come to being sceptics. At any rate, it is well to unlearn contempt for anybody; and, if only for that reason, it may be worth while to consider Pascal's position a little more closely. We shall do so best, I think, by considering the central theory which connects the Letters and the Thoughts, and gives the real starting-point of his speculation.
The Letters to a Provincial open by an exposition of certain disputes about grace, which call up faint memories of the endless and intricate controversies of the time. The technical terms, justification, sanctification, election, grace, predestination, and the like, still occur in respectable text-books of theology, like fossils which show what strange monsters once cumbered the earth. Yet the discussions were the temporary embodiment of inquiries which still interest us profoundly in a different dialect, and involve really vital points of morality. The creed represented by Jansenius has carried on an intermittent warfare with its antagonist at the critical periods of Christian theology. He had declared himself to be simply reproducing the teaching of Augustine, who had elaborated the teaching of St. Paul; and, under the shelter of those infallible authori-
