accommodation was recognised as a means of drawing
worldlings to the Church; the Jansenists held up a severe moral ideal,
and humbled human nature in presence of the absolute need and
resistless omnipotence of divine grace. Like the Jesuits, but in a
different spirit, the Port-Royalists devoted themselves much to the
task of education. They honoured classical studies; they honoured
science, dialectics, philosophy. Their grammar, logic, geometry were
substantial additions to the literature of pedagogy. Isaac le Maistre
de Sacy and others translated and annotated the Bible. Their
theologian, moralist, and controversialist, Pierre Nicole (1625-95),
author of _Essais de Morale_ (1671), if not profound or brilliant,
was the possessor of learning, good sense, good feeling, and religious
faith. Under the influence of St. Cyran, the Port-Royalists were in
close sympathy with the teaching of Jansen, Bishop of Ypres; the
writings of their great theologian Antoine Arnauld were vigorously
anti-Jesuitical. In 1653 five propositions, professedly extracted
from Jansen's _Augustinus_, were condemned by a Papal bull. The
insulting triumph of the Jesuits drew Arnauld again into controversy;
and on a question concerning divine grace he was condemned in January
1656 by the Sorbonne. "You who are clever and inquiring" (_curieux_),
said Arnauld to Pascal, "you ought to do something." Next day was
written the first of Pascal's _Lettres a un Provincial_, and on 23rd
January it was issued to the public; a second followed within a week;
the success was immense. The writer concealed his identity under the
pseudonym "Louis de Montalte."

The _Lettres Provinciales_ are eighteen in number. The first three
and the last three deal with the affair of Arnauld and the Sorbonne,
and the questions under discussion as to the nature and the need of
divine grace. In the opening letters the clearest intellectual
insight and the deepest seriousness of spirit are united with the
finest play of irony, and even with the temper of comedy. The supposed
Louis de Montalte, seeking theological lights from a doctor of the
Sorbonne, finds only how hopelessly divided in opinion are the
opponents of Arnauld, and how grotesquely they darken counsel with
speech. In the twelve letters intervening between the third and the
sixteenth, Pascal takes the offensive, and deploys an incomparably
skilful attack on the moral theology of the Jesuits. For the rigid
they may have a stric