LETTER XIV: TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE
JESUITS
October 23, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
If I had merely to reply to the three remaining charges on the
subject of homicide, there would be no need for a long discourse,
and you will see them refuted presently in a few words; but as I think
it of much more importance to inspire the public with a horror at your
opinions on this subject than to justify the fidelity of my
quotations, I shall be obliged to devote the greater part of this
letter to the refutation of your maxims, to show you how far you
have departed from the sentiments of the Church and even of nature
itself. The permissions of murder, which you have granted in such a
variety of cases, render it very apparent, that you have so far
forgotten the law of God, and quenched the light of nature, as to
require to be remanded to the simplest principles of religion and of
common sense.
What can be a plainer dictate of nature than that "no private
individual has a right to take away the life of another"? "So well are
we taught this of ourselves," says St. Chrysostom, "that God, in
giving the commandment not to kill, did not add as a reason that
homicide was an evil; because," says that father, "the law supposes
that nature has taught us that truth already." Accordingly, this
commandment has been binding on men in all ages. The Gospel has
confirmed the requirement of the law; and the Decalogue only renewed
the command which man had received from God before the law, in the
person of Noah, from whom all men are descended. On that renovation of
the world, God said to the patriarch: "At the hand of man, and at
the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for man is
made in the image of God." (Gen. ix. 5, 6.) This general prohibition
deprives man of all power over the life of man. And so exclusively has
the Almighty reserved this prerogative in His own hand that, in
accordance with Christianity, which is at utter variance with the
false maxims of Paganism, man has no power even over his own life.
But, as it has seemed good to His providence to take human society
under His protection, and to punish the evil-doers that give it
disturbance, He has Himself established laws for depriving criminals
of life; and thus those executions which, without this sanction, would
be punishable outrages, become, by virtue of His authority, which is
the rule of justice, praiseworthy penalties. St. Augustine takes an
admirable view of this subject. "God," he says, "has himself qualified
this general prohibition against manslaughter, both by the laws
which He has instituted for the capital punishment of malefactors, and
by the special orders which He has sometimes issued to put to death
certain individuals. And when death is inflicted in such cases, it
is not man that kills, but God, of whom man may be considered as
only the instrument, in the same way as a sword in the hand of him
that wields it. But, these instances excepted, whosoever kills
incurs the guilt of murder."
It appears, then, fathers, that the right of taking away the
life of man is the sole prerogative of God, and that, having
ordained laws for executing death on criminals, He has deputed kings
or commonwealths as the depositaries of that power- a truth which
St. Paul teaches us, when, speaking of the right which sovereigns
possess over the lives of their subjects, he deduces it from Heaven in
these words: "He beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister
of God to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. 13. 4.) But
as it is God who has put this power into their hands, so He requires
them to exercise it in the same manner as He does himself; in other
words, with perfect justice; according to what St. Paul observes in
the same passage: "Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the
evil. Wilt thou, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that which is
good: for he is the minister of God to thee for good." And this
restriction, so far from lowering their prerogative, exalts it, on the
contrary, more than ever; for it is thus assimilated to that of God
who has no power to do evil, but is all-powerful to do good; and it is
thus distinguished from that of devils, who are impotent in that which
is good, and powerful only for evil. There is this difference only
to be observed betwixt the King of Heaven and earthly sovereigns, that
God, being justice and wisdom itself, may inflict death
instantaneously on whomsoever and in whatsoever manner He pleases;
for, besides His being the sovereign Lord of human life, it certain
that He never takes it away either without cause or without judgement,
because He is as incapable of injustice as He is of error. Earthly
potentates, however, are not at liberty to act in this manner; for,
though the ministers of God, still they are but men, and not gods.
They may be misguided by evil counsels, irritated by false suspicions,
transported by passion, and hence they find themselves obliged to have
recourse, in their turn also, to human agency, and appoint magistrates
in their dominions, to whom they delegate their power, that the
authority which God has bestowed on them may be employed solely for
the purpose for which they received it.
I hope you understand, then, fathers, that, to avoid the crime
of murder, we must act at once by the authority of God, and
according to the justice of God; and that, when these two conditions
are not united, sin is contracted; whether it be by taking away life
with his authority, but without his justice; or by taking it away with
justice, but without his authority. From this indispensable connection
it follows, according to St. Augustine, "that he who, without proper
authority, kills a criminal, becomes a criminal himself, chiefly for
this reason, that he usurps an authority which God has not given him";
and on the other hand, magistrates, though they possess this
authority, are nevertheless chargeable with murder, if, contrary to
the laws which they are bound to follow, they inflict death on an
innocent man.
Such are the principles of public safety and tranquillity which
have been admitted at all times and in all places, and on the basis of
which all legislators, sacred and profane, from the beginning of the
world, have founded their laws. Even Heathens have never ventured to
make an exception to this rule, unless in cases where there was no
other way of escaping the loss of chastity or life, when they
conceived, as Cicero tells us, "that the law itself seemed to put
its weapons into the hands of those who were placed in such an
emergency."
But with this single exception, which has nothing to do with my
present purpose, that such a law was ever enacted, authorizing or
tolerating, as you have done, the practice of putting a man to
death, to atone for an insult, or to avoid the loss of honour or
property, where life is not in danger at the same time; that, fathers,
is what I deny was ever done, even by infidels. They have, on the
contrary, most expressly forbidden the practice. The law of the Twelve
Tables of Rome bore, "that it is unlawful to kill a robber in the
daytime, when he does not defend himself with arms"; which, indeed,
had been prohibited long before in the 22d chapter of Exodus. And
the law Furem, in the Lex Cornelia, which is borrowed from Ulpian,
forbids the killing of robbers even by night, if they do not put us in
danger of our lives.
Tell us now, fathers, what authority you have to permit what all
laws, human as well as divine, have forbidden; and who gave Lessius
a right to use the following language? "The book of Exodus forbids the
killing of thieves by day, when they do not employ arms in their
defence; and in a court of justice, punishment is inflicted on those
who kill under these circumstances. In conscience, however, no blame
can be attached to this practice, when a person is not sure of being
able otherwise to recover his stolen goods, or entertains a doubt on
the subject, as Sotus expresses it; for he is not obliged to run the
risk of losing any part of his property merely to save the life of a
robber. The same privilege extends even to clergymen." Such
extraordinary assurance! The law of Moses punishes those who kill a
thief when he does not threaten our lives, and the law of the
Gospel, according to you, will absolve them! What, fathers! has
Jesus Christ come to destroy the law, and not to fulfil it? "The civil
judge," says Lessius, "would inflict punishment on those who should
kill under such circumstances; but no blame can be attached to the
deed in conscience." Must we conclude, then, that the morality of
Jesus Christ is more sanguinary, and less the enemy of murder, than
that of Pagans, from whom our judges have borrowed their civil laws
which condemn that crime? Do Christians make more account of the
good things of this earth, and less account of human life, than
infidels and idolaters? On what principle do you proceed, fathers?
Assuredly not upon any law that ever was enacted either by God or man-
on nothing, indeed, but this extraordinary reasoning: "The laws,"
say you, "permit us to defend ourselves against robbers, and to
repel force by force; self-defence, therefore, being permitted, it
follows that murder, without which self-defence is often
impracticable, may be considered as permitted also."
It is false, fathers, that, because self-defence is allowed,
murder may be allowed also. This barbarous method of
self-vindication lies at the root of all your errors, and has been
justly stigmatized by the Faculty of Louvain, in their censure of
the doctrine of your friend Father Lamy, as "a murderous defence-
defensio occisiva." I maintain that the laws recognize such a wide
difference between murder and self-defence that, in those very cases
in which the latter is sanctioned, they have made a provision
against murder, when the person is in no danger of his life. Read
the words, fathers, as they run in the same passage of Cujas: "It is
lawful to repulse the person who comes to invade our property; but
we are not permitted to kill him." And again: "If any should
threaten to strike us, and not to deprive us of life, it is quite
allowable to repulse him; but it is against all law to put him to
death."
Who, then, has given you a right to say, as Molina, Reginald,
Filiutius, Escobar, Lessius, and others among you, have said, "that it
is lawful to kill the man who offers to strike us a blow"? or, "that
it is lawful to take the life of one who means to insult us, by the
common consent of all the casuists," as Lessius says. By what
authority do you, who are mere private individuals, confer upon
other private individuals, not excepting clergymen, this right of
killing and slaying? And how dare you usurp the power of life and
death, which belongs essentially to none but God, and which is the
most glorious mark of sovereign authority? These are the points that
demand explanation; and yet you conceive that you have furnished a
triumphant reply to the whole, by simply remarking, in your thirteenth
Imposture, "that the value for which Molina permits us to kill a
thief, who flies without having done us any violence, is not so
small as I have said, and that it must be a much larger sum than six
ducats!" How extremely silly! Pray, fathers, where would you have
the price to be fixed? At fifteen or sixteen ducats? Do not suppose
that this will produce any abatement in my accusations. At all events,
you cannot make it exceed the value of a horse; for Lessius is clearly
of opinion, "that we may lawfully kill the thief that runs off with
our horse." But I must tell you, moreover, that I was perfectly
correct when I said that Molina estimates the value of the thief's
life at six ducats; and, if you will not take it upon my word, we
shall refer it to an umpire to whom you cannot object. The person whom
I fix upon for this office is your own Father Reginald, who, in his
explanation of the same passage of Molina (l.28, n. 68), declares that
"Molina there determines the sum for which it is not allowable to kill
at three, or four, or five ducats." And thus, fathers, I shall have
Reginald, in addition to Molina, to bear me out.
It will be equally easy for me to refute your fourteenth
Imposture, touching Molina's permission to "kill a thief who offers to
rob us of a crown." This palpable fact is attested by Escobar, who
tells us "that Molina has regularly determined the sum for which it is
lawful to take away life, at one crown." And all you have to lay to my
charge in the fourteenth Imposture is, that I have suppressed the last
words of this passage, namely, "that in this matter every one ought to
study the moderation of a just self-defence." Why do you not
complain that Escobar has also omitted to mention these words? But how
little tact you have about you! You imagine that nobody understands
what you mean by self-defence. Don't we know that it is to employ "a
murderous defence"? You would persuade us that Molina meant to say
that if a person, in defending his crown, finds himself in danger of
his life, he is then at liberty to kill his assailant, in
self-preservation. If that were true, fathers, why should Molina say
in the same place that "in this matter he was of a contrary
judgement from Carrer and Bald," who give permission to kill in
self-preservation? I repeat, therefore, that his plain meaning is
that, provided the person can save his crown without killing the
thief, he ought not to kill him; but that, if he cannot secure his
object without shedding blood, even though he should run no risk of
his own life, as in the case of the robber being unarmed, he is
permitted to take up arms and kill the man, in order to save his
crown; and in so doing, according to him, the person does not
transgress "the moderation of a just defence." To show you that I am
in the right, just allow him to explain himself: "One does not
exceed the moderation of a just defence," says he, "when he takes up
arms against a thief who has none, or employs weapons which give him
the advantage over his assailant. I know there are some who are of a
contrary judgement; but I do not approve of their opinion, even in the
external tribunal."
Thus, fathers, it is unquestionable that your authors have given
permission to kill in defence of property and honour, though life
should be perfectly free from danger. And it is upon the same
principle that they authorize duelling, as I have shown by a great
variety of passages from their writings, to which you have made no
reply. You have animadverted in your writings only on a single passage
taken from Father Layman, who sanctions the above practice, "when
otherwise a person would be in danger of sacrificing his fortune or
his honour"; and here you accuse me with having suppressed what he
adds, "that such a case happens very rarely." You astonish me,
fathers: these are really curious impostures you charge me withal. You
talk as if the question were whether that is a rare case? when the
real question is if, in such a case, duelling is lawful? These are two
very different questions. Layman, in the quality of a casuist, ought
to judge whether duelling is lawful in the case supposed; and he
declares that it is. We can judge without his assistance whether the
case be a rare one; and we can tell him that it is a very ordinary
one. Or, if you prefer the testimony of your good friend Diana, he
will tell you that "the case is exceedingly common." But, be it rare
or not, and let it be granted that Layman follows in this the
example of Navarre, a circumstance on which you lay so much stress, is
it not shameful that he should consent to such an opinion as that,
to preserve a false honour, it is lawful in conscience to accept of
a challenge, in the face of the edicts of all Christian states, and of
all the canons of the Church, while in support of these diabolical
maxims you can produce neither laws, nor canons, nor authorities
from Scripture, or from the fathers, nor the example of a single
saint, nor, in short, anything but the following impious synogism:
"Honour is more than life; it is allowable to kill in defence of life;
therefore it is allowable to kill in defence of honour!" What,
fathers! because the depravity of men disposes them to prefer that
factitious honour before the life which God hath given them to be
devoted to his service, must they be permitted to murder one another
for its preservation? To love that honour more than life is in
itself a heinous evil; and yet this vicious passion, which, when
proposed as the end of our conduct, is enough to tarnish the holiest
of actions, is considered by you capable of sanctifying the most
criminal of them!
