Note 150b — Chapter V · THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

“Who is Escobar?” Pascal represents himself as inquiring in the fifth Letter. “Not know Escobar?” cries the monk; “the member of the Society who compiled a Moral Theology from twenty-four of our fathers.” This book, which Pascal says he “read twice through,” was the great repository from which he gathered the details of Jesuit doctrine which he exposes with such minuteness. Escobar, like so many of the chief Jesuit writers, was a Spaniard, born at Valladolid in 1589. His name became a sort of proverb in connection with their casuistical system, and “escobarder” came to signify “to palter in a double sense.”