On hearing this solid argument, I took my leave of them, to write you the foregoing account of my interview, from which you will perceive that the following points remain undisputed and uncondemned by either party. _First_, That grace is not given to all men. _Second_, That all the righteous have always the power of obeying the divine commandments. _Third_, That they require, nevertheless, in order to obey them, and even to pray, an efficacious grace, which invincibly determines their will. _Fourth_, That this efficacious grace is not always granted to all the righteous, and that it depends on the pure mercy of God. So that, after all, the truth is safe, and nothing runs any risk but that word without the sense, _proximate_. Happy the people who are ignorant of its existence!—happy those who lived before it was born!—for I see no help for it, unless the gentlemen of the Academy,[95] by an act of absolute authority, banish that barbarous term, which causes so many divisions, from beyond the precincts of the Sorbonne. Unless this be done, the censure appears certain; but I can easily see that it will do no other harm than diminish the credit[96] of the Sorbonne, and deprive it of that authority which is so necessary to it on other occasions. Meanwhile, I leave you at perfect liberty to hold by the word _proximate_ or not, just as you please; for I love you too much to persecute you under that pretext. If this account is not displeasing to you, I shall continue to apprize you of all that happens.—I am, &c. ----- Footnote 81: Anthony Arnauld, or Arnaud, priest and doctor of the Sorbonne, was the son of Anthony Arnauld, a famous advocate, and born at Paris, February 6, 1612. He early distinguished himself in philosophy and divinity, advocating the doctrines of Augustine and Port-Royal, and opposing those of the Jesuits. The disputes concerning grace which broke out about 1643 in the University of Paris, served to foment the mutual animosity between M. Arnauld and the Jesuits, who entertained a hereditary feud against the whole family, from the active part taken by their father against the Society in the close of the preceding century. In 1655 it happened that a certain duke, who was educating his grand-daughter at Port-Royal, the Jansenist monastery, and kept a Jansenist abbé in his house, on presenting himself for confession to a priest under the influence of the Jesuits, was refused absolution, unless he promised to recall his grand-daughter and discard his abbé. This produced two letters from M. Arnauld, in the second of which he exposed the calumnies and falsities with which the Jesuits had assailed him in a multitude of pamphlets. This is the letter referred to in the text. Footnote 82: