Status Updates From The Age of Religious Confli...

So there was an Ecumenical Patriarch (functional leader of Eastern Orthodoxy) that was EXTREMELY sympathetic to Reformed Christianity? B A S E D... until his most famous writing was declared a forgery and its contents roundly declared heresy by the Council of Jerusalem (historical opinions differ on whether or not it was actually forged). RIP Cyril Lucaris

Did you know there was a mystical movement in 17th century Roman Catholicsm that said that spiritual perfection required the annihilation of the human will? This so-called "mystic death" could apparently be achieved by meditation in which one simply rested passively in God's presence. They even claimed that it was impossible to sin in this state... it was later condemned, but did influence Prots like John Wesley.

"This is a picture of the church guided by its pastors. If people would but consider pastors as mariners, always tugging at the oar alwavs rowing against the wind, and always in danger they would not envy their condition. Their comfort is, that Christ has His eye continually on the boat, that He sees their pains and difficulties, and will certainly come to their assistance." - Pasquier Quesnel

"It is difficult to sum up the long-term effects of so complex a movement as Jansenism. Negatively, its defeat (especially through the Unigenitus bull of 1713) entailed the virtual obliteration of the Augustinian doctrine of grace within the Roman Catholic Church. In condemning Jansenism, Rome had unwittingly and indirectly condemned Augustine" - pg. 520

A 10 year old abbess, a clever defensive distinction between "law and fact", biting Church satire written by Blaise Pascal, Jesuits being Jesuits (Laxism... a.k.a moral calculus --> look it up), and a burgeoning (and increasingly problematic) Roman Catholic "Augustinian-Calvinist" movement (Jansenism)? Yeah... 17th century Roman Catholic France had it all.

what a marathon