I will only remark one singularity in this proceeding, which is not
equal to the story of the good woman; it is, that the Jesuits, who were
so much accused in France by the Jansenists of having been founded by
St. Ignatius, expressly to destroy the love of God, warmly interfered
at Rome in favor of the pure love of Fénelon. It happened to them as to
M. de Langeais, who was pursued by his wife to the Parliament of Paris,
on account of his impotence, and by a girl to the Parliament of Rennes,
for having rendered her pregnant. He ought to have gained one of these
two causes; he lost them both. Pure love, for which the Jesuits made so
much stir, was condemned at Rome, and they were always supposed at Paris
to be against loving God. This opinion was so rooted in the public mind
that when, some years ago, an engraving was sold representing our Lord
Jesus Christ dressed as a Jesuit, a wit--apparently the _loustic_ of the
Jansenist party--wrote lines under the print intimating that the
ingenious fathers had habited God like themselves, as the surest means
of preventing the love of him:
_Admirez l'artifice extrême_
_Les ces pères ingénieux:_
_Ils vous ont habillé comme eux,_
_Mon Dieu, de peur qu'on ne vous aime._
At Rome, where such disputes never arise, and where they judge those
that take place elsewhere, they were much annoyed with quarrels on pure
love. Cardinal Carpegne, who was the reporter of the affairs of the
archbishop of Cambray, was ill, and suffered much in a part which is not
more spared in cardinals than in other men. His surgeon bandaged him
with fine linen, which is called cambrai (cambric) in Italy as in many
other places. The cardinal cried out, when the surgeon pleaded that it
was the finest cambrai: "What! more cambrai still? Is it not enough to
have one's head fatigued with it?" Happy the disputes which end thus!
Happy would man be if all the disputers of the world, if heresiarchs,
submitted with so much moderation, such magnanimous mildness, as the
great archbishop of Cambray, who had no desire to be an heresiarch! I
know not whether he was right in wishing God to be loved for himself
alone, but M. de Fénelon certainly deserved to be loved thus.
In purely literary disputes there is often as much snarling and party
spirit as in more interesting quarrels. We should, if we could, renew
the factions of the circus, which agitated the Roman Empire. Two rival
actresses are capable of dividing a town. Men have all a secret
fascination for faction. If we cannot cabal, pursue, and destroy one
another for crowns, tiaras, and mitres, we fall upon one another for a
dancer or a musician. Rameau had a violent party against him, who would
have exterminated him; and he knew nothing of it. I had a violent party
against me, and I knew it well.
WHYS (THE).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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