Here, father, I might fairly enough have brought our dispute to an issue, without saying a word about those other persons whom you stigmatize as heretics, in order to comprehend me under that condemnation. But as I have been the occasion of their ill treatment, I consider myself bound in some sort to improve the occasion, and I shall take advantage of it in three particulars. One advantage, not inconsiderable in its way, is that it will enable me to vindicate the innocence of so many calumniated individuals. Another, not inappropriate to my subject, will be to disclose, at the same time, the artifices of your policy in this accusation. But the advantage which I prize most of all this, that it affords me an opportunity of apprizing the world of the falsehood of that scandalous report which you have been so busily disseminating, namely, “that the Church is divided by a new heresy.” And as you are deceiving multitudes into the belief that the points on which you are raising such a storm are essential to the faith, I consider it of the last importance to quash these unfounded impressions, and distinctly to explain here what these points are, so as to show that, in point of fact, there are no heretics in the Church. I presume, then, that were the question to be asked, Wherein consists the heresy of those called Jansenists? the immediate reply would be, “These people hold that the commandments of God are impracticable to men—that grace is irresistible—that we have not free will to do either good or evil—that Jesus Christ did not die for all men, but only for the elect; in short, they maintain the five propositions condemned by the pope.” Do you not give it out to all that this is the ground on which you persecute your opponents? Have you not said as much in your books, in your conversations, in your catechisms? A specimen of this you gave at the late Christmas festival at St. Louis. One of your little shepherdesses was questioned thus:— “For whom did Jesus Christ come into the world, my dear?” “For all men, father.” “Indeed, my child; so you are not one of those new heretics who say that he came only for the elect?” Thus children are led to believe you, and many others beside children; for you entertain people with the same stuff in your sermons, as Father Crasset did at Orleans, before he was laid under an interdict. And I frankly own that, at one time, I believed you myself. You had given me precisely the same idea of these good people; so that when you pressed them on these propositions, I narrowly watched their answer, determined never to see them more, if they did not renounce them as palpable impieties.