have not? Is it because this is an unimportant article of belief, and you leave all men at liberty to believe that efficacious grace is necessary or not, as they choose? Is it a matter of indifference to say, that with sufficient grace a man may really act?” “How!” cried the good man; “indifference!—it is heresy—formal heresy. The necessity of _efficacious grace_ for acting effectively, is a point of _faith_—it is heresy to deny it.” “Where are we now?” I exclaimed; “and which side am I to take here? If I deny the sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist. If I admit it, as the Jesuits do, in the way of denying that efficacious grace is necessary, I shall be a heretic, say you. And if I admit it, as you do, in the way of maintaining the necessity of efficacious grace, I sin against common sense, and am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What must I do, thus reduced to the inevitable necessity of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist? And what a sad pass are matters come to, if there are none but the Jansenists who avoid coming into collision either with the faith or with reason, and who save themselves at once from absurdity and from error!” My Jansenist friend took this speech as a good omen, and already looked upon me as a convert. He said nothing to me, however; but, addressing the monk: “Pray, father,” inquired he, “what is the point on which you agree with the Jesuits?” “We agree in this,” he replied, “that the Jesuits and we acknowledge the sufficient grace given to all.” “But,” said the Jansenist, “there are two things in this expression _sufficient grace_—there is the sound, which is only so much breath; and there is the thing which it signifies, which is real and effectual. And, therefore, as you are agreed with the Jesuits in regard to the word _sufficient_, and opposed to them as to the sense, it is apparent that you are opposed to them in regard to the substance of that term, and that you only agree with them as to the sound. Is this what you call acting sincerely and cordially?” “But,” said the good man, “what cause have you to complain, since we deceive nobody by this mode of speaking? In our schools we openly teach that we understand it in a manner different from the Jesuits.”