Chapter VIII — Most grave absurdities which necessarily follow upon Probabilism

I. I have most briefly touched upon the reasons which prove the manifest falsity of Probabilism. I have indicated their cavils, and the unheard-of paradoxes which they have devised, that they might oppose darkness to the most splendid truth. Now I shall lay open certain absurdities which follow upon the new manner of opining. Some things are premised.

II. It is of faith that there are sins of ignorance, as is found in Leviticus 5 [recte 4-5]: if he shall sin through ignorance ... he shall offer a ram without blemish. Again, John chapter 16: The hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth a service to God. St. Paul: I was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and contumelious; but I obtained the mercy of God, because I did it ignorantly: 1 Timothy 1. I pass over innumerable other testimonies of holy Scripture. The heresiarch Pelagius, first of all, sustained the opposite error, which the Synod of Palestine condemned.

III. Ignorance is the privation of knowledge. Error is the approbation of falsity. One ignorance is of law, which is ignorant of a law or precept; another of fact, which admits knowledge of the law, but is ignorant of the fact. One is vincible, or voluntary, consequent, and culpable — this can be conquered by diligence and study, and through negligence is not conquered. Another is invincible, which can be overcome by no study — this is without all fault. Of vincible ignorance, one kind is affected, which repels knowledge: He would not understand, that he might do well. Another is crass and supine, which applies no diligence at all to know those things which one can and ought to know.

IV. The error of Jansenius is the opposite of the error of Pelagius: Jansenius contended that invincible antecedent ignorance itself is a sin — which error the Church proscribed.

V. This most difficult question I have treated with full pen in Tome 2 of the Apparatus, book 2, dissertation 2, chapter 3. The brevity prescribed for a compendium does not permit me to bring the same again to the anvil; I shall only subjoin a few animadversions.

VI. Animadversion I. There are many oracles of Scripture which upbraid men with sins of ignorance. There is a way which seemeth just to a man; but the ends thereof lead to death: Proverbs 16. St. James, chapter 1, says: But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men abundantly, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind.

VII. Animadversion II. The ancient Fathers, making no distinction of the natural law into universal principles, proximate conclusions, and remote conclusions, deny invincible ignorance of the natural law.

VIII. Animadversion III. The precept of inquiring after the truth is most luminous. The oracles of the Scriptures which promise the grace of finding the truth to sedulous investigations are well attested, and frequent. We have been left in this valley of darkness, that with continual prayers we may implore the light of truth. God does not deny his grace, unless fault on our part precede.

IX. Animadversion IV. Vincible ignorance is most frequent; invincible, rare. Whether in some rare case there can be given an invincible ignorance of some remote conclusion of the natural law, I dare not define. Things which occur rarely ought not to hold us anxious. Against those things which happen frequently — such as the sins of vincible ignorance — we must watch incessantly.

X. Animadversion V. Let Theologians and Confessors meditate with what vigilance, with what study, they endeavor to attain the understanding of the divine law. Let them consider whether they can say with David, Psalm 1: Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly ... But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night. First of all, then, let the Priests of the Lord occupy themselves in coming to know the divine law, and in comprehending and tasting its spirit, that they may be able to discern what doctrine is conformed to this divine law.

XI. Animadversion VI. Dismissing, therefore, the controversy whether in some very rare case there can be given an invincible ignorance of the natural law, what St. Augustine writes in book 22 of the City of God, chapter 23 [recte 19, ch. 4 of book 19], must above all be weighed and executed: With continual vigils we keep watch, lest a verisimilar opinion deceive us, lest cunning speech beguile us, lest the darkness of some error pour itself over us, lest what is good be believed evil, or what is evil be believed good. Let us fear and tremble with Paul: For I am not conscious to myself of any thing; yet am I not hereby justified.

XII. Animadversion VII. Fr. La-Croix errs shamefully, and imposes a falsehood upon his readers, when in his book on laws, number 726, he narrates that in the year 1685 there was condemned the opinion of all the ancients, and of many, and indeed the gravest, of the more recent Theologians, denying invincible ignorance of any part whatsoever of the natural law. In that year, indeed, a book was forbidden in which errors were contained; but not everything taught in it was proscribed — just as not everything contained in the books of Luther and Calvin is proscribed.

XIII. The Probabilists rather commonly teach that sin is never committed without actual consideration, clear or obscure, of the malice of the action. This opinion, as it seems to my weakness, is the same as the error of the Pelagians denying the sins of ignorance, as Jerome and Augustine and the other Fathers testify. No crime, said the Pelagians, without liberty; no liberty without knowledge; therefore no sin without knowledge. The Probabilists deny that sin can be committed without some actual knowledge of the malice of the action: therefore the doctrine of the Pelagians and of the Probabilists is the same, so far as appears from the force of the reasoning. Which I prove thus.

XIV. It is a Catholic truth that men commit sins of ignorance. Actual advertence being admitted, the darkness of ignorance vanishes. The Probabilists teach that actual knowledge, or advertence, is necessary that the ignorance be vincible and criminal. Therefore the doctrine of both parties is the same. Tell me: what is opposed to ignorance? Knowledge. Therefore it cannot be that he sins ignorantly who knows, and considers — and that actually — that he is sinning.

XV. Actual consideration being removed, there is no sin. When therefore men inconsiderately vomit forth perjuries, blasphemies, revilings, and maledictions against God and against men, they in no way sin, because they do not actually advert that they are sinning. Those who, stirred by wrath and fury, shed human blood; those who, blinded by the enticements of concupiscence, violate the marriage-beds of others; those who defile the chastity of virgins — are guilty of no crime, because, carried away by passion, they do not in fact advert that they are offending God. What shall I say of the crimes of heresies and of infidelity? So far were very many infidels from reckoning that they were contemning the true Religion, that they rather judged that they were worshipping God with their sacrifices. Did the Circumcellions believe they were sinning, when they hurled themselves headlong from the cliffs? Did Nestorius consider that he was sinning, when he chose rather to abdicate the Patriarchate of Constantinople than to abjure his error?

XVI. In the name of the Probabilists, Fr. La-Croix answers, book 5, numbers 16 and 21, in these words: Although the ignorance or unthinkingness be culpable, the work following from it has no special malice, except precisely that of the negligence, or neglect, in knowing or adverting to that malice. Behold the most sweet yoke of flattering benignity! The Infidels, the Arians, the Iconoclasts, the Wycliffites, the Hussites, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Socinians, blinded by the perversity of their opinions, sinned indeed a sin of negligence in learning Catholic doctrine; but when, carried away by fury, they blurted out that the Son of God is a creature, tore sacred images to pieces, trampled the body of Christ underfoot, leveled the monasteries of Monks to the ground, defiled Virgins consecrated to God — these and other crimes have no special malice, except precisely that of the negligence, or neglect, in learning or adverting to the malice. I do not doubt that readers shudder as they hear these things.

XVII. The sophism of the Pelagians, which they obtrude today, drawn from liberty, is futile and empty. For nothing is more frequent among the Fathers and Theologians than the twofold voluntary and free: the one direct, the other indirect. The direct free act requires actual and formal knowledge and advertence. The indirect free act demands implicit, virtual, indirect knowledge and advertence — that is, knowledge in its cause. These things are obvious even to beginners.

XVIII. The philosophical sin condemned by the Church is of this kind: A philosophical, or moral, sin is a human act disagreeing with rational nature and with right reason. A theological and mortal sin is a free transgression of the divine law. The philosophical sin, however grave, in him who either is ignorant of God or does not actually think of God, is a grave sin, but is not an offense against God, nor a mortal sin dissolving the friendship of God, nor worthy of eternal punishment.

XIX. By what reasoning this condemned error can be separated from the ignorance just described, I truly do not perceive; nor will anyone perceive it who is not prejudiced. For, this hypothesis being admitted — that, actual advertence being removed, sin is never committed, nor God offended — philosophical sin necessarily follows. For in this hypothesis those who fornicate, commit adultery, lie, and perjure themselves, without actually adverting that they sin, will commit philosophical, not theological, sins. And it is my pleasure to confirm this by the authority of a Theologian of the illustrious Society of Jesus, Fr. Ignacio de Camargo, book 2, controversy 4, article 6, number 530, saying: This is Ignorantism — that is, the doctrine of the sins of ignorance among the recent Probabilists — of which you know not whether it be the parent of Probabilism, or its nursling, or its son, or its companion, or its full brother. Ignorantism, Probabilism, and Philosophism are so mutually connected, that you can scarcely define which is the parent and which the children. See Tome II of the Apparatus, book 2, dissertation 2, chapter 4.

XX. This paradox surpasses the rest. The Probabilists teach that the ignorance is invincible whenever the less probable opinion, in view of the more probable, is false: than which nothing more monstrous, it seems, can be devised or brought forth in the whole of Theology and Philosophy.

XXI. Invincible ignorance is that — as the very word bears on its face — which cannot be conquered and overcome. The mere doubting of the thing which is unknown makes the ignorance vincible and criminal. When you doubt whether such an action be depraved, by the confession of all you sin, because you expose yourself to the danger of sinning. And when you judge it more probable that the action is befouled with malice, and you repudiate this more probable opinion, and select the opposite, less probable one — if this be false, will your ignorance be invincible? You flee from the more splendid light, you close your eyes to it, that you may select the less probable opinion, which favors your liberty and is opposed to the Law: and in this case your error will be insuperable? Who, I pray you, endowed with common sense, can defend so great a paradox? Yet this is the paradox which all the Probabilists champion. But it is repugnant to common sense. For that is called invincible which cannot be conquered and overcome. With what face, then, do the Probabilists assert that this error cannot be overcome and conquered, at that very time at which they turn their eyes away from the greater light shining forth — at which they will not understand, that they may do well, and may at least approach nearer to the truth?