Waubonsee Community College

Pensées ;, The provincial letters, by Blaise Pascal

eng

no index present

non fiction

Pensées ;

483960

by Blaise Pascal

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The provincial letters

Pensées -- I. Thoughts on mind and on style -- II. The misery of man without god -- III. Of the necessity of the wager -- IV. Of the means of belief -- V. Justice and the reason of effects -- VI. The philosophers -- VII. Morality and doctrine -- VIII. The fundamentals of the Christian religion -- IX. Perpetuity -- X. Typology -- XI. The prophecies -- XII. Proofs of Jesus Christ -- XIII. The miracles -- XIV. Appendix: Polemical fragments -- The provincial letters -- Letter I -- Disputes in the Sorbonne, and he invention of proximate power, a term employed by the Jesuits to procure the censure of M. Arnauld -- Letter II -- Of sufficient grace -- Reply to the "provincial" to the first two letters -- Letter III -- Injustice, absurdity, and nullity of the censure on M. Arnauld -- Letter IV -- On actual grace and sins of ignorance -- Letter V -- Design of the Jesuits in establishing a new system of morals -- Two sorts of casuist among them, a great many lax and some severe ones -- Reason of this difference -- Explanation of the doctrine of probability -- A multitude of modern and unknown authors substituted in the place of the holy fathers -- Letter VI -- Various artifices of the Jesuits to elude the authority on the gospel, of councils, and of the popes -- Some consequences which result from their doctrine of probability -- Their relaxation in favor of beneficiaries, priests, monks, and domestics -- Story of John d'Alba -- Letter VII -- Method of directing the intention adopted by the casuists -- Permission to kill in defense of honor and property, extended even to priests and monks -- Curious question raised by Caramuel as to whether Jesuists may be allowed to kill Jansenists -- Letter VIII -- Corrupt maxims of the casuists relating to judges -- Usurers -- The contract mohatra -- Bankrupts -- Restitution -- Divers ridiculous notions of these same casuists -- Letter IX -- False worship of the virgin introduced by the Jesuits -- Devotion made easy -- Their maxims on ambition, envy, gluttony, equivocation, and mental reservations -- Female dress -- Gaming -- Hearing massLetter X -- Palliatives applied by the Jesuits to the sacrament of penance, in their maxims regarding confession, satisfaction, absolution, proximate occasions of sin, contrition and the love of God -- Letter XI -- Ridicule a fair weapon when employed against absurd opinions -- Rules to be observed in the use of this weapon -- The profane buffoonery of fathers Le Moine and Garasse -- Letter XII -- Refutation of their chicaneries regarding alms-giving and simony -- Letter XIII -- The doctrine of Lessius on homicide the same with that of Valentia -- How easy it is to pass from speculation to practice -- Why the Jesuists have recourse to this distinction, and how little it serves for their vindication -- Letter XIV -- In which the maxims of the Jesuits on murder are refuted from the fathers -- Some of their calumnies answered by the way -- And their doctrine compared with the forms observed in criminal trials -- Letter XV -- Showing that the Jesuits first exclude calumny from their catalogue of crimes, and then employ it in denouncing their opponents -- Letter XVI -- Shameful calumnies of the Jesuits against pious clergymen and innocent nuns -- Letter XVII -- The author of the letters vindicated from the charge of heresy -- An heretical phantom -- Popes and general councils not infallible in questions of fact -- Letter XVIII -- Showing still more plainly, on the authority of father Annat himself, that there is really no heresy in the church, and that in questions of fact we must be guided by our senses, and not by authority even of the popes -- Letter XIX -- Fragment of a nineteenth provincial letter, addressed to father Annat