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Updated: June 28, 2025
The minds of those who have believed in a single miracle as having come within their own experience become ecstatic; so deeply impressed are they with the momentous character of what they have known, that their power of enlisting sympathy becomes immeasurably greater than that of men who have never believed themselves to have come into contact with the miraculous; their deep conviction carries others along with it, and so the belief is strengthened till adverse influences check it, or till it reaches a pitch of grotesque horror, as in the case of the later Jansenist miracles.
M. Arnaud pretends that I have no logic; I have more than M. Nicole." "Yes," replied Conrart, "you have logic, but you are a Jansenist." This peroration was hailed with a boisterous shout of laughter; by degrees the promenaders had been attracted by the exclamations of the two disputants around the arbor under which they were arguing.
The Jansenist smiled, and said coldly, “Tell me in what sense you use the expression, and I will tell you what I believe about it.” But this was just what he could not do.
He was trying, let us never forget, to discover a scientific form of morals, and hardly enough attention has been given to the prominence which he gave to a searching analysis of conscience. He found little to help him in the court religion of the age, but he was immensely impressed with the Jansenist conception of the frailty and worthlessness of the natural man.
The matter which these celebrated letters contain is multifarious; they are sketches of Madame de Sevigne's friends, Madame de Lafayette, Madame Scarron, and all the principal personages of that brilliant court, from which, however, she was excluded, in consequence of her early alliance with the Fronde, her friendship for Fouquet, and her Jansenist opinions.
"It was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman." The prioress paused, moved her lips, as though in mental prayer, and resumed: "Three years ago, Madame de Bethune, a Jansenist, turned orthodox, merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer." "Ah! yes, now I hear the knell, reverend Mother." "The mothers have taken her to the dead-room, which opens on the church." "I know."
Some would send the man to Bedlam, "but you after a grave reprimand, will be content with saying: I know that two or three witnesses, good people and of sound sense, may attest the life or the death of a man, but I do not know how many more are needed to establish the resurrection of a Jansenist.
"MY DEAR VOLTAIRE, In spite of myself, I have to yield to the Quartan Fever, which is more tenacious than a Jansenist; and whatever desire I had of going to Antwerp and Brussels, I find myself not in a condition to undertake such a journey without risk.
And if I admit it, as you do, so that efficacious grace is still necessary, why I sin against common-sense, I am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What can I do in this dilemma, of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist? To what a strait are we come, if it is only Jansenists, after all, who are at variance with neither faith nor reason, and who preserve themselves both from folly and error?’”
When we had both well laughed at this, we admired the profound instruction of a discreet and religious King, who considered it better not to believe in God than to be a Jansenist, and who thought there was less danger to his nephew from the impiety of an unbeliever than from the doctrines of a sectarian.
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