Here my friend the Jansenist, following up my remarks, said to him: “You would do well, father, if you wish to preserve your doctrine, not to explain so precisely as you have done to us, what you mean by _actual grace_. For, how could you, without forfeiting all credit in the estimation of men, openly declare that _nobody sins without having previously the knowledge of his weakness, and of a physician, or the desire of a cure, and of asking it of God_? Will it be believed, on your word, that those who are immersed in avarice, impurity, blasphemy, duelling, revenge, robbery and sacrilege, have really a desire to embrace chastity, humility, and the other Christian virtues? Can it be conceived that those philosophers who boasted so loudly of the powers of nature, knew its infirmity and its physician? Will you maintain that those who held it as a settled maxim that ‘it is not God that bestows virtue, and that no one ever asked it from him,’ would think of asking it for themselves? Who can believe that the Epicureans, who denied a divine providence, ever felt any inclination to pray to God?—men who said that ‘it would be an insult to invoke the Deity in our necessities, as if he were capable of wasting a thought on beings like us?’ In a word, how can it be imagined that idolaters and Atheists, every time they are tempted to the commission of sin, in other words, infinitely often during their lives, have a desire to pray to the true God, of whom they are ignorant, that he would bestow on them virtues of which they have no conception?” “Yes,” said the worthy monk, in a resolute tone, “we will affirm it: and sooner than allow that any one sins without having the consciousness that he is doing evil, and the desire of the opposite virtue, we will maintain that the whole world, reprobates and infidels included, have these inspirations and desires in every case of temptation. You cannot show me, from the Scripture at least, that this is not the truth.” On this remark I struck in, by exclaiming: “What! father, must we have recourse to the Scripture to demonstrate a thing so clear as this? This is not a point of faith, nor even of reason. It is a matter of fact: we see it—we know it—we feel it.”