THE “PROVINCIAL LETTERS”
In the course of the controversy, Pascal was invited by one of the Arnaulds to help the cause of Jansenism. This he did by his “Provincial Letters,” most of them purporting to be a narrative of the condition of religious affairs at Paris by a certain Louis de Montalte to a friend in the provinces. In these letters, which are considered masterpieces of sarcastic polemic, Pascal did the Jesuits untold harm. By methods which may seem sometimes technically unfair, but which are after all employed by every controversial writer, he attacked the doctrines of certain Jesuit writers upon religious dogma, such as questions of Grace, and upon moral theories of casuistry, the science dealing with the solution of dilemmas of conscience and the exculpation of apparent offenses against righteousness. In the long and violent contest which raged in the seventeenth century, and of which the publication of the “Provincial Letters” was an incident, the Jesuits succeeded in having the Jansenists considered heretics, and they managed to encompass the destruction of Port Royal. But, whether rightly or wrongly (and here antagonists will remain unreconciled), Pascal dealt them severe blows from which, in France at least, they have never fully recovered.