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 JANSENIUS

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JANSENIUS

childhood I have been reared in the beliefs of this Church; I imbibed them with my mother's milk; I have grown up and grown old while remaining at- tached to them; never to my knowledge have I swerved therefrom a hair's-hrcadth in thought, action or wo'-d; and I am still firmly decided to keep this faith until my last breath and to appear with it be- fore the judgment-seat of God. " Thus Jansenius, al- though he gave his name to a heresy, was not himself a heretic, but lived and died in the bosom of the Church. In view of the fact that he consciously and deliberately aimed at innovation or reforming, it would certainly be difficult to exculpate him entirely or declare that his attitude was in no wise presump- tuous and rash; but impartial history may and should take into account the peculiar atmosphere created about him by the still smouldering controversies on Baianism and the widespread prejudices against the Roman Curia. To determine the extent to which these and similar circumstances, by deluding him, necessarily diminished his responsibility, is impossiljle; that is the secret of God.

II. The "Augustinus " .\nd it.s Condemnation. — .\fter the death of Jansenius. the internuncio Richard Aravivis vainly endeavoured to prevent the printing of his manuscript ; this undertaking, act i vely furthered by the friends of the dead man, was completed in 1640. The folio volume bore the title; "Cornelii Jansenii, Episcopi Yprensis, Augustinus, sen doctrina S. Augus- tini de hvmianiE nature sanitate, sgritudine, medi- cina, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses". It was divided into three volumes^ of which the first, chiefly historical, is an exposition in eight books of Pelagian- ism; the second, after an introductory study on the limitations of human reason, devotes one book to the state of innocence or the grace of .\dam and the an- gels, four books to the state of fallen nature, three to the .state of pure nature; the third volume treats in ten books of "the grace of Christ the Saviour", and con- cludes with "a parallel between the error of the Semi- pelagians and that of certain moderns", who are no other than the Molinists. The author, if we are to accept his own statement, laboured for twenty years on this work, anil to gather his materials he had ten times read the whole of St. Augustine and thirty times his treatise against the Pelagians. From these read- ings emerged a vast system, whose identity with Baian- ism neither skilful arrangement nor subtile dialectic could disguise.

His fundamental error consists in disregarding the supernatural order; for Jansenius, as for Baius, the vision of God is the necessary end of human natvire; hence it follows that all the primal endowments desig- nated in theology as supernatural or preternatural, in- cluding exemption from concupiscence, were simply man's due. This first assertion is fraught with grave consequences regarding the original fall, grace, and justification. As a result of Adam's sin, our nature, stripped of elements essential to its integrity, is rad- ically corrupt and depraved. Mastered by concupis- cence, which in each of us properly constitutes orig- inal sin, the will is powerless to resist; it has become purely passive. It cannot escape the attraction of evil except it be aided by a movement of grace supe- rior to and triumphant over the force of concupiscence. Our soul, henceforth obedient to no moti\-e save that of pleasure, is at the mercy of the delectation, earthly or heavenly, which for the time being attracts it with the greatest strength. At once inevitable and irre- sistiljle, this delectation, if it come from heaven or from grace, leads man to virtue ; if it come from nature or concupiscence, it determines him to sin. In the one case as in the other, the will is fatally swept on by the preponderant impulse. The two delectations, says Jansenius, are like the two arms of a balance, of which the one cannot rise unless the other be lowered, and vice versa. Thus man irresistibly, although vol-

untarily, does either good or evil, according as he ig dominated by grace or by concupiscence; he never re- sists either the one or the other. In this .system there is evidently no place for purely sufficient grace ; on the other hand it is ea.sy to discern the principles of the five condemned propositions (see below).

In order to present this doctrine under the patron- age of St. Augustine, Jansenius based his argument cliiefly on two .\ugustinian conceptions: on the dis- tinction between the auxilium sine quo non granted to .\dam, and the auxilium quo, active in his de- scendants; and on the theory of the "victorious delectation" of grace. A few brief remarks will suffice to make clear the double mistake. In the first place the auxilium sine quo non is not, in the idea of Augustine, "a grace purely sufficient", since through it the angels persevered; it is on the con- trary a grace w?iich confers complete power in actu prima (i. e. the ability to. act), in such a way that, this being granted, nothing further is needed for action. The auxilium quo, on the other hand, is a supernatural help which bears immediately on the actus secundus (i.e. the performance of the action) and in this grace, in so far as it is distinguished from the grace of .Adam, must be included the whole series of efficacious graces by which man works out his salva- tion, or the gift of actual perseverance, which gift con- ducts man infallibly and invincibly to beatitude, not because it suppresses liberty, but because its very concept implies the consent of man. The delectation of grace is a deliljerate pleasure which the Bishop of Hippo explicitly opposes to necessity {voluptas, non necessita-s) ; but what we will and embrace with consenting pleasure, we cannot at the same time not will, and in this sense we will it necessarily. In this sense also, it is correct to say, "Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est" (i. e. in acting we necessarily follow what gives us most pleas- ure). Finally, this delight is called victorious, not because it fatally subjugates the will, but because it trium.phs over concupiscence, fortifying free will to the point of rendering it invincible to natural desire. It is thus clear that we can say of men sustained by and faithful to grace, "Invictissime quod bonum est vehnt, et hoc deserere invictissime nolint ".

The success of the " .\ugu.stinus " was great, and it spread rapidly throughout Belgium, Holland, and France. A new edition, bearing the approbation of ten doctors of the Sorbonne, soon appeared at Paris. On the other hand, on 1 August, 1641, a decree of the Holy Office condemned the work and prohibited its reading; and the following year Urban VIII renewed the condemnation and interdiction in his Bull "In eminenti". The pope justified his sentence with two principal reasons: first, the violation of the decree for- bidding Catholics to publish anything on the subject of grace without the authorization of the Holy See; second, the reproduction of several of the errors of Baius. At the same time, and in the interests of peace, the sovereign pontiff interdicted several other works directed against the "Augustinus". Despite these wise precautions the Bull, which some pretended was forged or interpolated, was not received everywhere without difficulty. In Belgium, where the .\rchbishop of Mechlin and the university were rather favourable to the new ideas, the controversy lasted for ten years. But it was France which thenceforth became the chief centre of the agitation. At Paris, St-Cyran, who was powerful through his relations besides being very active, succeeiled in spreading simultaneously the doc- trines of the " Augustinus " and the principles of an ex- aggerated moral and disciplinary rigorism, all under the pretence of a return to the primitive Church. He had succeeded especially in winning over to his ideas the influential and numerous family of Arnauld of An- dilly, notably Mere Angelique Arnauld, Abbess of Port^Royal, and through her the religious of that im-