Note 183 — LETTER VIII.[173]

“Since all this, a new edition has been printed at Paris, by Piget, more correct than any of the rest. But the sentiments of Escobar may be still better ascertained from the great work on moral theology, printed at Lyons.” (Note in Nicole’s edition of the Letters.)

I may avail myself of this space to remark, that not one of the charges brought against the Jesuits in this letter has been met by Father Daniel in his celebrated reply. Indeed, after some vain efforts to contradict about a dozen passages in the letters, he leaves avowedly more than a hundred without daring to answer them. The pretext for thus failing to perform what he professed to do, and what he so loudly boasts, at the commencement, of his being able to do, is ingenious enough. “You will easily comprehend,” says one of his characters, “that this confronting of texts and quotations is not a great treat for a man of my taste. I could not stand this disagreeable labor much longer.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 277.) We reserve our remarks on the pretended falsifications charged against Pascal, till we come to his own masterly defence of himself in the subsequent letters.