366.  M. Bayle relates (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 142, p. 804) that Father Gibieuf of the Oratory published a Latin treatise on the freedom of God and of the creature, in the year 1639; that he was met with protests, and was shown a collection of seventy contradictions taken from the first book of his work; and that, twenty years after, Father Annat, Confessor to the King of France, reproached him in his book De Incoacta Libertate (ed.  Rome, 1654, in 4to.), for the silence he still maintained.  Who would not think (adds M. Bayle), after the uproar of the de Auxiliis Congregations, that the Thomists taught things touching the nature of free will which were entirely opposed to the opinion of the Jesuits?  When, however, one considers the passages that Father Annat quoted from the works of the Thomists (in a pamphlet entitled:  Jansenius a Thomistis, gratiae per se ipsam efficacis defensoribus, condemnatus, printed in Paris in the year 1654 in 4to.) one can in reality only see verbal controversies between the two sects.  The grace efficacious of itself, according to the one side, leaves to free will quite as much power of resistance as the congruent grace of the others.  M. Bayle thinks one can say almost as much of Jansenius himself.  He was (so he says) an able man, of a methodical mind and of great assiduity.  He worked for twenty-two years at his Augustinus.  One of his aims was to refute the Jesuits on the dogma of free will; yet no decision has yet been reached as to whether he rejects or adopts freedom of indifference.  From his work innumerable passages [345] are quoted for and against this opinion, as Father Annat has himself shown in the work that has just been mentioned, De Incoacta Libertate.  So easy is it to render this subject obscure, as M. Bayle says at the conclusion of this discourse.  As for Father Gibieuf, it must be admitted that he often alters the meaning of his terms, and that consequently he does not answer the question in the main, albeit he often writes with good sense.

367.  Indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in terms, and from one’s failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas about them.  That gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken, contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the impossible.  But provided that it is understood that necessity and possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend solely upon this question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that contingency is consistent with the inclinations, or reasons which contribute towards causing determination by the will; provided also that one knows how to distinguish clearly between necessity and determination or certainty, between metaphysical necessity, which admits of no choice, presenting only one single object as possible,