TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS
August 18, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
I have seen the letters which you are circulating in opposition to
those which I wrote to one of my friends on your morality; and I
perceive that one of the principal points of your defence is that I
have not spoken of your maxims with sufficient seriousness. This
charge you repeat in all your productions, and carry it so far as to
allege, that I have been "guilty of turning sacred things into
ridicule."
Such a charge, fathers, is no less surprising than it is
unfounded. Where do you find that I have turned sacred things into
ridicule? You specify "the Mohatra contract, and the story of John
d'Alba." But are these what you call "sacred things?" Does it really
appear to you that the Mohatra is something so venerable that it would
be blasphemy not to speak of it with respect? And the lessons of
Father Bauny on larceny, which led John d'Alba to practise it at
your expense, are they so sacred as to entitle you to stigmatize all
who laugh at them as profane people?
What, fathers! must the vagaries of your doctors pa** for the
verities of the Christian faith, and no man be allowed to ridicule
Escobar, or the fantastical and unchristian dogmas of your authors,
without being stigmatized as jesting at religion? Is it possible you
can have ventured to reiterate so often an idea so utterly
unreasonable? Have you no fears that, in blaming me for laughing at
your absurdities, you may only afford me fresh subject of merriment;
that you may make the charge recoil on yourselves, by showing that I
have really selected nothing from your writings as the matter of
raillery but what was truly ridiculous; and that thus, in making a
jest of your morality, I have been as far from jeering at holy things,
as the doctrine of your casuists is far from being the holy doctrine
of the Gospel?
Indeed, reverend sirs, there is a vast difference between laughing
at religion and laughing at those who profane it by their
extravagant opinions. It were impiety to be wanting in respect for the
verities which the Spirit of God has revealed; but it were no less
impiety of another sort to be wanting in contempt for the falsities
which the spirit of man opposes to them.
For, fathers (since you will force me into this argument), I
beseech you to consider that, just in proportion as Christian truths
are worthy of love and respect, the contrary errors must deserve
hatred and contempt; there being two things in the truths of our
religion: a divine beauty that renders them lovely, and a sacred
majesty that renders them venerable; and two things also about errors:
an impiety, that makes them horrible, and an impertinence that renders
them ridiculous. For these reasons, while the saints have ever
cherished towards the truth the twofold sentiment of love and fear-
the whole of their wisdom being comprised between fear, which is its
beginning, and love, which is its end- they have, at the same time,
entertained towards error the twofold feeling of hatred and
contempt, and their zeal has been at once employed to repel, by
force of reasoning, the malice of the wicked, and to chastise, by
the aid of ridicule, their extravagance and folly.
Do not then expect, fathers, to make people believe that it is
unworthy of a Christian to treat error with derision. Nothing is
easier than to convince all who were not aware of it before that
this practice is perfectly just- that it is common with the fathers of
the Church, and that it is sanctioned by Scripture, by the example
of the best of saints, and even by that of God himself.
Do we not find God at once hates and despises sinners; so that
even at the hour of d**h, when their condition is most sad and
deplorable, Divine Wisdom adds mockery to the vengeance which consigns
them to eternal punishment? "In interitu vestro ridebo et
subsannabo- I will laugh at your calamity." The saints, too,
influenced by the same feeling, will join in the derision; for,
according to David, when they witness the punishment of the wicked,
"they shall fear, and yet laugh at it- videbunt justi et timebunt,
et super eum ridebunt." And Job says: "Innocens subsannabit eos- The
innocent shall laugh at them."
It is worthy of remark here that the very first words which God
addressed to man after his fall contain, in the opinion of the
fathers, "bitter irony" and mockery. After Adam had disobeyed his
Maker, in the hope, suggested by the devil, of being like God, it
appears from Scripture that God, as a punishment, subjected him to
d**h; and after having reduced him to this miserable condition, which
was due to his sin, He taunted him in that state with the following
terms of derision: "Behold, the man has become as one of us!- Ecce
Adam quasi unus ex nobis!"- which, according to St. Jerome and the
interpreters, is "a grievous and cutting piece of irony," with which
God "stung him to the quick." "Adam," says Rupert, "deserved to be
taunted in this manner, and he would be naturally made to feel his
folly more acutely by this ironical expression than by a more
serious one." St. Victor, after making the same remark, adds, "that
this irony was due to his sottish credulity, and that this species
of rainery is an act of justice, merited by him against whom it was
directed."
Thus you see, fathers, that ridicule is, in some cases, a very
appropriate means of reclaiming men from their errors, and that it
is accordingly an act of justice, because, as Jeremiah says, "the
actions of those that err are worthy of derision, because of their
vanity- vana sunt es risu digna." And so far from its being impious to
laugh at them, St. Augustine holds it to be the effect of divine
wisdom: "The wise laugh at the foolish, because they are wise, not
after their own wisdom, but after that divine wisdom which shall laugh
at the d**h of the wicked."
The prophets, accordingly, filled with the Spirit of God, have
availed themselves of ridicule, as we find from the examples of Daniel
and Elias. In short, examples of it are not wanting in the
discourses of Jesus Christ himself. St. Augustine remarks that, when
he would humble Nicodemus, who deemed himself so expert in his
knowledge of the law, "perceiving him to be pulled up with pride, from
his rank as doctor of the Jews, he first beats down his presumption by
the magnitude of his demands, and, having reduced him so low that he
was unable to answer, What! says he, you a master in Israel, and not
know these things!- as if he had said, Proud ruler, confess that
thou knowest nothing." St. Chrysostom and St. Cyril likewise observe
upon this that "he deserved to be ridiculed in this manner."
