Take my word for it, then, and continue your letters; and let the censure come when it may, we are quite prepared for receiving it. These words, “proximate power,” and “sufficient grace,” with which we are threatened, will frighten us no longer. We have learned from the Jesuits, the Jacobins, and M. le Moine, in how many different ways they may be turned, and how little solidity there is in these new-fangled terms, to give ourselves any trouble about them.—Meanwhile, I remain, &c. ----- Footnote 108: The Cardinal de Richelieu, the celebrated founder of the French Academy. The Sorbonne owed its magnificence to the liberality of this eminent statesman, who rebuilt its house, enlarged its revenues, enriched its library, and took it under his special patronage. LETTER III. INJUSTICE, ABSURDITY, AND NULLITY OF THE CENSURE ON M. ARNAULD. PARIS, _February 9, 1656_. SIR,—I have just received your letter; and, at the same time, there was brought me a copy of the censure in manuscript. I find that I am as well treated in the former, as M. Arnauld is ill-treated in the latter. I am afraid there is some extravagance in both cases, and that neither of us is sufficiently well known by our judges. Sure I am, that were we better known, M. Arnauld would merit the approval of the Sorbonne, and I the censure of the Academy. Thus our interests are quite at variance with each other. It is his interest to make himself known, to vindicate his innocence; whereas it is mine to remain in the dark, for fear of forfeiting my reputation. Prevented, therefore, from showing my face, I must devolve on you the task of making my acknowledgments to my illustrious admirers, while I undertake that of furnishing you with the news of the censure. I assure you, sir, it has filled me with astonishment. I expected to find it condemning the most shocking heresy in the world, but your wonder will equal mine, when informed that these alarming preparations, when on the point of producing the grand effect anticipated, have all ended in smoke. To understand the whole affair in a pleasant way, only recollect, I beseech you, the strange impressions which, for a long time past, we have been taught to form of the Jansenists. Recall to mind the cabals, the factions, the errors, the schisms, the outrages, with which they have been so long charged; the manner in which they have been denounced and vilified from the pulpit and the press; and the degree to which this torrent of abuse, so remarkable for its violence and duration, has swollen of late years, when they have been openly and publicly accused of being not only heretics and schismatics, but apostates and infidels—with “denying the mystery of transubstantiation, and renouncing Jesus Christ and the Gospel.”[109]