High as the Provincials stand in the literary world, they were not suffered to pass without censure in the high places of the Church. The first effect of their publication, indeed, was to raise a storm against the casuists, whom Pascal had so effectually exposed. The curés of Paris, and afterwards the assembly of the clergy, shocked at the discovery of such a sink of corruption, the existence of which, though just beneath their feet, they never appear to have suspected, determined to institute an examination into the subject. Hitherto the tenets of the casuists, buried in huge folios, or only taught in the colleges of the Jesuits, had escaped public observation. The clergy resolved to compare the quotations of Pascal with these writings; and the result of the investigation was, that he was found to be perfectly correct, while a multitude of other maxims, equally scandalous, were dragged to light. These were condemned in a general assembly of the clergy.[48] Unfortunately for the Jesuits, they had not a single writer at the time capable of conducting their vindication. Several replies to the Provincials were attempted while they were in the course of publication; but these were taken up by the redoubtable Montalte, and fairly strangled at their birth.[49] Shortly after the Letters were finished, there appeared “An Apology for the Casuists,” the production of a Jesuit named Pirot, who, with a folly and frankness which proved nearly as fatal to his order as it did to himself, attempted to vindicate the worst maxims of the casuistical school. This Apology was condemned by the Sorbonne, and subsequently at Rome; its author died of chagrin, and the Jesuits fell into temporary disgrace.[50]