Transsubstantiation

The language of Antoine Arnauld and the Abbé de St. Cyran "is as Catholic as yours; but their conduct confirms their faith, and your conduct belies it.  For if you believe, as well as they do, that the bread is really changed into the body of Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they do, from those whom you advise to approach the altar, that the heart of stone and ice should be sincerely changed into a heart of flesh and of love?  If you believe that Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in a state of death, teaching those that approach it to die to the world, to sin, and to themselves, why do you suffer those to profane it in whose breasts evil passions continue to reign in all their life and vigour?"

"Car si vous croyez aussi bien qu’eux que ce pain est réellement changé au corps de Jésus-Christ, pourquoi ne demandez-vous pas comme eux que le cœur de pierre et de glace de ceux à qui vous conseillez d’en approcher soit sincèrement changé en un cœur de chair et d’amour?  Si vous croyez que Jésus-Christ y est dans un état de mort, pour apprendre à ceux qui s’en approchent à mourir au monde, au péché et à eux-mêmes, pourquoi portez-vous à en approcher ceux en qui les vices et les passions criminelles sont encore toutes vivantes?"

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 16, trans. M’Crie (GBBW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, pp. 136-137), underscoring mine =pp. 281-282 of tom. 6 of the 1904-1914 critical edition of the Œuvres edited by Brunschvicg =p. 774 of the 1998 Pléiade edited by Le Guern.

Body, soul, and divinity

"'the dead ashes of the bodies of the saints derive their principal dignity from that seed of life which they retain from the touch of the immortal and vivifying flesh of Jesus Christ'".

"'les cendres mortes des corps des saints tirent leur principale dignité de cette semence de vie qui leur reste de l’attouchement de la chair immortelle et vivifiante de Jésus-Christ'".

     Antoine Arnauld, De la fréquente communion (Paris:  Antoine Vitré, 1643), 1.40.  I was put onto this by Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 16, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 150).

"'What I am really asking is whether you would like to be the widow of a literary man.'"

     George Orwell, proposing by letter (dated 18 April 1946) to Anne Popham, who "was not swept off her feet."  As quoted in Dorian Lynskey, Ministry of truth:  the biography of George Orwell's 1984 (New York:  Doubleday, 2019), 147, citing CW XVIII, p. 153.

A slippery slope

"There is an infinite distance between God’s prohibition of murder and your speculative permission of the crime; but between that [speculative] permission and the practice the distance is very small indeed. . . . .  what is allowable in speculation is also so in practice. . . . .  Such is the wonderful growth attained by the doctrine of probability in general, as well as by every probable opinion in particular, in the course of time.  Attend . . . to what [the Jesuit Escobar] says [(i.e. came eventually openly to admit)]:  'I cannot see how it can be that an action which seems allowable in speculation should not be so likewise in practice; because what may be done in practice depends on what is found to be lawful in speculation, and the things differ from each other only as cause and effect.  Speculation is that which determines to action.  Whence it follows that opinions probable in speculation may be followed with a safe conscience in practice. . . .'
     "Verily, fathers, your friend Escobar reasons uncommonly well sometimes; and, in point of fact, there is such a close connection between speculation and practice, that when the former has once taken root, you have no difficulty in permitting the latter, without any [further] disguise."

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 13, trans. M’Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 103) =pp. 31-32 in tom. 6 of the 1904-1914 critical edition of the Œuvres edited by Brunschvicg, and pp. 728-729 in tom. 1 of the 1998 Pleiade edition of the Œuvres edited by Le Guern.
 

"yield to men what they desire, and give to God [only] words and appearances"

"your ordinary method . . . is to yield to men what they desire, and give the Almighty only words and shows."

"vostre methode ordinaire, qui est d’accorder aux hommes ce qu’ils desirent, et donner à Dieu des paroles et des apparences."

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 12, trans. M'Crie (GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 33, p. 94).  French from p. 374 of tom. 5 of the critical edition of the Œuvres ed. Brunschvicg, and p. 715 of vol. 1 of the 1998 Pleiade edition of the Œuvres ed. Le Guern.
     One might even say that according to Pascal, it should be the official motto of the Jesuits and their like "to attract all and repel none [(attirer tout le monde, et ne rebuter personne, to attract the whole world and repel no one)]" (at the head of no. 10).

Empiricism of a sort

"since God has shown to me a ray of his goodness, I cannot doubt him on the ground that someone has made up some new logical puzzles about him.  It is too late in the day to tell me that God does not exist, the God with whom I have so long conversed, and whom I have seen active in several living men or real sanctity, not to mention the canonised saints."

     Austin Marsden Farrer, "Double thinking," in A celebration of faith (1970), The essential sermons (1991), and The truth-seeking heart:  Austin Farrer and his writings, ed. Ann Loades and Robert McSwain, Canterbury studies in spiritual theology (Norwich:  Canterbury Press, 2006), 197 (196-200).

"May the Jesuits kill the Jansenists?"

"Caramuel, too, our famous champion. . . . examines a great many new questions on this principle, such as the following, for instance:  'May the Jesuits kill the Jansenists? [(SAVOIR SI LES JÉSUITES PEUVENT TUER LES JANSÉNISTES.)]'"

     Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 8, trans. M’Crie.  Pascal has just cited "sa Théologie fondamentale, p. 543."  Unable to find any comment on this in either vol. 5 of the critical Brunschvicg edition of 1904-1914, or vol. 1 of the Le Guern Pléiade edition of 1998, or via quick-and-dirty searches of the full-text in JSTOR and the Atla Religion Database on the French, I reproduce what I’ve found at secs. 1578 (MDLXXVIII) and 1579 (MDLXXIX) in the printing of 1657, albeit not on a p. 543.  (I could find no edition/volume of this work in the Hathi Trust Digital Library containing a p. 543, but have not yet checked, say, Google Books.  Secs. 1578 and 1579 had become secs. 2578 and 2579 in a latter printing, by the way, so variations like that should also be kept in mind.)

p. 444, col. 2 (marginal summaries):

• "An potuerint occidi Ianseniani", Whether the Jansenists can be killed.
• "An Iesuitis Iansenius nocuerit", Whether Jansenius harmed [(defamed)] the Jesuits.

p. 445, col. 1 (marginal summary):

• "Iansenius occidi a Iesuitis non potuit", Jansenius could not be killed by the Jesuits.

p. 445, cols. 1-2 (text above and beside the summary just above):

• The Jansenists accuse the Jesuits of Pelagianism, and [so] I ask first Whether they are calumniators, and second, Whether they can be killed. . . .  And I respond to the second that Jansenius could not be killed when alive, nor can the Jansenists today, who remain.