第94章

But God has not confined within the precincts of that society all whom he means to raise up in opposition to your corruptions.I hope, with his assistance, fathers, to make you feel this; and if he vouchsafe to sustain me in the design he has led me to form, of employing in his service all the resources I have received from him, I shall speak to you in such a strain as will, perhaps, give you reason to regret that you have not had to do with a man of Port-Royal.And to convince you of this, fathers, Imust tell you that, while those whom you have abused with this notorious slander content themselves with lifting up their groans to Heaven to obtain your forgiveness for the outrage, I feel myself obliged, not being in the least affected by your slander, to make you blush in the face of the whole Church, and so bring you to that wholesome shame of which the Scripture speaks, and which is almost the only remedy for a hardness of heart like yours: "Imple facies eorum ignominia, et quaerent nomen tuum, Domine- Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, O Lord." A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare the most sacred retreats.

For who can be safe after a calumny of this nature? For shame, fathers!

to publish in Paris such a scandalous book, with the name of your Father Meynier on its front, and under this infamous title, Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, in which you accuse of this apostasy, not only Monsieur the abbe of St.Cyran, and M.Arnauld, but also Mother Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of that monastery, alleging that "their faith, in regard to the eucharist, is as suspicious as that of M.Arnauld," whom you maintain to be "a down-right Calvinist."I here ask the whole world if there be any class of persons within the pale of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an abominable charge with less semblance of truth.For tell me, fathers, if these nuns and their directors had been "in concert with Geneva against the most holy sacrament of the altar" (the very thought of which is shocking), how they should have come to select as the principal object of their piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination? How should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacrament? taken the name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament? called their church the Church of the Holy Sacrament? How should they have requested and obtained from Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right of saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in which the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if they had conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from the Church?