logy. When imprisoned at Vincennes, he was
still the spiritual father of Port Royal. Amid this famous retreat
were collected the greatest scholars and the greatest saints of the
seventeenth century--Antoine Le Maitre, De Lericourt, Le Maitre de
Saci, Antoine Arnauld, and Pascal himself. Le Maitre de Saci gave to
the world the best translation of the Bible in French; Arnauld wrote
one hundred volumes of controversy, and, among them, a noted satire on
the Jesuits, which did them infinite harm; while Pascal, besides his
wonderful mathematical attainments, and his various meditative works,
is immortalized for his Provincial Letters, written in the purest
French, and with matchless power and beauty. This work, directed
against the Jesuits, is an inimitable model of elegant irony, and the
most effective sarcasm probably ever elaborated by man. In the vale of
Port Royal also dwelt Tillemont, the great ecclesiastical historian;
Fontaine and Racine, who were controlled by the spirit of Arnauld, as
well as the Prince of Conti, and the Duke of Liancourt. There resided,
under the name of _Le Merrier_, and in the humble occupation of a
gardener, one of the proudest nobles of the French court; and there,
too, dwelt the celebrated Duchess of Longueville, sister of the Prince
of Conde, the life of the Fronde, the idol of the Parisian mob, and the
once gay patroness of the proudest festivities.

[Sidenote: The Labors of the Port Royalists.]

But it is the labors of these saints, scholars, and nobles to repress
the dangerous influence of the Jesuits for which they were most
distinguished. The Jansenists of Port Royal did not deny the authority
of the pope, nor the great institutions of the papacy. They sought
chiefly, in their controversy with the Jesuits, to enforce the
doctrines of Augustine respecting justification. But their efforts
were not agreeable to the popes, nor to the doctors of the Sorbonne,
who had no sympathy with their religious life, and detested their bold
spirit of inquiry. The doctors of the Sorbonne, accordingly, extracted
from the book of Jansen five propositions which they deemed heretical,
and urged the pope to condemn them. The Port Royalists admitted that
these five propositions were indefensible if they were declared
heretical by the sovereign pontiff, but denied that they were actually
to be found in the book of Jansen. They did not quarrel with the pope
on grounds of faith. They recognized his infallibility