What a subversion of all principle is here, fathers! And who
does not see to what atrocious excesses it may lead? It is obvious,
indeed, that it will ultimately lead to the commission of murder for
the most trifling things imaginable, when one's honour is considered
to be staked for their preservation- murder, I venture to say, even
for an apple! You might complain of me, fathers, for drawing
sanguinary inferences from your doctrine with a malicious intent, were
I not fortunately supported by the authority of the grave Lessius, who
makes the following observation, in number 68: "It is not allowable to
take life for an article of small value, such as for a crown or for an
apple- aut pro pomo- unless it would be deemed dishonourable to lose
it. In this case, one may recover the article, and even, if necessary,
kill the aggressor, for this is not so much defending one's property
as retrieving one's honour." This is plain speaking, fathers; and,
just to crown your doctrine with a maxim which includes all the
rest, allow me to quote the following from Father Hereau, who has
taken it from Lessius: "The right of self-defence extends to
whatever is necessary to protect ourselves from all injury."
What strange consequences does this inhuman principle involve! and
how imperative is the obligation laid upon all, and especially upon
those in public stations, to set their face against it! Not the
general good alone, but their own personal interest should engage them
to see well to it; for the casuists of your school whom I have cited
in my letters extend their permissions to kill far enough to reach
even them. Factious men, who dread the punishment of their outrages,
which never appear to them in a criminal light, easily persuade
themselves that they are the victims of violent oppression, and will
be led to believe at the same time, "that the right of self-defence
extends to whatever is necessary to protect themselves from all
injury." And thus, relieved from contending against the checks of
conscience, which stifle the greater number of crimes at their
birth, their only anxiety will be to surmount external obstacles.
I shall say no more on this subject, fathers; nor shall I dwell on
the other murders, still more odious and important to governments,
which you sanction, and of which Lessius, in common with many others
of your authors, treats in the most unreserved manner. It was to be
wished that these horrible maxims had never found their way out of
hell; and that the devil, who is their original author, had never
discovered men sufficiently devoted to his will to publish them
among Christians.
From all that I have hitherto said, it is easy to judge what a
contrariety there is betwixt the licentiousness of your opinions and
the severity of civil laws, not even excepting those of Heathens.
How much more apparent must the contrast be with ecclesiastical
laws, which must be incomparably more holy than any other, since it is
the Church alone that knows and possesses the true holiness!
Accordingly, this chaste spouse of the Son of God, who, in imitation
of her heavenly husband, can shed her own blood for others, but
never the blood of others for herself, entertains a horror at the
crime of murder altogether singular, and proportioned to the
peculiar illumination which God has vouchsafed to bestow upon her. She
views man, not simply as man, but as the image of the God whom she
adores. She feels for every one of the race a holy respect, which
imparts to him, in her eyes, a venerable character, as redeemed by
an infinite price, to be made the temple of the living God. And
therefore she considers the death of a man, slain without the
authority of his Maker, not as murder only, but as sacrilege, by which
she is deprived of one of her members; for, whether he be a believer
or an unbeliever, she uniformly looks upon him, if not as one, at
least as capable of becoming one, of her own children.
Such, fathers, are the holy reasons which, ever since the time
that God became man for the redemption of men, have rendered their
condition an object of such consequence to the Church that she
uniformly punishes the crime of homicide, not only as destructive to
them, but as one of the grossest outrages that can possibly be
perpetrated against God. In proof of this I shall quote some examples,
not from the idea that all the severities to which I refer ought to be
kept up (for I am aware that the Church may alter the arrangement of
such exterior discipline), but to demonstrate her immutable spirit
upon this subject. The penances which she ordains for murder may
differ according to the diversity of the times, but no change of
time can ever effect an alteration of the horror with which she
regards the crime itself.
For a long time the Church refused to be reconciled, till the very
hour of death, to those who had been guilty of wilful murder, as those
are to whom you give your sanction. The celebrated Council of Ancyra
adjudged them to penance during their whole lifetime; and,
subsequently, the Church deemed it an act of sufficient indulgence
to reduce that term to a great many years. But, still more effectually
to deter Christians from wilful murder, she has visited with most
severe punishment even those acts which have been committed through
inadvertence, as may be seen in St. Basil, in St. Gregory of Nyssen,
and in the decretals of Popes Zachary and Alexander II. The canons
quoted by Isaac, bishop of Langres (tr. 2. 13), "ordain seven years of
penance for having killed another in self-defence." And we find St.
Hildebert, bishop of Mans, replying to Yves de Chartres, "that he
was right in interdicting for life a priest who had, in
self-defence, killed a robber with a stone."
After this, you cannot have the assurance to persist in saying
that your decisions are agreeable to the spirit or the canons of the
Church. I defy you to show one of them that permits us to kill
solely in defence of our property (for I speak not of cases in which
one may be called upon to defend his life- se suaquae liberando); your
own authors, and, among the rest, Father Lamy, confess that no such
canon can be found. "There is no authority," he says, "human or
divine, which gives an express permission to kill a robber who makes
no resistance." And yet this is what you permit most expressly. I defy
you to show one of them that permits us to kill in vindication of
honour, for a buffet, for an affront, or for a slander. I defy you
to show one of them that permits the killing of witnesses, judges,
or magistrates, whatever injustice we may apprehend from them. The
spirit of the church is diametrically opposite to these seditious
maxims, opening the door to insurrections to which the mob is
naturally prone enough already. She has invariably taught her children
that they ought not to render evil for evil; that they ought to give
place unto wrath; to make no resistance to violence; to give unto
every one his due- honour, tribute, submission; to obey magistrates
and superiors, even though they should be unjust, because we ought
always to respect in them the power of that God who has placed them
over us. She forbids them, still more strongly than is done by the
civil law, to take justice into their own hands; and it is in her
spirit that Christian kings decline doing so in cases of high treason,
and remit the criminals charged with this grave offence into the hands
of the judges, that they may be punished according to the laws and the
forms of justice, which in this matter exhibit a contrast to your mode
of management so striking and complete that it may well make you blush
for shame.
As my discourse has taken this turn, I beg you to follow the
comparison which I shall now draw between the style in which you would
dispose of your enemies, and that in which the judges of the land
dispose of criminals. Everybody knows, fathers, that no private
individual has a right to demand the death of another individual;
and that though a man should have ruined us, maimed our body, burnt
our house, murdered our father, and was prepared, moreover, to
assassinate ourselves, or ruin our character, our private demand for
the death of that person would not be listened to in a court of
justice. Public officers have been appointed for that purpose, who
make the demand in the name of the king, or rather, I would say, in
the name of God. Now, do you conceive, fathers, that Christian
legislators have established this regulation out of mere show and
grimace? Is it not evident that their object was to harmonize the laws
of the state with those of the Church, and thus prevent the external
practice of justice from clashing with the sentiments which all
Christians are bound to cherish in their hearts? It is easy to see how
this, which forms the commencement of a civil process, must stagger
you; its subsequent procedure absolutely overwhelms you.
Suppose then, fathers, that these official persons have demanded
the death of the man who has committed all the above-mentioned crimes,
what is to be done next? Will they instantly plunge a dagger in his
breast? No, fathers; the life of man is too important to be thus
disposed of; they go to work with more decency; the laws have
committed it, not to all sorts of persons, but exclusively to the
judges, whose probity and competency have been duly tried. And is
one judge sufficient to condemn a man to death? No; it requires
seven at the very least; and of these seven there must not be one
who has been injured by the criminal, lest his judgement should be
warped or corrupted by passion. You are aware also, fathers, that, the
more effectually to secure the purity of their minds, they devote
the hours of the morning to these functions. Such is the care taken to
prepare them for the solemn action of devoting a fellow-creature to
death; in performing which they occupy the place of God, whose
ministers they are, appointed to condemn such only as have incurred
his condemnation.
For the same reason, to act as faithful administrators of the
divine power of taking away human life, they are bound to form their
judgement solely according to the depositions of the witnesses, and
according to all the other forms prescribed to them; after which
they can pronounce conscientiously only according to law, and can
judge worthy of death those only whom the law condemns to that
penalty. And then, fathers, if the command of God obliges them to
deliver over to punishment the bodies of the unhappy culprits, the
same divine statute binds them to look after the interests of their
guilty souls, and binds them the more to this just because they are
guilty; so that they are not delivered up to execution till after they
have been afforded the means of providing for their consciences. All
this is quite fair and innocent; and yet, such is the abhorrence of
the Church to blood that she judges those to be incapable of
ministering at her altars who have borne any share in passing or
executing a sentence of death, accompanied though it be with these
religious circumstances; from which we may easily conceive what idea
the Church entertains of murder.
Such, then, being the manner in which human life is disposed of by
the legal forms of justice, let us now see how you dispose of it.
According to your modern system of legislation, there is but one
judge, and that judge is no other than the offended party. He is at
once the judge, the party, and the executioner. He himself demands
from himself the death of his enemy; he condemns him, he executes
him on the spot; and, without the least respect either for the soul or
the body of his brother, he murders and damns him for whom Jesus
Christ died; and all this for the sake of avoiding a blow on the
cheek, or a slander, or an offensive word, or some other offence of
a similar nature, for which, if a magistrate, in the exercise of
legitimate authority, were condemning any to die, he would himself
be impeached; for, in such cases, the laws are very far indeed from
condemning any to death. In one word, to crown the whole of this
extravagance, the person who kills his neighbour in this style,
without authority and in the face of all law, contracts no sin and
commits no disorder, though he should be religious and even a
priest! Where are we, fathers? Are these really religious, and
priests, who talk in this manner? Are they Christians? are they Turks?
are they men? or are they demons? And are these "the mysteries
revealed by the Lamb to his Society"? or are they not rather
abominations suggested by the Dragon to those who take part with him?
To come to the point, with you, fathers, whom do you wish to be
taken for?- for the children of the Gospel, or for the enemies of
the Gospel? You must be ranged either on the one side or on the other;
for there is no medium here. "He that is not with Jesus Christ is
against him." Into these two classes all mankind are divided. There
are, according to St. Augustine, two peoples and two worlds, scattered
abroad over the earth. There is the world of the children of God,
who form one body, of which Jesus Christ is the king and the head; and
there is the world at enmity with God, of which the devil is the
king and the head. Hence Jesus Christ is called the King and God of
the world, because he has everywhere his subjects and worshippers; and
hence the devil is also termed in Scripture the prince of this
world, and the god of this world, because he has everywhere his agents
and his slaves. Jesus Christ has imposed upon the Church, which is his
empire, such laws as he, in his eternal wisdom, was pleased to ordain;
and the devil has imposed on the world, which is his kingdom, such
laws as he chose to establish. Jesus Christ has associated honour with
suffering; the devil with not suffering. Jesus Christ has told those
who are smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also; and the devil
has told those who are threatened with a buffet to kill the man that
would do them such an injury. Jesus Christ pronounces those happy
who share in his reproach; and the devil declares those to be
unhappy who lie under ignominy. Jesus Christ says: Woe unto you when
men shall speak well of you! and the devil says: Woe unto those of
whom the world does not speak with esteem!
Judge, then, fathers, to which of these kingdoms you belong. You
have heard the language of the city of peace, the mystical
Jerusalem; and you have heard the language of the city of confusion,
which Scripture terms "the spiritual Sodom." Which of these two
languages do you understand? which of them do you speak? Those who are
on the side of Jesus Christ have, as St. Paul teaches us, the same
mind which was also in him; and those who are the children of the
devil- ex patre diabolo- who has been a murderer from the beginning,
according to the saying of Jesus Christ, follow the maxims of the
devil. Let us hear, therefore, the language of your school. I put this
question to your doctors: When a person has given me a blow on the
cheek, ought I rather to submit to the injury than kill the
offender? or may I not kill the man in order to escape the affront?
