The worthy monk was so confounded with this parable that he could not find words to reply. To cheer him up a little, I said to him, in a mild tone: “But, after all, my dear father, what made you think of giving the name of _sufficient_ to a grace which you say it is a point of faith to believe is, in fact, insufficient?” “It is very easy for you to talk about it,” said he. “You are an independent and private man; I am a monk, and in a community—cannot you estimate the difference between the two cases? We depend on superiors; they depend on others. They have promised our votes—what would you have to become of me?” We understood the hint; and this brought to our recollection the case of his brother monk, who, for a similar piece of indiscretion, has been exiled to Abbeville. “But,” I resumed, “how comes it about that your community is bound to admit this grace?” “That is another question,” he replied. “All that I can tell you is, in one word, that our order has defended, to the utmost of its ability, the doctrine of St. Thomas on efficacious grace. With what ardor did it oppose, from the very commencement, the doctrine of Molina? How did it labor to establish the necessity of the efficacious grace of Jesus Christ? Don’t you know what happened under Clement VIII. and Paul V., and how the former having been prevented by death, and the latter hindered by some Italian affairs from publishing his bull, our arms still sleep in the Vatican? But the Jesuits, availing themselves, since the introduction of the heresy of Luther and Calvin, of the scanty light which the people possess for discriminating between the error of these men and the truth of the doctrine of St. Thomas, disseminated their principles with such rapidity and success, that they became, ere long, masters of the popular belief; while we, on our part, found ourselves in the predicament of being denounced as Calvinists, and treated as the Jansenists are at present, unless we qualified the efficacious grace with, at least, the apparent avowal of a _sufficient_.[100] In this extremity, what better course could we have taken for saving the truth, without losing our own credit, than by admitting the name of sufficient grace, while we denied that it was such in effect? Such is the real history of the case.”