Those who think of Pascal in his final sanctity, his detachment of soul from all but the greatest matters, may be surprised, when they turn to the "Letters," to find him treating questions, as serious for the friends he was defending as for their adversaries, ironically, with a but half-veiled disdain for them, or an affected humility at being unskilled in them and no theologian. He does not allow us to forget that he is, after all, a layman; while he introduces us, almost avowedly, into a world of unmeaning terms, and unreal distinctions and suppositions that can never be verified. The world in general, indeed, se paye des paroles. That saying belongs to Pascal, and [64] he uses it with reference to the Jesuits and their favourite expression of "sufficient grace." In the earliest "Letters" he creates in us a feeling that, however orthodox one's intention, it is scarcely possible to speak of the matters then so abundantly discussed by religious people without heresy at some unguarded point. The suspected proposition of Arnauld, it is admitted by one of his foes, "would be Catholic in the mouth of any one but M. Arnauld." "The truth," as it lay between Arnauld and his opponents, is a thing so delicate that "pour peu qu'on s'en retire, on tombe dans l'erreur; mais cette erreur est si deliee, que, pour peu qu'on s'en eloigne, on se trouve dans la verite." Some, indeed, may find in the very delicacy, the curiosity, with which such distinctions are drawn, by Pascal's friends as well as by their foes, only the impertinence, the profanities, of the theologian by profession, all too intimate in laying down the law of the things he deals with--the things "which eye hath not seen" pressing into the secrets of God's sublime commerce with men, in which, it may be, He differs with every single human soul, by forms of thought adapted from the poorest sort of men's dealings with each other, from the trader, or the attorney. Pascal notes too the "impious buffooneries" of his opponents. The good Fathers, perhaps, only meant them to promote geniality of temper in the debate. But of such failures--failures of taste, of respect towards one's [65] own point of view--the world is ever unamiably aware; and in the "Letters" there is much to move the self-complacent smile of the worldling, as Pascal describes his experiences, while he went from one authority to another to find out what was really meant by the distinction between grace "sufficient," grace "efficacious," grace "active," grace "victorious." He heard, for instance, that all men have sufficient grace to do God's will; but it is not always prochain, not always at hand, at the moment of temptation to do otherwise. So far, then, Pascal's charges are those which may seem to lie ready to hand against all who study theology, a looseness of thought and language, that would pass nowhere else, in making what are professedly very fine distinctions; the insincerity with which