Kill him by all means- it is quite lawful! exclaim, in one breath,
Lessius, Molina, Escobar, Reginald, Filiutius, Baldelle, and other
Jesuits. Is that the language of Jesus Christ? One question more:
Would I lose my honour by tolerating a box on the ear, without killing
the person that gave it? "Can there be a doubt," cries Escobar,
"that so long as a man suffers another to live who has given him a
buffet, that man remains without honour?" Yes, fathers, without that
honour which the devil transfuses, from his own proud spirit into that
of his proud children. This is the honour which has ever been the idol
of worldly-minded men. For the preservation of this false glory, of
which the god of this world is the appropriate dispenser, they
sacrifice their lives by yielding to the madness of duelling; their
honour, by exposing themselves to ignominious punishments; and their
salvation, by involving themselves in the peril of damnation- a
peril which, according to the canons of the Church, deprives them even
of Christian burial. We have reason to thank God, however, for
having enlightened the mind of our monarch with ideas much purer
than those of your theology. His edicts bearing so severely on this
subject, have not made duelling a crime- they only punish the crime
which is inseparable from duelling. He has checked, by the dread of
his rigid justice, those who were not restrained by the fear of the
justice of God; and his piety has taught him that the honour of
Christians consists in their observance of the mandates of Heaven
and the rules of Christianity, and not in the pursuit of that
phantom which, airy and unsubstantial as it is, you hold to be a
legitimate apology for murder. Your murderous decisions being thus
universally detested, it is highly advisable that you should now
change your sentiments, if not from religious principle, at least from
motives of policy. Prevent, fathers, by a spontaneous condemnation
of these inhuman dogmas, the melancholy consequences which may
result from them, and for which you will be responsible. And to
impress your minds with a deeper horror at homicide, remember that the
first crime of fallen man was a murder, committed on the person of the
first holy man; that the greatest crime was a murder, perpetrated on
the person of the King of saints; and that, of all crimes, murder is
the only one which involves in a common destruction the Church and the
state, nature and religion.
I have just seen the answer of your apologist to my Thirteenth
Letter, but if he has nothing better to produce in the shape of a
reply to that letter, which obviates the greater part of his
objections, he will not deserve a rejoinder. I am sorry to see him
perpetually digressing from his subject, to indulge in rancorous abuse
both of the living and the dead. But, in order to gain some credit
to the stories with which you have furnished him, you should not
have made him publicly disavow a fact so notorious as that of the
buffet of Compiegne. Certain it is, fathers, from the deposition of
the injured party, that he received upon his cheek a blow from the
hand of a Jesuit; and all that your friends have been able to do for
you has been to raise a doubt whether he received the blow with the
back or the palm of the hand, and to discuss the question whether a
stroke on the cheek with the back of the hand can be properly
denominated a buffet. I know not to what tribunal it belongs to decide
this point; but shall content myself, in the meantime, with
believing that it was, to say the very least, a probable buffet.
This gets me off with a safe conscience.
LETTER XV
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS
November 25, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
As your scurrilities are daily increasing, and as you are
employing them in the merciless abuse of all pious persons opposed
to your errors, I feel myself obliged, for their sake and that of
the Church, to bring out that grand secret of your policy, which I
promised to disclose some time ago, in order that all may know,
through means of your own maxims, what degree of credit is due to your
calumnious accusations.
I am aware that those who are not very well acquainted with you
are at a great loss what to think on this subject, as they find
themselves under the painful necessity, either of believing the
incredible crimes with which you charge your opponents, or (what is
equally incredible) of setting you down as slanderers. "Indeed!"
they exclaim, "were these things not true, would clergymen publish
them to the world- would they debauch their consciences and damn
themselves by venting such libels?" Such is their way of reasoning,
and thus it is that the palpable proof of your falsifications coming
into collision with their opinion of your honesty, their minds hang in
a state of suspense between the evidence of truth, which they cannot
gainsay, and the demands of charity, which they would not violate.
It follows that since their high esteem for you is the only thing that
prevents them from discrediting your calumnies, if we can succeed in
convincing them that you have quite a different idea of calumny from
that which they suppose you to have, and that you actually believe
that in blackening and defaming your adversaries you are working out
your own salvation, there can be little question that the weight of
truth will determine them immediately to pay no regard to your
accusations. This, fathers, will be the subject of the present letter.
My design is not simply to show that your writings are full of
calumnies; I mean to go a step beyond this. It is quite possible for a
person to say a number of false things believing them to be true;
but the character of a liar implies the intention to tell lies. Now
I undertake to prove, fathers, that it is your deliberate intention to
tell lies, and that it is both knowingly and purposely that you load
your opponents with crimes of which you know them to be innocent,
because you believe that you may do so without falling from a state of
grace. Though you doubtless know this point of your morality as well
as I do, this need not prevent me from telling you about it; which I
shall do, were it for no other purpose than to convince all men of its
existence, by showing them that I can maintain it to your face,
while you cannot have the assurance to disavow it, without confirming,
by that very disavowment, the charge which I bring against you.
The doctrine to which I allude is so common in your schools that
you have maintained it not only in your books, but, such is your
assurance, even in your public theses; as, for example, in those
delivered at Louvain in the year 1645, where it occurs in the
following terms: "What is it but a venial sin to culminate and forge
false accusations to ruin the credit of those who speak evil of us?"
So settled is this point among you that, if any one dare to oppose it,
you treat him as a blockhead and a hare-brained idiot. Such was the
way in which you treated Father Quiroga, the German Capuchin, when
he was so unfortunate as to impugn the doctrine. The poor man was
instantly attacked by Dicastille, one of your fraternity; and the
following is a specimen of the manner in which he manages the dispute:
"A certain rueful-visaged, bare-footed, cowled friar-cucullatus
gymnopoda- whom I do not choose to name, had the boldness to
denounce this opinion, among some women and ignorant people, and to
allege that it was scandalous and pernicious against all good manners,
hostile to the peace of states and societies, and, in short,
contrary to the judgement not only of all Catholic doctors, but of all
true Catholics. But in opposition to him I maintained, as I do
still, that calumny, when employed against a calumniator, though it
should be a falsehood, is not a mortal sin, either against justice
or charity: and, to prove the point, I referred him to the whole
body of our fathers, and to whole universities, exclusively composed
of them whom I had consulted on the subject; and among others the
reverend Father John Gans, confessor to the Emperor; the reverend
Father Daniel Bastele, confessor to the Archduke Leopold; Father
Henri, who was preceptor to these two princes; all the public and
ordinary professors of the university of Vienna" (wholly composed of
Jesuits); "all the professors of the university of Gratz" (all
Jesuits); "all the professors of the university of Prague" (where
Jesuits are the masters);- "from all of whom I have in my possession
approbations of my opinions, written and signed with their own
hands; besides having on my side the reverend Father Panalossa, a
Jesuit, preacher to the Emperor and the King of Spain; Father
Pilliceroli, a Jesuit, and many others, who had all judged this
opinion to be probable, before our dispute began." You perceive,
fathers, that there are few of your opinions which you have been at
more pains to establish than the present, as indeed there were few
of them of which you stood more in need. For this reason, doubtless,
you have authenticated it so well that the casuists appeal to it as an
indubitable principle. "There can be no doubt," says Caramuel, "that
it is a probable opinion that we contract no mortal sin by
calumniating another, in order to preserve our own reputation. For
it is maintained by more than twenty grave doctors, by Gaspard
Hurtado, and Dicastille, Jesuits, &c.; so that, were this doctrine not
probable, it would be difficult to find any one such in the whole
compass of theology."
Wretched indeed must that theology be, and rotten to the very
core, which, unless it has been decided to be safe in conscience to
defame our neighbor's character to preserve our own, can hardly
boast of a safe decision on any other point! How natural is it,
fathers, that those who hold this principle should occasionally put it
in practice! corrupt propensity of mankind leans so strongly in that
direction of itself that, the obstacle of conscience once being
removed, it would be folly to suppose that it will not burst forth
with all its native impetuosity. If you desire an example of this,
Caramuel will furnish you with one that occurs in the same passage:
"This maxim of Father Dicastille," he says, "having been
communicated by a German countess to the daughters of the Empress, the
belief thus impressed on their minds that calumny was only a venial
sin, gave rise in the course of a few days to such an immense number
of false and scandalous tales that the whole court was thrown into a
flame and fill ed with alarm. It is easy, indeed, to conceive what a
fine use these ladies would make of the new light they had acquired.
Matters proceeded to such a length, that it was found necessary to
call in the assistance of a worthy Capuchin friar, a man of
exemplary life, called Father Quiroga" (the very man whom Dicastille
rails at so bitterly), "who assured them that the maxim was most
pernicious, especially among women, and was at the greatest pains to
prevail upon the Empress to abolish the practice of it entirely." We
have no reason, therefore, to be surprised at the bad effects of
this doctrine; on the contrary, the wonder would be if it had failed
to produce them. Self-love is always ready enough to whisper in our
ear, when we are attacked, that we suffer wrongfully; and more
particularly in your case, fathers, whom vanity has blinded so
egregiously as to make you believe that to wound the honour of your
Society is to wound that of the Church. There would have been good
ground to look on it as something miraculous, if you had not reduced
this maxim to practice. Those who do not know you are ready to say:
How could these good fathers slander their enemies, when they cannot
do so but at the expense of their own salvation? But, if they knew you
better, the question would be: How could these good fathers forego the
advantage of decrying their enemies, when they have it in their
power to do so without hazarding their salvation? Let none, therefore,
henceforth be surprised to find the Jesuits calumniators; they can
exercise this vocation with a safe conscience; there is no obstacle in
heaven or on earth to prevent them. In virtue of the credit they
have acquired in the world, they can practise defamation without
dreading the justice of mortals; and, on the strength of their
self-assumed authority in matters of conscience, they have invented
maxims for enabling them to do it without any fear of the justice of
God.
This, fathers, is the fertile source of your base slanders. On
this principle was Father Brisacier led to scatter his calumnies about
him, with such zeal as to draw down on his head the censure of the
late Archbishop of Paris. Actuated by the same motives, Father D'Anjou
launched his invectives from the pulpit of the Church of St.
Benedict in Paris on the 8th of March, 1655, against those
honourable gentlemen who were intrusted with the charitable funds
raised for the poor of Picardy and Champagne, to which they themselves
had largely contributed; and, uttering a base falsehood, calculated
(if your slanders had been considered worthy of any credit) to dry
up the stream of that charity, he had the assurance to say, "that he
knew, from good authority, that certain persons had diverted that
money from its proper use, to employ it against the Church and the
State"; a calumny which obliged the curate of the parish, who is a
doctor of the Sorbonne, to mount the pulpit the very next day, in
order to give it the lie direct. To the same source must be traced the
conduct of your Father Crasset, who preached calumny at such a furious
rate in Orleans that the Archbishop of that place was under the
necessity of interdicting him as a public slanderer. In this
mandate, dated the 9th of September last, his lordship declares: "That
whereas he had been informed that Brother Jean Crasset, priest of
the Society of Jesus, had delivered from the pulpit a discourse filled
with falsehoods and calumnies against the ecclesiastics of this
city, falsely and maliciously charging them with maintaining impious
and heretical propositions, such as: That the commandments of God
are impracticable; that internal grace is irresistible; that Jesus
Christ did not die for all men; and others of a similar kind,
condemned by Innocent X: he therefore hereby interdicts the
aforesaid Crasset from preaching in his diocese, and forbids all his
people to hear him, on pain of mortal disobedience." The above,
fathers, is your ordinary accusation, and generally among the first
that you bring against all whom it is your interest to denounce.
And, although you should find it as impossible to substantiate the
charge against any of them, as Father Crasset did in the case of the
clergy of Orleans, your peace of conscience will not be in the least
disturbed on that account; for you believe that this mode of
calumniating your adversaries is permitted you with such certainty
that you have no scruple to avow it in the most public manner, and
in the face of a whole city.
A remarkable proof of this may be seen in the dispute you had with
M. Puys, curate of St. Nisier at Lyons; and the story exhibits so
complete an illustration of your spirit that I shall take the
liberty of relating some of its leading circumstances. You know,
fathers, that, in the year 1649, M. Puys translated into French an
excellent book, written by another Capuchin friar, On the duty which
Christians owe to their own parishes, against those that would lead
them away from them, without using a single invective, or pointing
to any monk or any order of monks in particular. Your fathers,
however, were pleased to put the cap on their own heads; and without
any respect to an aged pastor, a judge in the Primacy of France, and a
man who was held in the highest esteem by the whole city, Father
Alby wrote a furious tract against him, which you sold in your own
church upon Assumption Day; in which book, among other various
charges, he accused him of having made himself scandalous by his
gallantries," described him as suspected of having no religion, as a
heretic, excommunicated, and, in short, worthy of the stake. To this
M. Puys made a reply; and Father Alby, in a second publication,
supported his former allegations. Now, fathers, is it not a clear
point either that you were calumniators, or that you believed all that
you alleged against that worthy priest to be true; and that, on this
latter assumption, it became you to see him purified from all these
abominations before judging him worthy of your friendship? Let us see,
then, what happened at the accommodation of the dispute, which took
place in the presence of a great number of the principal inhabitants
of the town on the 25th of September, 1650. Before all these witnesses
M. Puys made a declaration, which was neither more nor less than this:
"That what he had written was not directed against the fathers of
the Society of Jesus; that he had spoken in general of those who
alienated the faithful from their parishes, without meaning by that to
attack the Society; and that, so far from having such an intention,
the Society was the object of his esteem and affection." By virtue
of these words alone, without either retraction or absolution, M. Puys
recovered, all at once, from his apostasy, his scandals, and his
excommunication; and Father Alby immediately thereafter addressed
him in the following express terms: "Sir, it was in consequence of
my believing that you meant to attack the Society to which I have
the honour to belong that I was induced to take up the pen in its
defence; and I considered that the mode of reply which I adopted was
such as I was permitted to employ. But, on a better understanding of
your intention, I am now free to declare that there is nothing in your
work to prevent me from regarding you as a man of genius,
enlightened in judgement, profound and orthodox in doctrine, and
irreproachable in manners; in one word, as a pastor worthy of your
Church. It is with much pleasure that I make this declaration, and I
beg these gentlemen to remember what I have now said."
They do remember it, fathers; and, allow me to add, they were more
scandalized by the reconciliation than by the quarrel. For who can
fail to admire this speech of Father Alby? He does not say that he
retracts, in consequence of having learnt that a change had taken
place in the faith and manners of M. Puys, but solely because,
having understood that he had no intention of attacking your
Society, there was nothing further to prevent him from regarding the
author as a good Catholic. He did not then believe him to be
actually a heretic! And yet, after having, contrary to his conviction,
accused him of this crime, he will not acknowledge he was in the
wrong, but has the hardihood to say that he considered the method he
adopted to be "such as he was permitted to employ!"
What can you possibly mean, fathers, by so publicly avowing the
fact that you measure the faith and the virtue of men only by the
sentiments they entertain towards your Society? Had you no
apprehension of making yourselves pass, by your own acknowledgement,
as a band of swindlers and slanderers? What, fathers! must the same
individual without undergoing any personal transformation, but
simply according as you judge him to have honoured or assailed your
community, be "pious" or "impious," "irreproachable" or
"excommunicated," "a pastor worthy of the Church," or "worthy of the
stake"; in short, "a Catholic" or "a heretic"? To attack your
Society and to be a heretic are, therefore, in your language,
convertible terms! An odd sort of heresy this, fathers! And so it
would appear that, when we see many good Catholics branded, in your
writings, by the name of heretia, it means nothing more than that
you think they attack you! It is well, fathers, that we understand
this strange dialect, according to which there can be no doubt that
I must be a great heretic. It is in this sense, then, that you so
often favour me with this appellation! Your sole reason for cutting me
off from the Church is because you conceive that my letters have
done you harm; and, accordingly, all that I have to do, in order to
become a good Catholic, is either to approve of your extravagant
morality, or to convince you that my sole aim in exposing it has
been your advantage. The former I could not do without renouncing
every sentiment of piety that I ever possessed; and the latter you
will be slow to acknowledge till you are well cured of your errors.
Thus am I involved in heresy, after a very singular fashion; for,
the purity of my faith being of no avail for my exculpation, I have no
means of escaping from the charge, except either by turning traitor to
my own conscience, or by reforming yours. Till one or other of these
events happen, I must remain a reprobate and a slanderer; and, let
me be ever so faithful in my citations from your writings, you will go
about crying everywhere: "What an instrument of the devil must that
man be, to impute to us things of which there is not the least mark or
vestige to be found in our books!" And, by doing so, you will only
be acting in conformity with your fixed maxim and your ordinary
practice: to such latitude does your privilege of telling lies extend!
Allow me to give you an example of this, which I select on purpose; it
will give me an opportunity of replying, at the same time, to your
ninth Imposture: for, in truth, they only deserve to be refuted in
passing.
About ten or twelve years ago, you were accused of holding that
maxim of Father Bauny, "that it is permissible to seek directly (primo
et per se) a proximate occasion of sin, for the spiritual or
temporal good of ourselves or our neighbour" (tr.4, q.14); as an
example of which, he observes: "It is allowable to visit infamous
places, for the purpose of converting abandoned females, even although
the practice should be very likely to lead into sin, as in the case of
one who has found from experience that he has frequently yielded to
their temptations." What answer did your Father Caussin give to this
charge in the year 1644? "Just let any one look at the passage in
Father Bauny," said he, "let him peruse the page, the margins, the
preface, the appendix, in short, the whole book from beginning to end,
and he will not discover the slightest vestige of such a sentence,
which could only enter into the mind of a man totally devoid of
conscience, and could hardly have been forged by any other but an
instrument of Satan." Father Pintereau talks in the same style:
"That man must be lost to all conscience who would teach so detestable
a doctrine; but he must be worse than a devil who attributes it to
Father Bauny. Reader, there is not a single trace or vestige of it
in the whole of his book." Who would not believe that persons
talking in this tone have good reason to complain, and that Father
Bauny has, in very deed, been misrepresented? Have you ever asserted
anything against me in stronger terms? And, after such a solemn
asseveration, that "there was not a single trace or vestige of it in
the whole book, " who would imagine that the passage is to be found,
word for word, in the place referred to?
Truly, fathers, if this be the means of securing your
reputation, so long as you remain unanswered, it is also,
unfortunately, the means of destroying it forever, so soon as an
answer makes its appearance. For so certain is it that you told a
lie at the period before mentioned, that you make no scruple of
acknowledging, in your apologies of the present day, that the maxim in
question is to be found in the very place which had been quoted;
and, what is most extraordinary, the same maxim which, twelve years
ago, was "detestable," has now become so innocent that in your ninth
Imposture (p. 10) you accuse me of "ignorance and malice, in
quarrelling with Father Bauny for an opinion which has not been
rejected in the School." What an advantage it is, fathers, to have
to do with people that deal in contradictions! I need not the aid of
any but yourselves to confute you; for I have only two things to show:
first, That the maxim in dispute is a worthless one; and, secondly,
That it belongs to Father Bauny; and I can prove both by your own
confession. In 1644, you confessed that it was "detestable"; and, in
1656, you avow that it is Father Bauny's. This double
acknowledgement completely justifies me, fathers; but it does more, it
discovers the spirit of your policy. For, tell me, pray, what is the
end you propose to yourselves in your writings? Is it to speak with
honesty? No, fathers; that cannot be, since your defences destroy each
other. Is it to follow the truth of the faith? As little can this be
your end; since, according to your own showing, you authorize a
"detestable" maxim. But, be it observed that while you said the
maxim was "detestable," you denied, at the same time, that it was
the property of Father Bauny, and so he was innocent; and when you now
acknowledge it to be his, you maintain, at the same time, that it is a
good maxim, and so he is innocent still. The innocence of this monk,
therefore, being the only thing common to your two answers, it is
obvious that this was the sole end which you aimed at in putting
them forth; and that, when you say of one and the same maxim, that
it is in a certain book, and that it is not; that it is a good
maxim, and that it is a bad one; your sole object is to whitewash some
one or other of your fraternity; judging in the matter, not
according to the truth, which never changes, but according to your own
interest, which is varying every hour. Can I say more than this? You
perceive that it amounts to a demonstration; but it is far from
being a singular instance, and, to omit a multitude of examples of the
same thing, I believe you will be contented with my quoting only one
more.
You have been charged, at different times, with another
proposition of the same Father Bauny, namely:. "That absolution
ought to be neither denied nor deferred in the case of those who
live in the habits of sin against the law of God, of nature, and of
the Church, although there should be no apparent prospect of future
amendment- etsi emendationis futurae spes nulla appareat." Now, with
regard to this maxim, I beg you to tell me, fathers, which of the
apologies that have been made for it is most to your liking; whether
that of Father Pintereau, or that of Father Brisacier, both of your
Society, who have defended Father Bauny, in your two different
modes- the one by condemning the proposition, but disavowing it to
be Father Bauny's; the other by allowing it to be Father Bauny's,
but vindicating the proposition? Listen, then, to their respective
deliverances. Here comes that of Father Pintereau (p. 8): "I know
not what can be called a transgression of all the bounds of modesty, a
step beyond all ordinary impudence, if the imputation to Father
Bauny of so damnable a doctrine is not worthy of that designation.
Judge, reader, of the baseness of that calumny; see what sort of
creatures the Jesuits have to deal with; and say if the author of so
foul a slander does not deserve to be regarded from henceforth as
the interpreter of the father of lies." Now for Father Brisacier:
"It is true, Father Bauny says what you allege." (That gives the lie
direct to Father Pintereau, plain enough.) "But," adds he, in
defence of Father Bauny, "if you who find so much fault with this
sentiment wait, when a penitent lies at your feet, till his guardian
angel find security for his rights in the inheritance of heaven; if
you wait till God the Father swear by himself that David told a lie,
when he said by the Holy Ghost that 'all men are liars,' fallible
and perfidious; if you wait till the penitent be no longer a liar,
no longer frail and changeable, no longer a sinner, like other men; if
you wait, I say, till then, you will never apply the blood of Jesus
Christ to a single soul."
What do you really think now, fathers, of these impious and
extravagant expressions? According to them, if we would wait "till
there be some hope of amendment" in sinners before granting their
absolution, we must wait "till God the Father swear by himself,"
that they will never fall into sin any more! What, fathers! is no
distinction to be made between hope and certainty? How injurious is it
to the grace of Jesus Christ to maintain that it is so impossible
for Christians ever to escape from crimes against the laws of God,
nature, and the Church, that such a thing cannot be looked for,
without supposing "that the Holy Ghost has told a lie"; and, if
absolution is not granted to those who give no hope of amendment,
the blood of Jesus Christ will be useless, forsooth, and would never
be applied to a single soul!" To what a sad pass have you come,
fathers by this extravagant desire of upholding the glory of your
authors, when you can find only two ways of justifying them- by
imposture or by impiety; and when the most innocent mode by which
you can extricate yourselves is by the barefaced denial of facts as
patent as the light of day!
This may perhaps account for your having recourse so frequently to
that very convenient practice. But this does not complete the sum of
your accomplishments in the art of self-defence. To render your
opponents odious, you have had recourse to the forging of documents,
such as that Letter of a Minister to M. Arnauld, which you
circulated through all Paris, to induce the belief that the work on
Frequent Communion, which had been approved by so many bishops and
doctors, but which, to say the truth, was rather against you, had been
concocted through secret intelligence with the ministers of Charenton.
At other times, you attribute to your adversaries writings full of
impiety, such as the Circular Letter of the Jansenists, the absurd
style of which renders the fraud too gross to be swallowed, and
palpably betrays the malice of your Father Meynier, who has the
impudence to make use of it for supporting his foulest slanders.
Sometimes, again, you will quote books which were never in
existence, such as The Constitution of the Holy Sacrament, from
which you extract passages, fabricated at pleasure and calculated to
make the hair on the heads of certain good simple people, who have
no idea of the effrontery with which you can invent and propagate
falsehoods, actually to bristle with horror. There is not, indeed, a
single species of calumny which you have not put into requisition; nor
is it possible that the maxim which excuses the vice could have been
lodged in better hands.
But those sorts of slander to which we have adverted are rather
too easily discredited; and, accordingly, you have others of a more
subtle character, in which you abstain from specifying particulars, in
order to preclude your opponents from getting any hold, or finding any
means of reply; as, for example, when Father Brisacier says that
"his enemies are guilty of abominable crimes, which he does not choose
to mention." Would you not think it were impossible to prove a
charge so vague as this to be a calumny? An able man, however, has
found out the secret of it; and it is a Capuchin again, fathers. You
are unlucky in Capuchins, as times now go; and I foresee that you
may be equally so some other time in Benedictines. The name of this
Capuchin is Father Valerien, of the house of the Counts of Magnis. You
shall hear, by this brief narrative, how he answered your calumnies.
He had happily succeeded in converting Prince Ernest, the Landgrave of
Hesse-Rheinsfelt. Your fathers, however, seized, as it would appear,
with some chagrin at seeing a sovereign prince converted without their
having had any hand in it, immediately wrote a book against the
friar (for good men are everywhere the objects of your persecution),
in which, by falsifying one of his passages, they ascribed to him an
heretical doctrine. They also circulated a letter against him, in
which they said: "Ah, we have such things to disclose" (without
mentioning what) "as will gall you to the quick! If you don't take
care, we shall be forced to inform the pope and the cardinals about
it." This manoeuvre was pretty well executed; and I doubt not,
fathers, but you may speak in the same style of me; but take warning
from the manner in which the friar answered in his book, which was
printed last year at Prague (p.112, &c.): "What shall I do," he
says, "to counteract these vague and indefinite insinuations? How
shall I refute charges which have never been specified? Here, however,
is my plan. I declare, loudly and publicly, to those who have
threatened me, that they are notorious slanderers and most impudent
liars, if they do not discover these crimes before the whole world.
