Note 9 — ADVERTISEMENT.

The reader, perhaps, will not be displeased to see what a philosopher of much wit, and full of contempt besides for all theological quarrels, thought of this charming doctrine. “Can it be possible to give to the word freedom a meaning so forced as that which the Jansenists give it? We are now, according to them, like a ball on a billiard-table, indifferent whether it move to the right or to the left; but at the very time that it moves to the right, it is maintained to be still indifferent as to its moving to that side; for this reason, that it might have been driven to the left. Such is what they have the presumption to call in us freedom; a freedom purely passive, which signifies only the different use which the Creator may make of our wills, and not the use which we can make of them ourselves without his help. What fantastic and fallacious language!” Lettre de Mr. de la Motte, à Mr. de Fenelon.