[1] (Monsieur Jean Lacoste wrote in the _Gazette de France_ of May 20, 1893): Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard is a priest full of knowledge, humility and faith. I do not say that his conduct was always an honour to his bands or that his robe was unstained. But if he succumbs to temptation, if the devil has in him an easy prey, he never loses confidence; he hopes by God’s grace to fall no more, and to reach the glories of Paradise. And, in fact, he affords us the spectacle of a very edifying death. Thus a grain of faith beautifies life, and Christian humility well becomes our human weakness. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, if he be not a saint, perhaps deserves purgatory. But he deserves the fire a very long time, and has run risk of hell. For in his acts of humility, though sincere, there was scarcely any repentance. He reckoned too much on the grace of God, and made no effort to help the workings of grace. That is why he fell back into his sin. Thus faith availed him little, and he was nearly a heretic, for the holy council of Trent, by its canons VI. and IX. in its sixth session, declared all those anathema who pretend “that it is not in the power of man to give up his evil ways” and who have such reliance on faith that they think faith alone can save them “without any motion of the will.” Thus the divine mercy extended to Abbé Coignard is truly miraculous and beyond ordinary channels. [2] This has been very favourably received, Monsieur Hugues Rebell having admitted that there is such a thing as a charitable scepticism. Referring, not, it is true, to the opinions of Monsieur Coignard, but to some writings drawn from the same source, he has made some remarks of which I may avail myself here: “An interesting vein of thought might be followed up after reading this work, furnishing, as it does, some valuable teaching: I may be permitted some reflections on it: “1. The organisation of a particular society does not depend on individual wills, but on the compulsion of nature, or to put it more simply, on the unanimity of the more intelligent beings of which that society is composed who inevitably choose the most agreeable rule of life: “2. Mankind at any one period, having the same organic constitution and passions as mankind at any other period, can never have entirely differing institutions. It results from this that a political revolution is no more than a rotatory movement, round the ancient ways, which ends where it began; it is just a disease, an interruption in human development. And the result of this law is that all societies live and die in the same way.” HUGUES REBELL in _l’Ermitage_, _April 1893_. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard simply says that a people is not susceptible to more than one form of government at the same period. THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD COLLECTED BY JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE AND PUBLISHED BY ANATOLE FRANCE THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD I MINISTERS OF STATE