The Life Of Mr. Paschal, With His Letters Relating to the Jesuits.

2 Volumes. 8vo. pp. 7 p.l., lxiii, 228; 2 p.l., 320. 2 engraved frontis. portraits by George Vertue. Vol. I lacking A2 (dedication to George Pitt, Jun.). several woodcut ornaments. contemporary calf, rebacked & recornered (covers worn, internally fine & crisp). First Edition of the Second English Translation of the 'Provincial Letters', by William Andrews, and First Edition in English of the prefatory biography of Pascal by his sister. Pascal's famous defence of Jansenism, the seventeenth-century French ascetic movement of reform inside the Roman Catholic Church, stands as a brilliant and noble defence of thought in religious faith. The author's first important ethical work and a classic of French prose, it was composed following Pascal's removal in 1654 to Port Royal, the monastery famous as the centre of the Jansenist movement. Written in response to the Jesuit attacks on Jansenism which culminated in the condemnation by the Sorbonne at the end of 1655 of Antoine Arnauld, the leading light of Port Royal, the Lettres were originally issued clandestinely in a series of eighteen separate parts between January 23, 1656 and January 15, 1657. Pascal's magnificent invective against the casuistical methods of argument employed by the Jesuits seriously weakened their position in France and was largely responsible for the traditional bad reputation which they still bear. The prefatory biography was written by Pascal's sister, Jacqueline Perier, who was a nun at Port Royal. "Pascal's counter-attack took the form of a brilliant exposure of the casuistical methods of argument employed by the Jesuits.[His] weapon was irony, and the freshness with which the gravity of the subject contrasts with the lightness of the manner is an enduring triumph. The vividness and distinction of his style recalls the prose of Milton at its best." (Printing and the Mind of Man) NCBEL II 1525. Rothschild 35.