Come forth, then, mine accusers! and publish your lies upon the
house-tops, in place of telling them in the ear, and keeping
yourselves out of harm's way by telling them in the ear. Some may
think this a scandalous way of managing the dispute. It was
scandalous, I grant, to impute to me such a crime as heresy, and to
fix upon me the suspicion of many others besides; but, by asserting my
innocence, I am merely applying the proper remedy to the scandal
already in existence."
Truly, fathers, never were your reverences more roughly handled,
and never was a poor man more completely vindicated. Since you have
made no reply to such a peremptory challenge, it must be concluded
that you are unable to discover the slightest shadow of criminality
against him. You have had very awkward scrapes to get through
occasionally; but experience has made you nothing the wiser. For, some
time after this happened, you attacked the same individual in a
similar strain, upon another subject; and he defended himself after
the same spirited manner, as follows: "This class of men, who have
become an intolerable nuisance to the whole of Christendom, aspire,
under the pretext of good works, to dignities and domination, by
perverting to their own ends almost all laws, human and divine,
natural and revealed. They gain over to their side, by their doctrine,
by the force of fear, or of persuasion, the great ones of the earth,
whose authority they abuse for the purpose of accomplishing their
detestable intrigues. Meanwhile their enterprises, criminal as they
are, are neither punished nor suppressed; on the contrary, they are
rewarded; and the villains go about them with as little fear or
remorse as if they were doing God service. Everybody is aware of the
fact I have now stated; everybody speaks of it with execration; but
few are found capable of opposing a despotism so powerful. This,
however, is what I have done. I have already curbed their insolence;
and, by the same means, I shall curb it again. I declare, then, that
they are most impudent liars- mentiris impudentissime. If the
charges they have brought against me be true, let them prove it;
otherwise they stand convicted of falsehood, aggravated by the
grossest effrontery. Their procedure in this case will show who has
the right upon his side. I desire all men to take a particular
observation of it; and beg to remark, in the meantime, that this
precious cabal, who will not suffer the most trifling charge which
they can possibly repel to lie upon them, made a show of enduring,
with great patience, those from which they cannot vindicate
themselves, and conceal, under a counterfeit virtue, their real
impotency. My object, therefore, in provoking their modesty by this
sharp retort, is to let the plainest people understand that, if my
enemies hold their peace, their forbearance must be ascribed, not to
the meekness of their natures, but to the power of a guilty
conscience." He concludes with the following sentence: "These
gentry, whose history is well known throughout the whole world, are so
glaringly iniquitous in their measures, and have become so insolent in
their impunity, that if I did not detest their conduct, and publicly
express my detestation too, not merely for my own vindication, but
to guard the simple against its seducing influence, I must have
renounced my allegiance to Jesus Christ and his Church."
Reverend fathers, there is no room for tergiversation. You must
pass for convicted slanderers, and take comfort in your old maxim that
calumny is no crime. This honest friar has discovered the secret of
shutting your mouths; and it must be employed on all occasions when
you accuse people without proof. We have only to reply to each slander
as it appears, in the words of the Capuchin: "Mentiris impudentissime-
You are most impudent liars." For instance, what better answer does
Father Brisacier deserve when he says of his opponents that they are
"the gates of hell; the devil's bishops; persons devoid of faith,
hope, and charity; the builders of Antichrist's exchequer"; adding, "I
say this of him, not by way of insult, but from deep conviction of its
truth"? Who would be at the pains to demonstrate that he is not "a
gate of hell," and that he has no concern with "the building up of
Antichrist's exchequer"?
In like manner, what reply is due to all the vague speeches of
this sort which are to be found in your books and advertisements on my
letters; such as the following, for example: "That restitutions have
been converted to private uses, and thereby creditors have been
reduced to beggary; that bags of money have been offered to learned
monks, who declined the bribe; that benefices are conferred for the
purpose of disseminating heresies against the faith; that pensioners
are kept in the houses of the most eminent churchmen, and in the
courts of sovereigns; that I also am a pensioner of Port-Royal; and
that, before writing my letters, I had composed romances"- I, who
never read one in my life, and who do not know so much as the names of
those which your apologist has published? What can be said in reply to
all this, fathers, if you do not mention the names of all these
persons you refer to, their words, the time, and the place, except-
Mentiris impudentissime? You should either be silent altogether, or
relate and prove all the circumstances, as I did when I told you the
anecdotes of Father Alby and John d'Alba. Otherwise, you will hurt
none but yourselves. Your numerous fables might, perhaps, have done
you some service, before your principles were known; but now that
the whole has been brought to light, when you begin to whisper as
usual, "A man of honor, who desired us to conceal his name, has told
us some horrible stories of these same people"- you will be cut
short at once, and reminded of the Capuchin's "Mentiris
impudentissime." Too long by far have you been permitted to deceive
the world, and to abuse the confidence which men were ready to place
in your calumnious accusations. It is high time to redeem the
reputation of the multitudes whom you have defamed. For what innocence
can be so generally known, as not to suffer some injury from the
daring aspersions of a body of men scattered over the face of the
earth, and who, under religious habits, conceal minds so utterly
irreligious that they perpetrate crimes like calumny, not in
opposition to, but in strict accordance with, their moral maxims? I
cannot, therefore, be blamed for destroying the credit which might
have been awarded you, seeing it must be allowed to be a much
greater act of justice to restore to the victims of your obloquy the
character which they did not deserve to lose, than to leave you in the
possession of a reputation for sincerity which you do not deserve to
enjoy. And, as the one could not be done without the other, how
important was it to show you up to the world as you really are! In
this letter I have commenced the exhibition; but it will require
some time to complete it. Published it shall be, fathers, and all your
policy will be inadequate to save you from the disgrace; for the
efforts which you may make to avert the blow will only serve to
convince the most obtuse observers that you were terrified out of your
wits, and that, your consciences anticipating the charges I had to
bring against you, you have put every oar in the water to prevent
the discovery.
LETTER XVI
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS
December 4, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies, and shall begin
with those contained in your advertisements, which remain to be
noticed. As all your other writings, however, are equally well stocked
with slander, they will furnish me with abundant materials for
entertaining you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient. In
the first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have
propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres, I beg
leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously wrested the
meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one of his letters which,
being capable of a good sense, ought, according to the spirit of the
Gospel, to have been taken in good part, and could only be taken
otherwise according to the spirit of your Society. For example, when
he says to a friend, "Give yourself no concern about your nephew; I
will furnish him with what he requires from the money that lies in
my hands," what reason have you to interpret this to mean that he
would take that money without restoring it, and not that he merely
advanced it with the purpose of replacing it? And how extremely
imprudent was it for you to furnish a refutation of your own lie, by
printing the other letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly
show that, in point of fact, it was merely advanced money, which he
was bound to refund. This appears, to your confusion, from the
following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of July
30, 1619: "Be not uneasy about the money advanced; he shall want for
nothing so long as he is here"; and likewise from another, dated
January 6, 1620, where he says: "You are in too great haste; when
the account shall become due, I have no fear but that the little
credit which I have in this place will bring me as much money as I
require."
If you are convicted slanderers on this subject, you are no less
so in regard to the ridiculous story about the charity-box of St.
Merri. What advantage, pray, can you hope to derive from the
accusation which one of your worthy friends has trumped up against
that ecclesiastic? Are we to conclude that a man is guilty, because he
is accused? No, fathers. Men of piety, like him, may expect to be
perpetually accused, so long as the world contains calumniators like
you. We must judge of him, therefore, not from the accusation, but
from the sentence; and the sentence pronounced on the case (February
23, 1656) justifies him completely. Moreover, the person who had the
temerity to involve himself in that iniquitous process, was
disavowed by his colleagues, and himself compelled to retract his
charge. And as to what you allege, in the same place, about "that
famous director, who pocketed at once nine hundred thousand livres," I
need only refer you to Messieurs the cures of St. Roch and St. Paul,
who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, to his
perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your inexcusable
malice in that piece of imposition.
Enough, however, for such paltry falsities. These are but the
first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master-strokes of your
"grand professed." To these do I now come, fathers; I come to a
calumny which is certainly one of the basest that ever issued from the
spirit of your Society. I refer to the insufferable audacity with
which you have imputed to holy nuns, and to their directors, the
charge of "disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation and the real
presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist." Here, fathers, is a
slander worthy of yourselves. Here is a crime which God alone is
capable of punishing, as you alone were capable of committing it. To
endure it with patience would require an humility as great as that
of these calumniated ladies; to give it credit would demand a degree
of wickedness equal to that of their wretched defamers. I propose not,
therefore, to vindicate them; they are beyond suspicion. Had they
stood in need of defence, they might have commanded abler advocates
than me. My object in what I say here is to show, not their innocence,
but your malignity. I merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves,
and to let the whole world understand that, after this, there is
nothing of which you are not capable.
You will not fail, I am certain, notwithstanding all this, to
say that I belong to Port-Royal; for this is the first thing you say
to every one who combats your errors: as if it were only at Port-Royal
that persons could be found possessed of sufficient zeal to defend,
against your attacks, the purity of Christian morality. I know,
fathers, the work of the pious recluses who have retired to that
monastery, and how much the Church is indebted to their truly solid
and edifying labours. I know the excellence of their piety and their
learning. For, though I have never had the honour to belong to their
establishment, as you, without knowing who or what I am, would fain
have it believed, nevertheless, I do know some of them, and honour the
virtue of them all. But God has not confined within the precincts of
that society all whom he means to raise up in opposition to your
corruptions. I hope, with his assistance, fathers, to make you feel
this; and if he vouchsafe to sustain me in the design he has led me to
form, of employing in his service all the resources I have received
from him, I shall speak to you in such a strain as will, perhaps, give
you reason to regret that you have not had to do with a man of
Port-Royal. And to convince you of this, fathers, I must tell you
that, while those whom you have abused with this notorious slander
content themselves with lifting up their groans to Heaven to obtain
your forgiveness for the outrage, I feel myself obliged, not being
in the least affected by your slander, to make you blush in the face
of the whole Church, and so bring you to that wholesome shame of which
the Scripture speaks, and which is almost the only remedy for a
hardness of heart like yours: "Imple facies eorum ignominia, et
quaerent nomen tuum, Domine- Fill their faces with shame, that they
may seek thy name, O Lord."
A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare the
most sacred retreats. For who can be safe after a calumny of this
nature? For shame, fathers! to publish in Paris such a scandalous
book, with the name of your Father Meynier on its front, and under
this infamous title, Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most
holy Sacrament of the Altar, in which you accuse of this apostasy, not
only Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, but also Mother
Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of that monastery, alleging that
"their faith, in regard to the eucharist, is as suspicious as that
of M. Arnauld," whom you maintain to be "a down-right Calvinist." I
here ask the whole world if there be any class of persons within the
pale of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an abominable
charge with less semblance of truth. For tell me, fathers, if these
nuns and their directors had been "in concert with Geneva against
the most holy sacrament of the altar" (the very thought of which is
shocking), how they should have come to select as the principal object
of their piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination? How
should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacrament? taken the
name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament? called their church the
Church of the Holy Sacrament? How should they have requested and
obtained from Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right
of saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in which
the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if they had
conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from the Church? Why
would they have bound themselves, by a particular devotion, also
sanctioned by the Pope, to have some of their sisterhood, night and
day without intermission, in presence of the sacred host, to
compensate, by their perpetual adorations towards that perpetual
sacrifice, for the impiety of the heresy that aims at its
annihilation? Tell me, fathers, if you can, why, of all the
mysteries of our religion, they should have passed by those in which
they believed, to fix upon that in which they believed not? and how
they should have devoted themselves, so fully and entirely, to that
mystery of our faith, if they took it, as the heretics do, for the
mystery of iniquity? And what answer do you give to these clear
evidences, embodied not in words only, but in actions; and not in some
particular actions, but in the whole tenor of a life expressly
dedicated to the adoration of Jesus Christ, dwelling on our altars?
What answer, again, do you give to the books which you ascribe to
Port-Royal, all of which are full of the most precise terms employed
by the fathers and the councils to mark the essence of that mystery?
