JANSENISTS

in France, are those who follow the opinions of Jansenius, a doctor of divinity of the university of Louvain, and bishop of Ypres. In the year 1640, the two universities of Louvain and Douay thought fit to condemn the loose doctrine of the Jesuits, particularly Father Molina and Father Leonard Celsus, concerning grace and predestination. This having set the controversy on foot, Jansenius opposed to the doctrine of the Jesuits the sentiments of St. Augustine, and wrote a treatise upon grace, which he entitled August in us . The treatise was attacked by the Jesuits, who accused Jansenius of maintaining dangerous and heretical opinions: nor did they stop here, but obtained of Pope Urban VIII., in 1642, a formal condemnation of Jansenius’s treatise. The partisans of Jansenius gave out, that this bull was spurious, and composed by a person entirely devoted to the Jesuits. After the death of Urban VIII., the affair of Jansenism began to be more warmly controverted, and gave birth to an infinite number of polemical writings concerning Grace . What occasioned some mirth in these disputes was, the titles which each party gave to their writings. One writer published The Torch of St. Augustine ; another found Snuffers for St. Augustine’s Torch . F. Veron composed A Gag for the Jansenists : and the like. In the year 1650, sixty-eight bishops of France subscribed a letter to Pope Innocent X., to obtain of him an inquiry into, and condemnation of, the five famous propositions which follow, extracted from Jansenius’s August in us :— I. Some of God’s commandments are impo ible to be kept by the righteous, even though they are willing to observe them. II. A man doth never resist inward grace, in the state of fallen nature.