the efforts you were making to procure the
condemnation of this sense without explaining it, and that your design
was to make this indefinite censure recoil some day or other upon
the doctrine of efficacious grace, by showing, as you could easily do,
that this was exactly the doctrine of Jansenius. This has reduced
you to the necessity of making a reply; for, had you pertinaciously
refused, after such an insinuation, to explain your views of that
sense, it would have been apparent to persons of the smallest
penetration that you condemned it in the sense of efficacious grace- a
conclusion which, considering the veneration in which the Church holds
holy doctrine, would have overwhelmed you with disgrace.
You have, therefore, been forced to speak out your mind; and we
find it expressed in your reply to that part of letter in which I
remarked, that "if Jansenius was capable of any other sense than
that of efficacious grace, he had no defenders; but if his writings
bore no other sense, he had no errors to defend." You found it
impossible to deny this position, father; but you have attempted to
parry it by the following distinction: "It is not sufficient," say
you, "for the vindication of Jansenius, to allege that he merely holds
the doctrine of efficacious grace, for that may be held in two ways-
the one heretical, according to Calvin, which consists in
maintaining that the will, when under the influence of grace, has
not the power of resisting it; the other orthodox, according to the
Thomists and the Sorbonists, which is founded on the principles
established by the councils, and which is, that efficacious grace of
itself governs the will in such a way that it still has the power of
resisting it.
Pages:
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357