We understood him perfectly well; and on our being left alone, I expressed to my friend my astonishment at the subversion which this doctrine threatened to the whole system of morals. To this he replied that he was quite astonished at my astonishment. “Are you not yet aware,” he said, “that they have gone to far greater excess in morals than in any other matter?” He gave me some strange illustrations of this, promising me more at some future time. The information which I may receive on this point, will, I hope, furnish the topic of my next communication.—I am, &c. ----- Footnote 120: Etienne Bauni, or Stephen Bauny, was a French Jesuit. His “Summary,” which Pascal has immortalized by his frequent references to it, was published in 1633. It is a large volume, stuffed with the most detestable doctrines. In 1642, the General Assembly of the French clergy censured his books on moral theology, as containing propositions “leading to licentiousness, and the corruption of good manners, violating natural equity, and excusing blasphemy, usury, simony, and other heinous sins, as trivial matters.” (Nicole, i. 164.) And yet this abominable work was formally defended in the “Apology for the Casuists,” written in 1657, by Father Pirot, and acknowledged by the Jesuits as having been written under their direction! (Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales, p. 30.) Footnote 121: Francis Annat was born in the year 1590. He was made rector of the College of Toulouse, and appointed by the Jesuits their French provincial; and, while in that situation, was chosen by Louis XIV. as his confessor. His friends have highly extolled his virtues as a man; and the reader may judge of the value of these eulogiums from the fact, that he retained his post as the favorite confessor of that licentious monarch, without interruption, till deafness prevented him from listening any longer to the confessions of his royal penitent. (Bayle, art. _Annat_.) They have also extolled his answer to the Provincial Letters, in his “Bonne Foy des Jansenistes,” in which he professed to expose the falsity of the quotations made from the Casuists, with what success, appears from the Notes of Nicole, who has completely vindicated Pascal from the unfounded charges which the Jesuits have reiterated on this point. (Notes Preliminaires, vol. i. p. 256, &c.; Entretiens de Cleandre et Eudoxe, p. 79.) Footnote 122: