  The various kinds of divine assistance (or, in the language of theology, grace) by which human beings may overcome their Fallen condition were the subject of intense theological controversy in the seventeenth century. The Church had condemned as heretical the Pelagian theory that human beings could achieve eternal salvation by the use of their unaided, natural powers. Various opinions to the effect that they could make some independent contribution to this process were equally condemned as semi-Pelagian. These suggestions were thought to deny or mitigate the exclusive efficacy of the Incarnation. Jansenism represented a starkly exclusive interpretation of how God's assistance enabled Fallen human beings to recover from the effect of Original Sin by the influence of ‘efficacious grace’. However, such a unilateral interpretation of God's intervention seemed to make human effort redundant. Pascal mocked the suggestion that God assisted weak human beings by means of a ‘sufficient grace’ which was not sufficient, and that this insufficient grace required an independent contribution from human agents. “By sufficient grace you mean a grace that is not sufficient” (Provincial Letters: I, 601). In response to what he understood as various degrees of Pelagianism, Pascal defended the theory that no human effort could contribute to salvation, even as a partial cause, and that God's agency is completely efficacious if He chooses freely to assist undeserving sinners.