Dining one day at the house of a Dutch lady, I was charitably warned by one of the guests, to take care of myself, and not to praise Voetius. "I have no desire," said I, "to say either good or evil of your Voetius; but why do you give me this advice?" "Because madam is a Cocceian," said my neighbor. "With all my heart," said I. She added, that there were still four Cocceians in Holland, and that it was a great pity that the sect perished. A time will come in which the Jansenists, who have made so much noise among us, and who are unknown everywhere else, will have the fate of the Cocceians. An old doctor said to me: "Sir, in my youth, I have debated on the _'mandata impossibilia volentibus et conantibus.'_ I have written against the formulary and the pope, and I thought myself a confessor. I have been put in prison, and I thought myself a martyr. I now no longer interfere in anything, and I believe myself to be reasonable." "What are your occupations?" said I to him. "Sir," replied he, "I am very fond of money." It is thus that almost all men in their old age inwardly laugh at the follies which they ardently embraced in their youth. Sects grow old, like men. Those which have not been supported by great princes, which have not caused great mischief, grow old much sooner than others. They are epidemic maladies, which pass over like the sweating sickness and the whooping-cough. There is no longer any question on the pious reveries of Madame Guyon. We no longer read the most unintelligible book of Maxims of the Saints, but Telemachus. We no longer remember what the eloquent Bossuet wrote against the elegant and amiable Fénelon; we give the preference to his funeral orations. In all the dispute on what is called quietism, there has been nothing good but the old tale revived of the honest woman who brought a torch to burn paradise, and a cruse of water to extinguish the fire of hell, that God should no longer be served either through hope or fear.