* * * * * _P. S._—On finishing this letter, there was put in my hands one of your publications, in which you accuse me of falsification, in the case of six of your maxims quoted by me, and also with being in correspondence with heretics. You will shortly receive, I trust, a suitable reply; after which, fathers, I rather think you will not feel very anxious to continue this species of warfare.[240] ----- Footnote 228: In this and the following letters, Pascal changes his style, from that of dialogue to that of direct address, and from that of the liveliest irony to that of serious invective and poignant satire. Footnote 229: “Religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and they tell us truth: yet surely the corruptions in it may; for we are taught by the tritest maxim in the world, that religion being the best of things, its corruptions are likely to be the worst.” (Swift’s Apology for a Tale of a Tub.) Footnote 230: Prov. i. 26; Ps. lii. 6; Job xxii. 19. In the first passage, the figure is evidently what theologians call _anthropopathic_, or speaking of God after the manner of men, and denotes his total disregard of the wicked in the day of their calamity. Footnote 231: In most of the editions, it is “St. Chrysostom,” but I have followed that of Nicole. Footnote 232: We may be permitted to question the correctness of this interpretation, and the propriety of introducing it in the present connection. For the former, the fathers, not Pascal, are responsible; as to the latter, it was certainly superfluous, and not very happy, to have recourse to such an example, to justify the use of ridicule as a weapon against religious follies. Among other writers, the Abbé D’Artigny is very severe against our author on this score, and quotes with approbation the following censure on him: “Is it possible that a man of such genius and erudition could justify the most criminal excesses by such respectable examples? Not content with making witty old fellows of the prophets and the holy fathers, nothing will serve him but to make us believe that the Almighty himself has furnished us with precedents for the most bitter slanders and pleasantries—an evident proof that there is nothing that an author will not seek to justify when he follows his own passion.” (Nouveaux Mémoires D’Artigny, ii. 185.) How solemnly and eloquently will a man write down all such satires, when the jest is pointed against himself and his party! D’Artigny quotes, within a few pages, with evident relish, a bitter satire against a Protestant minister. Footnote 233: “Religious,” is a general term, applied in the Romish Church to all who are in holy orders. Footnote 234: