Between the date of the second and the third Letter, the process before the Sorbonne had been finished, and M. Arnauld’s censure pronounced. The third Letter deals with this censure. The writer represents the long preparation for it, the manner in which the Jansenists had been denounced as the vilest of heretics, “the cabals, factions, errors, schisms, and outrages with which they have been so long charged.” Who would not have thought, in such circumstances, that the “blackest heresy imaginable” would have come forth under the condemning touch of the Sorbonne? All Christendom waited for the result. It was true that M. Arnauld had backed up his opinions by the clearest quotations from the Fathers, expressing apparently the very things with which he had been charged. But points of difference imperceptible to ordinary eyes would no doubt be made clear under the penetration of so many learned doctors. Thoughts of this kind kept everybody in a state of breathless suspense waiting for the result. “But, alas! how has the expectation been balked! Whether the Molinist doctors have not deigned to lower themselves to the level of instructing us, or for some other secret reason, they have done nothing else than pronounce the following words: ‘This proposition is rash, impious, blasphemous, deserving of anathema, and heretical!’” It was not to be wondered at, in the circumstances, that people were in a bad humour, and were beginning to think that after all there may have been no real heresy in M. Arnauld’s proposition. A heresy which could not be defined, except in general terms of abuse, seemed at the least doubtful. The writer is puzzled, as usual, and has recourse to “one of the most intelligent of the Sorbonnists” who had been so far neutral in the discussion, and whom he asks to point out the difference betwixt M. Arnauld and the Fathers. The “intelligent” Sorbonnist is amused at the _naïveté_ of the inquiry. “Do you fancy,” he says, “that if they could have found any difference they would not have pointed it out?” But why, then, pursues the ingenuous inquirer, should they in such a case pass censure?—