It is at once ridiculous and disgusting to hear you replying to
these as you have done throughout your libel. M. Arnauld, say you,
talks very well about transubstantiation; but he understands, perhaps,
only "a significative transubstantiation." True, he professes to
believe in "the real presence"; who can tell, however, but he means
nothing more than "a true and real figure"? How now, fathers! whom,
pray, will you not make pass for a Calvinist whenever you please, if
you are to allowed the liberty of perverting the most canonical and
sacred expressions by the wicked subtleties of your modern
equivocations? Who ever thought of using any other terms than those in
question, especially in simple discourses of devotion, where no
controversies are handled? And yet the love and the reverence in which
they hold this sacred mystery have induced them to give it such a
prominence in all their writings that I defy you, fathers, with all
your cunning, to detect in them either the least appearance of
ambiguity, or the slightest correspondence with the sentiments of
Geneva.
Everybody knows, fathers, that the essence of the Genevan heresy
consists, as it does according to your own showing, in their believing
that Jesus Christ is not contained in this sacrament; that it is
impossible he can be in many places at once; that he is, properly
speaking, only in heaven, and that it is as there alone that he
ought to be adored, and not on the altar; that the substance of the
bread remains; that the body of Jesus Christ does not enter into the
mouth or the stomach; that he can only be eaten by faith, and
accordingly wicked men do not eat him at all; and that the mass is not
a sacrifice, but an abomination. Let us now hear, then, in what way
"Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva." In the writings of the
former we read, to your confusion, the following statement: That
"the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ are contained under the species
of bread and wine"; that "the Holy of Holies is present in the
sanctuary, and that there he ought to be adored"; that "Jesus Christ
dwells in the sinners who communicate, by the real and veritable
presence of his body in their stomach, although not by the presence of
his Spirit in their hearts"; that "the dead ashes of the bodies of the
saints derive their principal dignity from that seed of life which
they retain from the touch of the immortal and vivifying flesh of
Jesus Christ"; that "it is not owing to any natural power, but to
the almighty power of God, to whom nothing is impossible, that the
body of Jesus Christ is comprehended under the host, and under the
smallest portion of every host"; that "the divine virtue is present to
produce the effect which the words of consecration signify"; that
"Jesus Christ, while be is lowered and hidden upon the altar, is, at
the same time, elevated in his glory; that he subsists, of himself and
by his own ordinary power, in divers places at the same time- in the
midst of the Church triumphant, and in the midst of the Church
militant and travelling"; that "the sacramental species remain
suspended, and subsist extraordinarily, without being upheld by any
subject; and that the body of Jesus Christ is also suspended under the
species, and that it does not depend upon these, as substances
depend upon accidents"; that "the substance of the bread is changed,
the immutable accidents remaining the same"; that "Jesus Christ
reposes in the eucharist with the same glory that he has in heaven";
that "his glorious humanity resides in the tabernacles of the
Church, under the species of bread, which forms its visible
covering; and that, knowing the grossness of our natures, he
conducts us to the adoration of his divinity, which is present in
all places, by the adoring of his humanity, which is present in a
particular place"; that "we receive the body of Jesus Christ upon
the tongue, which is sanctified by its divine touch"; "that it
enters into the mouth of the priest"; that "although Jesus Christ
has made himself accessible in the holy sacrament, by an act of his
love and graciousness, he preserves, nevertheless, in that
ordinance, his inaccessibility, as an inseparable condition of his
divine nature; because, although the body alone and the blood alone
are there, by virtue of the words- vi verborum, as the schoolmen
say- his whole divinity may, notwithstanding, be there also, as well
as his whole humanity, by a necessary conjunction." In fine, that "the
eucharist is at the same time sacrament and sacrifice"; and that
"although this sacrifice is a commemoration of that of the cross,
yet there is this difference between them, that the sacrifice of the
mass is offered for the Church only, and for the faithful in her
communion; whereas that of the cross has been offered for all the
world, as the Scripture testifies."
I have quoted enough, fathers, to make it evident that there was
never, perhaps, a more imprudent thing attempted than what you have
done. But I will go a step farther, and make you pronounce this
sentence against yourselves. For what do you require from a man, in
order to remove all suspicion of his being in concert and
correspondence with Geneva? "If M. Arnauld," says your Father Meynier,
p.93, "had said that, in this adorable mystery, there is no
substance of the bread under the species, but only the flesh and the
blood of Jesus Christ, I should have confessed that he had declared
himself absolutely against Geneva." Confess it, then, ye revilers! and
make him a public apology. How often have you seen this declaration
made in the passages I have just cited? Besides this, however, the
Familiar Theology of M. de St. Cyran having been approved by M.
Arnauld, it contains the sentiments of both. Read, then, the whole
of lesson 15th, and particularly article 2d, and you will there find
the words you desiderate, even more formally stated than you have done
yourselves. "Is there any bread in the host, or any wine in the
chalice? No: for all the substance of the bread and the wine is
taken away, to give place to that of the body and blood of Jesus
Christ, the which substance alone remains therein, covered by the
qualities and species of bread and wine."
How now, fathers! will you still say that Port-Royal teaches
"nothing that Geneva does not receive," and that M. Arnauld has said
nothing in his second letter "which might not have been said by a
minister of Charenton"? See if you can persuade Mestrezat to speak
as M. Arnauld does in that letter, on page 237. Make him say that it
is an infamous calumny to accuse him of denying transubstantiation;
that he takes for the fundamental principle of his writings the
truth of the real presence of the Son of God, in opposition to the
heresy of the Calvinists; and that he accounts himself happy for
living in a place where the Holy of Holies is continually adored in
the sanctuary"- a sentiment which is still more opposed to the
belief of the Calvinists than the real presence itself; for, as
Cardinal Richelieu observes in his Controversies (p. 536): "The new
ministers of France having agreed with the Lutherans, who believe
the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist; they have declared
that they remain in a state of separation from the Church on the point
of this mystery, only on account of the adoration which Catholics
render to the eucharist." Get all the passages which I have
extracted from the books of Port-Royal subscribed at Geneva, and not
the isolated passages merely, but the entire treatises regarding
this mystery, such as the Book of Frequent Communion, the
Explication of the Ceremonies of the Mass, the Exercise during Mass,
the Reasons of the Suspension of the Holy Sacrament, the Translation
of the Hymns in the Hours of Port-Royal, &c.; in one word, prevail
upon them to establish at Charenton that holy institution of
adoring, without intermission, Jesus Christ contained in the
eucharist, as is done at Port-Royal, and it will be the most signal
service which you could render to the Church; for in this case it will
turn out, not that Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva, but that
Geneva is in concert with Port-Royal and with the whole Church.
Certainly, fathers, you could not have been more unfortunate
than in selecting Port-Royal as the object of attack for not believing
in the eucharist; but I will show what led you to fix upon it. You
know I have picked up some small acquaintance with your policy; in
this instance you have acted upon its maxims to admiration. If
Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, had only spoken of
what ought to be believed with great respect to this mystery, and said
nothing about what ought to be done in the way of preparation for
its reception, they might have been the best Catholics alive; and no
equivocations would have been discovered in their use of the terms
real presence and transubstantiation. But, since all who combat your
licentious principles must needs be heretics, and heretics, too, in
the very point in which they condemn your laxity, how could M. Arnauld
escape falling under this charge on the subject of the eucharist,
after having published a book expressly against your profanations of
that sacrament? What! must he be allowed to say, with impunity, that
"the body of Jesus Christ ought not to be given to those who
habitually lapse into the same crimes, and who have no prospect of
amendment; and that such persons ought to be excluded, for some
time, from the altar, to purify themselves by sincere penitence,
that they may approach it afterwards with benefit"? Suffer no one to
talk in this strain, fathers, or you will find that fewer people
will come to your confessionals. Father Brisacier says that "were
you to adopt this course, you would never apply the blood of Jesus
Christ to a single individual." It would be infinitely more for your
interest were every one to adopt the views of your Society, as set
forth by your Father Mascarenhas, in a book approved by your
doctors, and even by your reverend Father-General, namely: "That
persons of every description, and even priests, may receive the body
of Jesus Christ on the very day they have polluted themselves with
odious crimes; that, so far from such communions implying irreverence,
persons who partake of them in this manner act a commendable part;
that confessors ought not to keep them back from the ordinance, but,
on the contrary, ought to advise those who have recently committed
such crimes to communicate immediately; because, although the Church
has forbidden it, this prohibition is annulled by the universal
practice in all places of the earth."
See what it is, fathers, to have Jesuits in all places of the
earth! Behold the universal practice which you have introduced, and
which you are anxious everywhere to maintain! It matters nothing
that the tables of Jesus Christ are filled with abominations, provided
that your churches are crowded with people. Be sure, therefore, cost
what it may, to set down all that dare to say a word against your
practice as heretics on the holy sacrament. But how can you do this,
after the irrefragable testimonies which they have given of their
faith? Are you not afraid of my coming out with the four grand
proofs of their heresy which you have adduced? You ought, at least, to
be so, fathers, and I ought not to spare your blushing. Let us,
then, proceed to examine proof the first.
"M. de St. Cyran," says Father Meynier, "consoling one of his
friends upon the death of his mother (tom. i., let. 14), says that the
most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered up to God, on such
occasions, is that of patience; therefore he is a Calvinist." This
is marvellously shrewd reasoning, fathers; and I doubt if anybody will
be able to discover the precise point of it. Let us learn it, then,
from his own mouth. "Because," says this mighty controversialist,
"it is obvious that he does not believe in the sacrifice of the
mass; for this is, of all other sacrifices, the most acceptable unto
God." Who will venture to say now that the do not know how to
reason? Why, they know the art to such perfection that they will
extract heresy out of anything you choose to mention, not even
excepting the Holy Scripture itself! For example, might it not be
heretical to say, with the wise man in Ecclesiasticus, "There is
nothing worse than to love money"; as if adultery, murder, or
idolatry, were not far greater crimes? Where is the man who is not
in the habit of using similar expressions every day? May we not say,
for instance, that the most acceptable of all sacrifices in the eyes
of God is that of a contrite and humbled heart; just because, in
discourses of this nature, we simply mean to compare certain
internal virtues with one another, and not with the sacrifice of the
mass, which is of a totally different order, and infinitely more
exalted? Is this not enough to make you ridiculous, fathers? And is it
necessary, to complete your discomfiture, that I should quote the
passages of that letter in which M. de St. Cyran speaks of the
sacrifice of the mass as "the most excellent" of all others, in the
following terms? "Let there be presented to God, daily and in all
places, the sacrifice of the body of his Son, who could not find a
more excellent way than that by which he might honour his Father." And
afterwards: "Jesus Christ has enjoined us to take, when we are
dying, his sacrificed body, to render more acceptable to God the
sacrifice of our own, and to join himself with us at the hour of
dissolution; to the end that he may strengthen us for the struggle,
sanctifying, by his presence, the last sacrifice which we make to
God of our life and our body"? Pretend to take no notice of all
this, fathers, and persist in maintaining, as you do in page 39,
that he refused to take the communion on his death-bed, and that he
did not believe in the sacrifice of the mass. Nothing can be too gross
for calumniators by profession.
Your second proof furnishes an excellent illustration of this.
To make a Calvinist of M. de St. Cyran, to whom you ascribe the book
of Petrus Aurelius, you take advantage of a passage (page 80) in which
Aurelius explains in what manner the Church acts towards priests,
and even bishops, whom she wishes to degrade or depose. "The
Church," he says, "being incapable of depriving them of the power of
the order, the character of which is indelible, she does all that
she can do: she banishes from her memory the character which she
cannot banish from the souls of the individuals who have been once
invested with it; she regards them in the same light as if they were
not bishops or priests; so that, according to the ordinary language of
the Church, it may be said they are no longer such, although they
always remain such, in as far as the character is concerned- ob
indelebilitatem characteris." You perceive, fathers, that this author,
who has been approved by three general assemblies of the clergy of
France, plainly declares that the character of the priesthood is
indelible; and yet you make him say, on the contrary, in the very same
passage, that "the character of the priesthood is not indelible." This
is what I would call a notorious slander; in other words, according to
your nomenclature, a small venial sin. And the reason is, this book
has done you some harm by refuting the heresies of your brethren in
England touching the Episcopal authority. But the folly of the
charge is equally remarkable; for, after having taken it for
granted, without any foundation, that M. de St. Cyran holds the
priestly character to be not indelible, you conclude from this that he
does not believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the
eucharist.
