“We have been imposed upon,” he says. “It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until then I had thought that the disputes of the Sorbonne were really important, and deeply affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocation of an assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, induced such high expectations that one could not help believing the business to be of extraordinary importance. You will be much surprised, however, when you learn from this letter the upshot of the grand demonstration. I can explain the matter in a few words, having made myself perfectly master of it.” Two questions, he says, were under examination—“the one a question of fact, the other a question of right.” He explains the question of fact as consisting in the point whether M. Arnauld was guilty of temerity in expressing his doubts as to the propositions being in Jansen’s book after the bishops had declared that they were. No fewer than seventy-one doctors undertook his defence, maintaining that all that could reasonably be asked of him was to say that “he had not been able to find them, but that if they were in the book, he condemned them there.” “Some,” he continues, “even went a step farther, and protested that, after all the search they had made in the book, they had never stumbled upon these propositions, and that they had, on the contrary, found sentiments entirely at variance with them. They then earnestly begged that if any doctor present had discovered them, he would have the goodness to point them out; adding that what was so easy could not be reasonably refused, as that would be the surest way to silence all objectors, M. Arnauld included. But this they have always refused to do. So much for the one side. “On the other side are eighty secular doctors, and some forty mendicant friars, who have condemned M. Arnauld’s proposition, without choosing to examine whether he has spoken truly or falsely—who, in fact, have declared that they have nothing to do with the veracity of his proposition, but simply with its temerity. Besides these were fifteen who were not in favour of the censure, and who are called Neutrals.” Having thus stated the question of fact, and the balance of parties regarding it, Pascal dismisses it at once, important as it proved in the after-history of Port Royal. “As to the issue of the question of fact, I own I give myself very little concern. It does not affect my conscience in the least whether M. Arnauld is presumptuous or the reverse; and should I be tempted from curiosity to ascertain whether these propositions are contained in Jansen, his book is neither so very scarce nor so very large but that I can read it all through for my own enlightenment without consulting the Sorbonne at all.”