What portion of this cycle they have reached among us, it is needless to demonstrate. They have evidently got beyond the first stage; and it is highly probable that, in proof of it, the present publication may elicit a more than ordinary exhibition of their skill in the science of defamation and denial. It is far from being unlikely that, at the present point of their revolution, they may find it their interest, after all the mischief that Pascal has done them, and all the ill that they have spoken against Pascal, to claim him as a good Catholic, and take advantage of the prestige of his name to insinuate, that the Church which could boast of such a man is not to be lightly esteemed. And, in fact, it requires no small exercise of caution to guard ourselves against such an illusion. It is difficult to characterize Popery as it deserves without apparent uncharitableness to individuals, such as Fenelon and Pascal, who, though members of a corrupt Church, possessed much of the spirit of true religion. But, though it would be impossible to class such eminent and pious men with an infidel cardinal or a Spanish inquisitor, it does not follow that they are free from condemnation. It has been justly remarked, that “their example has done much harm, and been only the more pernicious from their eminence and their virtues. It is difficult to calculate how much assistance their well-merited reputation has given to prop the falling cause of Popery, and to lengthen out the continuance of a delusion the most lasting and the most dangerous that has ever led mankind astray from the truth.”[80] With regard to our author, in particular, it may be well to remember, that he was virtuous without being indebted to his Church, and evangelical in spite of his creed; that his piety, for which he is so much esteemed by us, was the very quality that exposed him to odium and suspicion from his own communion; that the truths, for his adherence to which we would claim him as a brother in Christ, were those which were reprobated by the authorities of Rome; and that the following Letters, for which he is so justly admired, were, by the same Church, formally censured and ignominiously burnt, along with the Bible which Pascal loved, and the martyrs who have suffered for “the truth as it is in Jesus.” ----- Footnote 1: Non quia per nos sancti et immaculati futuri essemus, sed elegit prædestinavitque ut essemus. (De Prædest., Aug. Op., tom. x. 815.) Footnote 2: De dono Persever. (Ib., 822.) Footnote 3: Neander, Bibl. Repos., iii. 94; Leydecker, de Jansen. Dogm., 413. Footnote 4: The question of the middle knowledge is learnedly handled by Voetius (Disp. Theol., i. 264), by Hoornbeck (Socin. Confut.), and other Protestant divines, who have shown it to be untenable, useless, and fraught with absurdity. Footnote 5: Dupin, Eccl. Hist., 17th cent. 1–14. Footnote 6: “Well done, gentlemen; you have left me more in the dark than ever.” Footnote 7: