Note 1 — THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME COIGNARD

(Monsieur Jean Lacoste wrote in the Gazette de France of May 20, 1893): Monsieur l'Abbé Jérôme Coignard is a priest full of knowledge, humility and faith. I do not say that his conduct was always an honour to his bands or that his robe was unstained. But if he succumbs to temptation, if the devil has in him an easy prey, he never loses confidence; he hopes by God's grace to fall no more, and to reach the glories of Paradise. And, in fact, he affords us the spectacle of a very edifying death. Thus a grain of faith beautifies life, and Christian humility well becomes our human weakness.

Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, if he be not a saint, perhaps deserves purgatory. But he deserves the fire a very long time, and has run risk of hell. For in his acts of humility, though sincere, there was scarcely any repentance. He reckoned too much on the grace of God, and made no effort to help the workings of grace. That is why he fell back into his sin. Thus faith availed him little, and he was nearly a heretic, for the holy council of Trent, by its canons VI. and IX. in its sixth session, declared all those anathema who pretend "that it is not in the power of man to give up his evil ways" and who have such reliance on faith that they think faith alone can save them "without any motion of the will." Thus the divine mercy extended to Abbé Coignard is truly miraculous and beyond ordinary channels.