The Christian Remembrancer (Volume 24) - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852. Excerpt: ... 176 Art. VI.--Les Provinciates; et leur Refutation. Par M. I'Abbe Maynard, Chanoine Honoraire de Poitiers. Ouvrage dedie aMons.de Vesins, Eveque d'Agen. Paris: 1851. 2 vols. 8vo. This is a curious book. Pascal's famous Letters elicited, at the time of their publication, a vigorous defence on the part of the great order whom they had attacked so unceremoniously; but of that fierce and eventful controversy they are now almost the sole memorials. It may be supposed that the able and shrewd men against whom they were directed, had something to say to them. As a company, the Jesuits possessed more available talent, more concentrated resources, more discipline, than any public body in Europe. They sifted and contradicted the 'Provincial Letters;' they explained with ingenuity, and even with wit. They made out, with much plausibility, that they had said nothing but what other people had said. But it is very hard now to get a sight of their books. We may look in vain in some of our most famous libraries: they seem all to have disappeared--the Jesuit books which Pascal attacked, and the Jesuit books which attacked Pascal; the Peres Bauny, and Binet, and Garasse, and Le Moyne, his victims, and their defenders, Peres Annat and Nouer, and Pirot and Pinthereau, and even the polite P. Daniel. This want, however, has been supplied by the work before us, an edition of the Provincial Letters,' with their refutation by the Abbe Maynard, a French ecclesiastic of some literary pretensions, who may stand very well for the Baunys and Daniels, now so seldom met with. In noticing this book, we wish one thing distinctly to be understood. It is not that we are opening afresh these bygone scandals. It is M. Maynard who has brought them before us, to show us how he could dispose of...