Do not expect me to answer this, fathers. If you have got no
common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it. All who possess
any share of it will enjoy a hearty laugh at your expense. Nor will
they treat with greater respect your third proof, which rests upon the
following words, taken from the Book of Frequent Communion: "In the
eucharist God vouchsafes us the same food that He bestows on the
saints in heaven, with this difference only, that here He withholds
from us its sensible sight and taste, reserving both of these for
the heavenly world." These words express the sense of the Church so
distinctly that I am constantly forgetting what reason you have for
picking a quarrel with them, in order to turn them to a bad use; for I
can see nothing more in them than what the Council of Trent teaches
(sess. xiii, c. 8), namely, that there is no difference between
Jesus Christ in the eucharist and Jesus Christ in heaven, except
that here he is veiled, and there he is not. M. Arnauld does not say
that there is no difference in the manner of receiving Jesus Christ,
but only that there is no difference in Jesus Christ who is
received. And yet you would, in the face of all reason, interpret
his language in this passage to mean that Jesus Christ is no more
eaten with the mouth in this world than he is in heaven; upon which
you ground the charge of heresy against him.
You really make me sorry for you, fathers. Must we explain this
further to you? Why do you confound that divine nourishment with the
manner of receiving it? There is but one point of difference, as I
have just observed, betwixt that nourishment upon earth and in heaven,
which is that here it is hidden under veils which deprive us of its
sensible sight and taste; but there are various points of
dissimilarity in the manner of receiving it here and there, the
principal of which is, as M. Arnauld expresses it (p.3, ch.16),
"that here it enters into the mouth and the breast both of the good
and of the wicked," which is not the case in heaven.
And, if you require to be told the reason of this diversity, I may
inform you, fathers, that the cause of God's ordaining these different
modes of receiving the same food is the difference that exists betwixt
the state of Christians in this life and that of the blessed in
heaven. The state of the Christian, as Cardinal Perron observes
after the fathers, holds a middle place between the state of the
blessed and the state of the Jews. The spirits in bliss possess
Jesus Christ really, without veil or figure. The Jews possessed
Jesus Christ only in figures and veils, such as the manna and the
paschal lamb. And Christians possess Jesus Christ in the eucharist
really and truly, although still concealed under veils. "God," says
St. Eucher, "has made three tabernacles: the synagogue, which had
the shadows only, without the truth; the Church, which has the truth
and shadows together; and heaven, where there is no shadow, but the
truth alone." It would be a departure from our present state, which is
the state of faith, opposed by St. Paul alike to the law and to open
vision, did we possess the figures only, without Jesus Christ; for
it is the property of the law to have the mere figure, and not the
substance of things. And it would be equally a departure from our
present state if we possessed him visibly; because faith, according to
the same apostle, deals not with things that are seen. And thus the
eucharist, from its including Jesus Christ truly, though under a veil,
is in perfect accordance with our state of faith. It follows that this
state would be destroyed, if, as the heretics maintain, Jesus Christ
were not really under the species of bread and wine; and it would be
equally destroyed if we received him openly, as they do in heaven:
since, on these suppositions, our state would be confounded, either
with the state of Judaism or with that of glory.
Such, fathers, is the mysterious and divine reason of this most
divine mystery. This it is that fills us with abhorrence at the
Calvinists, who would reduce us to the condition of the Jews; and this
it is that makes us aspire to the glory of the beatified, where we
shall be introduced to the full and eternal enjoyment of Jesus Christ.
From hence you must see that there are several points of difference
between the manner in which he communicates himself to Christians
and to the blessed; and that, amongst others, he is in this world
received by the mouth, and not so in heaven; but that they all
depend solely on the distinction between our state of faith and
their state of immediate vision. And this is precisely, fathers,
what M. Arnauld has expressed, with great plainness, in the
following terms: "There can be no other difference between the
purity of those who receive Jesus Christ in the eucharist and that
of the blessed, than what exists between faith and the open vision
of God, upon which alone depends the different manner in which he is
eaten upon earth and in heaven." You were bound in duty, fathers, to
have revered in these words the sacred truths they express, instead of
wresting them for the purpose of detecting an heretical meaning
which they never contained, nor could possibly contain, namely, that
Jesus Christ is eaten by faith only, and not by the mouth; the
malicious perversion of your Fathers Annat and Meynier, which forms
the capital count of their indictment.
Conscious, however, of the wretched deficiency of your proofs, you
have had recourse to a new artifice, which is nothing less than to
falsify the Council of Trent, in order to convict M. Arnauld of
nonconformity with it; so vast is your store of methods for making
people heretics. This feat has been achieved by Father Meynier, in
fifty different places of his book, and about eight or ten times in
the space of a single page (the 54th), wherein he insists that to
speak like a true Catholic it is not enough to say, "I believe that
Jesus Christ is really present in the eucharist," but we must say,
"I believe, with the council, that he is present by a true local
presence, or locally." And, in proof of this, he cites the council,
session xiii, canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th. Who would not
suppose, upon seeing the term local presence quoted from three
canons of a universal council, that the phrase was actually to be
found in them? This might have served your turn very well, before
the appearance of my Fifteenth Letter; but, as matters now stand,
fathers, the trick has become too stale for us. We go our way and
consult the council, and discover only that you are falsifiers. Such
terms as local presence, locally, and locality, never existed in the
passages to which you refer; and let me tell you further, they are not
to be found in any other canon of that council, nor in any other
previous council, not in any father of the Church. Allow me, then,
to ask you, fathers, if you mean to cast the suspicion of Calvinism
upon all that have not made use of that peculiar phrase? If this be
the case, the Council of Trent must be suspected of heresy, and all
the holy fathers without exception. Have you no other way of making M.
Arnauld heretical, without abusing so many other people who never
did you any harm, and, among the rest, St. Thomas, who is one of the
greatest champions of the eucharist, and who, so far from employing
that term, has expressly rejected it- "Nullo modo corpus Christi est
in hoc sacramento localiter.- By no means is the body of Christ in
this sacrament locally"? Who are you, then, fathers, to pretend, on
your authority, to impose new terms, and ordain them to be used by all
for rightly expressing their faith; as if the profession of the faith,
drawn up by the popes according to the plan of the council, in which
this term has no place, were defective, and left an ambiguity in the
creed of the faithful which you had the sole merit of discovering?
Such a piece of arrogance, to prescribe these terms, even to learned
doctors! such a piece of forgery, to attribute them to general
councils! and such ignorance, not to know the objections which the
most enlightened saints have made to their reception! "Be ashamed of
the error of your ignorance," as the Scripture says of ignorant
impostors like you, "De mendacio ineruditionis tuae confundere."
Give up all further attempts, then, to act the masters; you have
neither character nor capacity for the part. If, however, you would
bring forward your propositions with a little more modesty, they might
obtain a hearing. For, although this phrase, local presence, has
been rejected, as you have seen, by St. Thomas, on the ground that the
body of Jesus Christ is not in the eucharist, in the ordinary
extension of bodies in their places, the expression has, nevertheless,
been adopted by some modern controversial writers, who understand it
simply to mean that the body of Jesus Christ is truly under the
species, which being in a particular place, the body of Jesus Christ
is there also. And in this sense M. Arnauld will make no scruple to
admit the term, as M. de St. Cyran and he have repeatedly declared
that Jesus Christ in the eucharist is truly in a particular place, and
miraculously in many places at the same time. Thus all your subtleties
fall to the ground; and you have failed to give the slightest
semblance of plausibility to an accusation which ought not to have
been allowed to show its face without being supported by the most
unanswerable proofs.
But what avails it, fathers, to oppose their innocence to your
calumnies? You impute these errors to them, not in the belief that
they maintain heresy, but from the idea that they have done you
injury. That is enough, according to your theology, to warrant you
to calumniate them without criminality; and you can, without either
penance or confession, say mass, at the very time that you charge
priests, who say it every day, with holding it to be pure idolatry;
which, were it true, would amount to sacrilege no less revolting
than that of your own Father Jarrige, whom you yourselves ordered to
be hanged in effigy, for having said mass "at the time he was in
agreement with Geneva."
What surprises me, therefore, is not the little scrupulosity
with which you load them with crimes of the foulest and falsest
description, but the little prudence you display, by fixing on them
charges so destitute of plausibility. You dispose of sins, it is true,
at your pleasure; but do you mean to dispose of men's beliefs too?
Verily, fathers, if the suspicion of Calvinism must needs fall
either on them or on you, you would stand, I fear, on very ticklish
ground. Their language is as Catholic as yours; but their conduct
confirms their faith, and your conduct belies it. For if you
believe, as well as they do, that the bread is really changed into the
body of Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they do, from those
whom you advise to approach the altar, that the heart of stone and ice
should be sincerely changed into a heart of flesh and of love? If
you believe that Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in a state of
death, teaching those that approach it to die to the world, to sin,
and to themselves, why do you suffer those to profane it in whose
breasts evil passions continue to reign in all their life and
vigour? And how do you come to judge those worthy to eat the bread
of heaven, who are not worthy to eat that of earth?
Precious votaries, truly, whose zeal is expended in persecuting
those who honour this sacred mystery by so many holy communions, and
in flattering those who dishonour it by so many sacrilegious
desecrations! How comely is it, in these champions of a sacrifice so
pure and so venerable, to collect around the table of Jesus Christ a
crowd of hardened profligates, reeking from their debauchcries; and to
plant in the midst of them a priest, whom his own confessor has
hurried from his obscenities to the altar; there, in the place of
Jesus Christ, to offer up that most holy victim to the God of
holiness, and convey it, with his polluted hands, into mouths as
thoroughly polluted as his own! How well does it become those who
pursue this course "in all parts of the world," in conformity with
maxims sanctioned by their own general to impute to the author of
Frequent Communion, and to the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, the
crime of not believing in that sacrament!
Even this, however, does not satisfy them. Nothing less will
satiate their rage than to accuse their opponents of having
renounced Jesus Christ and their baptism. This is no air-built
fable, like those of your invention; it is a fact, and denotes a
delirious frenzy which marks the fatal consummation of your calumnies.
Such a notorious falsehood as this would not have been in hands worthy
to support it, had it remained in those of your good friend Filleau,
through whom you ushered it into the world: your Society has openly
adopted it; and your Father Meynier maintained it the other day to
be "a certain truth" that Port-Royal has, for the space of thirty-five
years, been forming a secret plot, of which M. de St. Cyran and M.
d'Ypres have been the ringleaders, "to ruin the mystery of the
incarnation- to make the Gospel pass for an apocryphal fable- to
exterminate the Christian religion, and to erect Deism upon the
ruins of Christianity." Is this enough, fathers? Will you be satisfied
if all this be believed of the objects of your hate? Would your
animosity be glutted at length, if you could but succeed in making
them odious, not only to all within the Church, by the charge of
"consenting with Geneva, of which you accuse them, but even to all who
believe in Jesus Christ, though beyond the pale of the Church, by
the imputation of Deism?
But whom do you expect to convince, upon your simple asseveration,
without the slightest shadow of proof, and in the face of every
imaginable contradiction, that priests who preach nothing but the
grace of Jesus Christ, the purity of the Gospel, and the obligations
of baptism, have renounced at once their baptism, the Gospel, and
Jesus Christ? Who will believe it, fathers? Wretched as you are, do
you believe it yourselves? What a sad predicament is yours, when you
must either prove that they do not believe in Jesus Christ, or must
pass for the most abandoned calumniators. Prove it, then, fathers.
Name that "worthy clergyman" who, you say, attended that assembly at
Bourg-Fontaine in 1621, and discovered to Brother Filleau the design
there concerted of overturning the Christian religion. Name those
six persons whom you allege to have formed that conspiracy. Name the
individual who is designated by the letters A. A., who you say "was
not Antony Arnauld" (because he convinced you that he was at that time
only nine years of age), "but another person, who you say is still
in life, but too good a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to
him." You know him, then, fathers; and consequently, if you are not
destitute of religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious
wretch to the king and parliament, that he may be punished according
to his deserts. You must speak out, fathers; you must name the person,
or submit to the disgrace of being henceforth regarded in no other
light than as common liars, unworthy of being ever credited again.
Good Father Valerien has taught us that this is the way in which
such characters should be "put to the rack" and brought to their
senses. Your silence upon the present challenge will furnish a full
and satisfactory confirmation of this diabolical calumny. Your
blindest admirers will be constrained to admit that it will be "the
result, not of your goodness, but your impotency"; and to wonder how
you could be so wicked as to extend your hatred even to the nuns of
Port-Royal, and to say, as you do in page 14, that The Secret
Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament, composed by one of their number, was
the first fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ; or, as in
page 95, that "they have imbibed all the detestable principles of that
work"; which is, according to your account, a lesson in Deism." Your
falsehoods regarding that book have already been triumphantly refuted,
in the defence of the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris
against Father Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of
answering; and yet you do not scruple to abuse it in a more shameful
manner than ever, for the purpose of charging women, whose piety is
universally known, with the vilest blasphemy.
