English literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- Anecdotes; Litterateurs
In this research on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous
history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which
had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real
notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions
have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the
_Antinomians_, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine,
expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John
Agricola, a follower of Luther, who, while he lived, had kept Agricola's
follies from exploding, which they did when he asserted that there was
no such thing as sin, our salvation depending on faith, and not on
works; and when he declaimed against the _Law of God_. To what length
some of his sect pushed this verbal doctrine is known; but the real
notions of this Agricola probably never will be! Bayle considered him as
a harmless dreamer in theology, who had confused his head by Paul's
controversies with the Jews; but Mosheim, who bestows on this early
reformer the epithets of _ventosus_ and _versipellis_, windy and crafty!
or, as his translator has it, charges him with "vanity, presumption, and
artifice," tells us by the term "law," Agricola only meant the ten
commandments of Moses, which he considered were abrogated by the Gospel,
being designed for the Jews and not for the Christians. Agricola then,
by the words the "Law of God," and "that there was no such thing as
sin," must have said one thing and meant another! This appears to have
been the case with most of the divines of the sixteenth century; for
even Mosheim complains of "their want of precision and consistency in
expressing _their sentiments_, hence their real sentiments have been
misunderstood." There evidently prevailed a great "confusion of words"
among them! The _grace suffisante_ and the _grace efficace_ of the
Jansenists and the Jesuits show the shifts and stratagems by which
nonsense may be dignified. "Whether all men received from God
_sufficient grace_ for their conversion!" was an inquiry some unhappy
metaphysical theologist set afloat: the Jesuits, according to their
worldly system of making men's consciences easy, affirmed it; but the
Jansenists insisted, that this _sufficient grace_ would never be
_efficacious_, unless accompanied by _special grace_. "Then the
_sufficient grace_, which is not _efficacious_, is a contradiction in
terms, and worse, a heresy!" triumphantly cried the Jesuits, exulting
over their adversaries. This "confusion of words" thickened, till the
Jesuits introduced in this logomachy with the Jansenists papal bulls,
royal edicts, and a regiment of dragoons! The Jansenists, in despair,
appealed to miracles and prodigies, which they got up for public
representation; but, above all, to their Pascal, whose immortal satire
the Jesuits really felt was at once "sufficient and efficacious,"
though the dragoons, in settling a "confusion of words," did not boast
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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