404 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi 



have made. But in order to dispose those who 

 cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe 

 that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his 

 own cause plays no part in inducing ine to speak 

 thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the 

 following examination, which shall be as brief as I 

 can make it, of the seven propositions in which 

 Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary 

 of my " errors." 



When, in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, the Holy See declared that certain proposi- 

 tions contained in the works of Bishop Jansen 

 were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal 

 replied that, while they were ready to defer to 

 the Papal authority about questions of faith and 

 morals, they must be permitted to judge about 

 questions of fact for themselves ; and that, really, 

 the condemned propositions were not to be found 

 in Jansen's writings. As everybody knows, His 

 Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this, 

 surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of 

 Lord Peter in the " Tale of a Tub." It is, there- 

 fore, not without some apprehension of meeting 

 with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea 

 against Mr. Gladstone's Bull. The seven proposi- 

 tions declared to be false and condemnable, in 

 that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly 

 compares with the authoritative style of the 

 Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may 

 not be true. But they are not to be found in 