Cruel, cowardly persecutors! Must, then, the most retired
cloisters afford no retreat from your calumnies? While these
consecrated virgins are employed, night and day, according to their
institution, in adoring Jesus Christ in the holy sacrament, you
cease not, night nor day, to publish abroad that they do not believe
that he is either in the eucharist or even at the right hand of his
Father; and you are publicly excommunicating them from the Church,
at the very time when they are in secret praying for the whole Church,
and for you! You blacken with your slanders those who have neither
ears to hear nor mouths to answer you! But Jesus Christ, in whom
they are now hidden, not to appear till one day together with him,
hears you, and answers for them. At the moment I am now writing,
that holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds nature and
consoles the Church. And I fear, fathers, that those who now harden
their hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear him, while he speaks
in the character of God, will one day be compelled to hear him with
terror, when he speaks to them in the character of a judge. What
account, indeed, fathers, will you be able to render to him of the
many calumnies you have uttered, seeing that he will examine them,
in that day, not according to the fantasies of Fathers Dicastille,
Gans, and Pennalossa, who justify them, but according to the eternal
laws of truth, and the sacred ordinances of his own Church, which,
so far from attempting to vindicate that crime, abhors it to such a
degree that she visits it with the same penalty as wilfull murder?
By the first and second councils of Arles she has decided that the
communion shall be denied to slanderers as well as murderers, till the
approach of death. The Council of Lateran has judged those unworthy of
admission into the ecclesiastical state who have been convicted of the
crime, even though they may have reformed. The popes have even
threatened to deprive of the communion at death those who have
calumniated bishops, priests, or deacons. And the authors of a
defamatory libel, who fail to prove what they have advanced, are
condemned by Pope Adrian to be whipped,- yes, reverend fathers,
flagellentur is the word. So strong has been the repugnance of the
Church at all times to the errors of your Society- a Society so
thoroughly depraved as to invent excuses for the grossest of crimes,
such as calumny, chiefly that it may enjoy the greater freedom in
perpetrating them itself. There can be no doubt, fathers, that you
would be capable of producing abundance of mischief in this way, had
God not permitted you to furnish with your own hands the means of
preventing the evil, and of rendering your slanders perfectly
innocuous; for, to deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough
to publish the strange maxim that it is no crime to calumniate.
Calumny is nothing, if not associated with a high reputation for
honesty. The defamer can make no impression, unless he has the
character of one that abhors defamation as a crime of which he is
incapable. And thus, fathers, you are betrayed by your own
principle. You establish the doctrine to secure yourselves a safe
conscience, that you might slander without risk of damnation, and be
ranked with those "pious and holy calumniators" of whom St. Athanasius
speaks. To save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim
which promises you this security on the faith of your doctors; but
this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to their idea,
against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives you of all
the advantage you may have expected to reap from it in the present; so
that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have lost the benefit
of calumny. Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so completely
does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic malignity.
You might have slandered, therefore, much more advantageously
for yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St. Paul, that evil
speakers are not worthy to see God; for in this case, though you would
indeed have been condemning yourselves, your slanders would at least
have stood a better chance of being believed. But, by maintaining,
as you have done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime,
your slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into
the bargain; for two things are certain, fathers: first, That it
will never be in the power of your grave doctors to annihilate the
justice of God; and, secondly, That you could not give more certain
evidence that you are not of the Truth than by your resorting to
falsehood. If the Truth were on your side, she would fight for you-
she would conquer for you; and whatever enemies you might have to
encounter, "the Truth would set you free" from them, according to
her promise. But you have had recourse to falsehood, for no other
design than to support the errors with which you flatter the sinful
children of this world, and to bolster up the calumnies with which you
persecute every man of piety who sets his face against these
delusions. The truth being diametrically opposed to your ends, it
behooved you, to use the language of the prophet, "to put your
confidence in lies." You have said: "The scourges which afflict
mankind shall not come nigh unto us; for we have made lies our refuge,
and under falsehood have we hid ourselves." But what says the
prophet in reply to such? "Forasmuch," says he, "as ye have put your
trust in calumny and tumult- sperastis in calumnia et in tumultu- this
iniquity and your ruin shall be like that of a high wall whose
breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the
breaking of the potter's vessel that is shivered in pieces"- with such
violence that "there shall not be found in the bursting of it a
shred to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the
pit." "Because," as another prophet says, "ye have made the heart of
the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and ye have flattered and
strengthened the malice of the wicked; I will therefore deliver my
people out of your hands, and ye shall know that I am their Lord and
yours."
Yes, fathers, it is to be hoped that if you do not repent, God
will deliver out of your hands those whom you have so long deluded,
either by flattering them in their evil courses with your licentious
maxims, or by poisoning their minds with your slanders. He will
convince the former that the false rules of your casuists will not
screen them from His indignation; and He will impress on the minds
of the latter the just dread of losing their souls by listening and
yielding credit to your slanders, as you lose yours by hatching
these slanders and disseminating them through the world. Let no man be
deceived; God is not mocked; none may violate with impunity the
commandment which He has given us in the Gospel, not to condemn our
neighbour without being well assured of his guilt. And,
consequently, what profession soever of piety those may make who
lend a willing ear to your lying devices, and under what pretence
soever of devotion they may entertain them, they have reason to
apprehend exclusion from the kingdom of God, solely for having imputed
crimes of such a dark complexion as heresy and schism to Catholic
priests and holy nuns, upon no better evidence than such vile
fabrications as yours. "The devil," says M. de Geneve, "is on the
tongue of him that slanders, and in the ear of him that listens to the
slanderer." "And evil speaking," says St. Bernard, "is a poison that
extinguishes charity in both of the parties; so that a single
calumny may prove mortal to an infinite numbers of souls, killing
not only those who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not
repudiated."
Reverend fathers, my letters were not wont either to be so prolix,
or to follow so closely on one another. Want of time must plead my
excuse for both of these faults. The present letter is a very long
one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. You know
the reason of this haste better than I do. You have been unlucky in
your answers. You have done well, therefore, to change your plan;
but I am afraid that you will get no credit for it, and that people
will say it was done for fear of the Benedictines.
I have just come to learn that the person who was generally
reported to be the author of your Apologies, disclaims them, and is
annoyed at their having been ascribed to him. He has good reason,
and I was wrong to have suspected him of any such thing; for, in spite
of the assurances which I received, I ought to have considered that he
was a man of too much good sense to believe your accusations, and of
too much honour to publish them if he did not believe them. There
are few people in the world capable of your extravagances; they are
peculiar to yourselves, and mark your character too plainly to admit
of any excuse for having failed to recognize your hand in their
concoction. I was led away by the common report; but this apology,
which would be too good for you, is not sufficient for me, who profess
to advance nothing without certain proof. In no other instance have
I been guilty of departing from this rule. I am sorry for what I said.
I retract it; and I only wish that you may profit by my example.
LETTER XVII
TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT
January 23, 1657
REVEREND FATHER,
Your former behaviour had induced me to believe that you were
anxious for a truce in our hostilities, and I was quite disposed to
agree that it should be so. Of late, however, you have poured forth
such a volley of pamphlets, in such rapid succession, as to make it
apparent that peace rests on a very precarious footing when it depends
on the silence of Jesuits. I know not if this rupture will prove
very advantageous to you; but, for my part, I am far from regretting
the opportunity which it affords me of rebutting that stale charge
of heresy with which your writings abound.
It is full time, indeed, that I should, once for all, put a stop
to the liberty you have taken to treat me as a heretic- a piece of
gratuitous impertinence which seems to increase by indulgence, and
which is exhibited in your last book in a style of such intolerable
assurance that, were I not to answer the charge as it deserves, I
might lay myself open to the suspicion of being actually guilty. So
long as the insult was confined to your associates I despised it, as I
did a thousand others with which they interlarded their productions.
To these my Fifteenth Letter was a sufficient reply. But you now
repeat the charge with a different air: you make it the main point
of your vindication. It is, in fact, almost the only thing in the
shape of argument that you employ. You say that, "as a complete answer
to my fifteen letters, it is enough to say fifteen times that I am a
heretic; and, having been pronounced such, I deserve no credit." In
short, you make no question of my apostasy, but assume it as a settled
point, on which you may build with all confidence. You are serious
then, father, it would seem, in deeming me a heretic. I shall be
equally serious in replying to the charge.
You are well aware, sir, that heresy is a charge of grave a
character that it is an act of high presumption to advance, without
being prepared to substantiate it. I now demand your proofs. When
was I seen at Charenton? When did I fail in my presence at mass, or in
my Christian duty to my parish church? What act of union with
heretics, or of schism with the Church, can you lay to my charge? What
council have I contradicted? What papal constitution have I
violated? You must answer, father, else- You know what I mean. And
what do you answer? I beseech all to observe it: First of all, you
assume "that the author of the letters is a Port-Royalist"; then you
tell us "that Port-Royal is declared to be heretical"; and, therefore,
you conclude, "the author of letters must be a heretic." It is not
on me, then, father, that the weight of this indictment falls, but
on Port-Royal; and I am only involved in the crime because you suppose
me to belong to that establishment; so that it will be no difficult
matter for me to exculpate myself from the charge. I have no more to
say than that I am not a member of that community; and to refer you to
my letters, in which I have declared that "I am a private individual";
and again in so many words, that "I am not of Port-Royal, as I said in
my Sixteenth Letter, which preceded your publication.
You must fall on some other way, then, to prove me heretic,
otherwise the whole world will be convinced that it is beyond your
power to make good your accusation. Prove from my writings that I do
not receive the constitution. My letters are not very voluminous-
there are but sixteen of them- and I defy you or anybody else to
detect in them the slightest foundation for such a charge. I shall,
however, with your permission, produce something out of them to
prove the reverse. When, for example, I say in the Fourteenth that,
"by killing our brethren in mortal sin, according to your maxims, we
are damning those for whom Jesus Christ died, do I not plainly
acknowledge that Jesus Christ died for those who may be damned, and,
consequently, declare it to be false "that he died only for the
predestinated," which is the error condemned in the fifth proposition?
Certain it is, father, that I have not said a word in behalf of
these impious propositions, which I detest with all my heart. And even
though Port-Royal should hold them, I protest against your drawing any
conclusion from this against me, as, thank God, I have no sort of
connection with any community except the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
Church, in the bosom of which I desire to live and die, in communion
with the Pope, the head of the Church, and beyond the pale of which
I am persuaded there is no salvation.
How are you to get at a person who talks in this way, father? On
what quarter will you assail me, since neither my words nor my
writings afford the slightest handle to your accusations, and the
obscurity in which my person is enveloped forms my protection
against your threatenings? You feel yourselves smitten by an invisible
hand- a hand, however, which makes your delinquencies visible to all
the earth; and in vain do you endeavour to attack me in the person
of those with whom you suppose me to be associated. I fear you not,
either on my own account or on that of any other, being bound by no
tie either to a community or to any individual whatsoever. All the
influence which your Society possesses can be of no avail in my
case. From this world I have nothing to hope, nothing to dread,
nothing to desire. Through the goodness of God, I have no need of
any man's money or any man's patronage. Thus, my father, I elude all
your attempts to lay hold of me. You may touch Port-Royal, if you
choose, but you shall not touch me. You may turn people out of the
Sorbonne, but that will not turn me out of my domicile. You may
contrive plots against priests and doctors, but not against me, for
I am neither the one nor the other. And thus, father, you never
perhaps had to do, in the whole course of your experience, with a
person so completely beyond your reach, and therefore so admirably
qualified for dealing with your errors- one perfectly free- one
without engagement, entanglement, relationship, or business of any
kind- one, too, who is pretty well versed in your maxims, and
determined, as God shall give him light, to discuss them, without
permitting any earthly consideration to arrest or slacken his
endeavours.
Since, then, you can do nothing against me, what good purpose
can it serve to publish so many calumnies, as you and your brethren
are doing, against a class of persons who are in no way implicated
in our disputes? You shall not escape under these subterfuges: you
shall be made to feel the force of the truth in spite of them. How
does the case stand? I tell you that you are ruining Christian
morality by divorcing it from the love of God, and dispensing with its
obligation; and you talk about "the death of Father Mester"- a
person whom I never saw in my life. I tell you that your authors
permit a man to kill another for the sake of an apple, when it would
be dishonourable to lose it; and you reply by informing me that
somebody "has broken into the poor-box at St. Merri!" Again, what
can you possibly mean by mixing me up perpetually with the book On the
Holy Virginity, written by some father of the Oratory, whom I never
saw any more than his book? It is rather extraordinary, father, that
you should thus regard all that are opposed to you as if they were one
person. Your hatred wou