[4] We know from a very respectable and very sure hand, that this father of the church was some months since at Petersbourg, where he wrote, for bread, panegyricks on a great princess, who pays to his eulogies the same regard as to his writings. Nothing more was wanting to the disgrace of those who set him to work, but to leave him, as they do, in want, and obliged to go to beg abjectly, at six hundred leagues, his subsistence. [5] M. de Voltaire, in his excellent catalogue of the writers of the age of Louis XIV. [6] They were very far from this in 16.... when they forbid all the subjects of the congregation from teaching Jansenism and Cartesianism. [7] See Bayle’s dictionary under the word Petau. See also the Longueruana, Part I. p. 86. [8] The safety of the people is the supreme law. [9] The reader, perhaps, will not be displeased to see what a philosopher of much wit, and full of contempt besides for all theological quarrels, thought of this charming doctrine. “Can it be possible to give to the word _freedom_ a meaning so forced as that which the Jansenists give it? We are now, according to them, like a ball on a billiard-table, indifferent whether it move to the right or to the left; but at the very time that it moves to the right, it is maintained to be still indifferent as to its moving to that side; for this reason, that it might have been driven to the left. Such is what they have the presumption to call in us _freedom_; a freedom purely passive, which signifies only the different use which the Creator may make of our wills, and not the use which we can make of them ourselves without his help. What fantastic and fallacious language!” _Lettre de Mr. de la Motte, à Mr. de Fenelon._ [10] Lib. vii. Fabl. 16. [11] Mr. de la Chalotais, in his _Essay on Education_, presented to the parliament of Bretagne. [12] The late cardinal de Tencin. [13] _Le Dépit amoureux_, Act first, Scene last. [14] It is said that the Jesuits, out of respect to the Queen and Dauphin, refused to undertake the spiritual guidance of La Pompadour. _Appendix_ to the XXXII. Vol. of the _Monthly Review_. p. 499. [15] _Fontaine_, Lib. VII. Fable iii. [16] Æneid I. [17] Mélanges de littérature, d’histoire & de philosophie, par M. D.... Tom. IV. p. 364. [18] _And thou too, my dear Brutus!_ It is assured that this satyrist gave to the word _Brutus_ a more malicious interpretation than we pretend to approve of. [19] The reader knows that _hegira_ signifies _flight_, or _expulsion_. [20] This is what a thousand French have heard said in England, in Germany, and even at Rome. [21] It is assured, that the day after the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Convulsionaries began to foretell it. It is thus that they have always prophesied; and what is very surprising, they have never been mistaken.