Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

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Note XXL
doctrine of Calvin and the Reformers, and the Augustinian
and Jansenist doctrine, on the subject of grace and free
will. But I admit it the more readily, for the obvious
consideration, that Pascal was not in a position to ackowledge
such an identity in the doctrine of the two schools.
As an attached member of the Roman communion, he was
obliged by his position to disconnect his own and his
party s doctrine as much as possible from that of the
Reformers, and to make out a wide difference between
them. The Jansenists were attacked on all sides as dis
affected members of the Roman Church, Reformers in
heart, though outwardly Catholics. They disowned and
repelled the charge with indignation. But what is the
natural, the irresistible disposition of a religious party
under such circumstances, with respect to the doctrines
upon which such a charge is founded ? It is, of course, to
make out, in any way they can, a difference between these
doctrines and those of the other school, with which their
opponents identify them. Under such circumstances, the
authority even of Pascal has not, upon the present ques
tion, any irresistible weight. And when we come to
examine his argument, and the reasons upon which he
erects the difference he does between the Augustinian and
the Calvinistic doctrine of grace, any weight that we might
previously have been inclined to give his conclusion is
much diminished.
Every reader of the Provincial Letters will remember
the great argumentative clearness and penetration, sup
ported by the keenest irony, with which Pascal proves the
identity, under a guise of verbal difference, of the Thomist
doctrine of grace with the Jansenist. The Thomist mem
bers of the Sorbonne, siding with the Jesuits against the
Jansenists, had distinguished their own doctrine of grace
from that of the Jansenists by a particular term ; to the
use of which, though apparently counter to their own
Augustinian doctrine, they had by an arrangement con
sented among themselves, but to which the Jansenists
would not consent. This was the term prochain proximus.
The Thoinists maintained that every Christian had