Tell them, they are
ignorant and stupid- that they misunderstand Jansenius. These would be
charges in keeping with your controversy; but it is quite irrelevant
to call them heretics. As this, however, is the only charge from which
I am anxious to defend them, I shall not give myself much trouble to
show that they rightly understand Jansenius. All I shall say on the
point, father, is that it appears to me that, were he to be judged
according to your own rules, it would be difficult to prove him not to
be a good Catholic. We shall try him by the test you have proposed.
"To know," say you, "whether Jansenius is sound or not, we must
inquire whether he defends efficacious grace in the manner of
Calvin, who denies that man has the power of resisting it- in which
case he would be heretical; or in the manner of the Thomists, who
admit that it may be resisted- for then he would be Catholic."
judge, then, father, whether he holds that grace may be resisted
when he says: "That we have always a power to resist grace,
according to the council; that free will may always act or not act,
will or not will, consent or not consent, do good or do evil; and that
man, in this life, has always these two liberties, which may be called
by some contradictions." Judge. likewise, if he be not opposed to
the error of Calvin, as you have described it, when he occupies a
whole chapter (21st) in showing "that the Church has condemned that
heretic who denies that efficacious grace acts on the free will in the
manner which has been so long believed in the Church, so as to leave
it in the power of free will to consent or not to consent; whereas,
according to St.
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