Note 294 — Chapter IX · THE VERDICT. (continued 3)

From the time of Arnauld, the Jansenists, in order to maintain their doctrine intact in the sense of Jansenius, the spirit of (à l'âme de) his book, pretend to interdict the church from the condemnation of errors according to their sense in a system and in a book—that is to say, in an assemblage of propositions—as if the grammatical construction alone of every phrase completely determined the sense conveyed. In this time especially, when there is question of delicate matter treated by men who are constantly crying out, "Truth, truth!" but who ever have equivocations on their lips, no one, not even Sainte-Beuve, the titled panegyrist of Port Royal, has dared to exculpate the Jansenists for their indirect and tortuous course since 1653.