tians. Agricola then,
by the words the "Law of God," and "that there was no such thing as
sin," must have said one thing and meant another! This appears to have
been the case with most of the divines of the sixteenth century; for
even Mosheim complains of "their want of precision and consistency in
expressing _their sentiments_, hence their real sentiments have been
misunderstood." There evidently prevailed a great "confusion of words"
among them! The _grace suffisante_ and the _grace efficace_ of the
Jansenists and the Jesuits show the shifts and stratagems by which
nonsense may be dignified. "Whether all men received from God
_sufficient grace_ for their conversion!" was an inquiry some unhappy
metaphysical theologist set afloat: the Jesuits, according to their
worldly system of making men's consciences easy, affirmed it; but the
Jansenists insisted, that this _sufficient grace_ would never be
_efficacious_, unless accompanied by _special grace_. "Then the
_sufficient grace_, which is not _efficacious_, is a contradiction in
terms, and worse, a heresy!" triumphantly cried the Jesuits, exulting
over their adversaries. This "confusion of words" thickened, till the
Jesuits introduced in this logomachy with the Jansenists papal bulls,
royal edicts, and a regiment of dragoons! The Jansenists, in despair,
appealed to miracles and prodigies, which they got up for public
representation; but, above all, to their Pascal, whose immortal satire
the Jesuits really felt was at once "sufficient and efficacious,"
though the dragoons, in settling a "confusion of words," did not boast
of inferior success to Pascal's. Former ages had, indeed, witnessed even
a more melancholy logomachy, in the _Homoousion_ and the _Homoiousion_!
An event which Boileau has immortalised by some fine verses, which, in
his famous satire on _L'Equivoque_, for reasons best known to the
Sorbonne, were struck out of the text.

D'une _syllabe_ impie un saint _mot_ augmente
Remplit tous les esprits d'aigreurs si meurtrieres--
Tu fis, dans une guerre et si triste et si longue,
Perir tant de Chretiens, _martyrs d'une diphthongue_!

Whether the Son was similar to the substance of the Father, or of the
same substance, depended on the diphthong _oi_, which was alternately
rejected and received. Had they earlier discovered, what at length they
agreed on, that the words denoted what was incomprehensible, it would
have saved thousands, as a witness describes, "f