You may learn from this, fathers, that should it so happen, in our
day that persons who enact the part of "masters" among Christians,
as Nicodemus and the Pharisees did among the Jews, show themselves
so ignorant of the first principles of religion as to maintain, for
example, that "a man may be saved who never loved God all his life,"
we only follow the example of Jesus Christ when we laugh at such a
combination of ignorance and conceit.
I am sure, fathers, these sacred examples are sufficient to
convince you that to deride the errors and extravagances of man is not
inconsistent with the practice of the saints; otherwise we must
blame that of the greatest doctors of the Church, who have been guilty
of it- such as St. Jerome, in his letters and writings against
Jovinian, Vigilantius, and the Pelagians; Tertullian, in his Apology
against the follies of idolaters; St. Augustine against the monks of
Africa, whom he styles "the hairy men"; St. Irenaeus the Gnostics; St.
Bernard and the other fathers of the Church, who, having been the
imitators of the apostles, ought to be imitated by the faithful in all
time coming; for, say what we will, they are the true models for
Christians, even of the present day.
In following such examples, I conceived that I could not go far
wrong; and, as I think I have sufficiently established this
position, I shall only add, in the admirable words of Tertullian,
which give the true explanation of the whole of my proceeding in
this matter: "What I have now done is only a little sport before the
real combat. I have rather indicated the wounds that might be given
you than inflicted any. If the reader has met with pa**ages which have
excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects
themselves. There are many things which deserve to be held up in
this way to ridicule and mockery, lest, by a serious refutation, we
should attach a weight to them which they do not deserve. Nothing is
more due to vanity than laughter; and it is the Truth properly that
has a right to laugh, because she is cheerful, and to make sport of
her enemies, because she is sure of the victory. Care must be taken,
indeed, that the raillery is not too low, and unworthy of the truth;
but, keeping this in view, when ridicule may be employed with
effect, it is a duty to avail ourselves of it." Do you not think
fathers, that this pa**age is singularly applicable to our subject?
The letters which I have hitherto written are "merely a little sport
before a real combat." As yet, I have been only playing with the foils
and "rather indicating the wounds that might be given you than
inflicting any." I have merely exposed your pa**ages to the light,
without making scarcely a reflection on them. "If the reader has met
with any that have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the
subjects themselves." And, indeed, what is more fitted to raise a
laugh than to see a matter so grave as that of Christian morality
decked out with fancies so grotesque as those in which you have
exhibited it? One is apt to form such high anticipations of these
maxims, from being told that "Jesus Christ himself has revealed them
to the fathers of the Society," that when one discovers among them
such absurdities as "that a priest, receiving money to say a ma**, may
take additional sums from other persons by giving up to them his own
share in the sacrifice"; "that a monk is not to be excommunicated
for putting off his habit, provided it is to dance, swindle, or go
incognito into infamous houses"; and "that the duty of hearing ma**
may be fulfilled by listening to four quarters of a ma** at once
from different priests"- when, I say, one listens to such decisions as
these, the surprise is such that it is impossible to refrain from
laughing; for nothing is more calculated to produce that emotion
than a startling contrast between the thing looked for and the thing
looked at. And why should the greater part of these maxims be
treated in any other way? As Tertullian says, "To treat them seriously
would be to sanction them."
What! is it necessary to bring up all the forces of Scripture
and tradition, in order to prove that running a sword through a
man's body, covertly and behind his back, is to murder him in
treachery? or, that to give one money as a motive to resign a
benefice, is to purchase the benefice? Yes, there are things which
it is duty to despise, and which "deserve only to be laughed at." In
short, the remark of that ancient author, "that nothing is more due to
vanity than derision, with what follows, applies to the case before us
so justly and so convincingly, as to put it beyond all question that
we may laugh at errors without violating propriety.
And let me add, fathers, that this may be done without any
breach of charity either, though this is another of the charges you
bring against me in your publications. For, according to St.
Augustine, "charity may sometimes oblige us to ridicule the errors
of men, that they may be induced to laugh at them in their turn, and
renounce them- Haec tu misericorditer irride, ut eis ridenda ac
fugienda commendes." And the same charity may also, at other times,
bind us to repel them with indignation, according to that other saying
of St. Gregory of Nazianzen: "The spirit of meekness and charity
hath its emotions and its heats." Indeed, as St. Augustine observes,
"who would venture to say that truth ought to stand disarmed against
falsehood, or that the enemies of the faith shall be at liberty to
frighten the faithful with hard words, and jeer at them with lively
sallies of wit; while the Catholics ought never to write except with a
coldness of style enough to set the reader asleep?"
Is it not obvious that, by following such a course, a wide door
would be opened for the introduction of the most extravagant and
pernicious dogmas into the Church; while none would be allowed to
treat them with contempt, through fear of being charged with violating
propriety, or to confute them with indignation, from the dread of
being taxed with want of charity?
Indeed, fathers! shall you be allowed to maintain, "that it is
lawful to k** a man to avoid a box on the ear or an affront," and
must nobody be permitted publicly to expose a public error of such
consequence? Shall you be at liberty to say, "that a judge may in
conscience retain a fee received for an act of injustice," and shall
no one be at liberty to contradict you? Shall you print, with the
privilege and approbation of your doctors, "that a man may be saved
without ever having loved God"; and will you shut the mouth of those
who defend the true faith, by telling them that they would violate
brotherly love by attacking you, and Christian modesty by laughing
at your maxims? I doubt, fathers, if there be any persons whom you
could make believe this; if however, there be any such, who are really
persuaded that, by denouncing your morality, I have been deficient
in the charity which I owe to you, I would have them examine, with
great jealousy, whence this feeling takes its rise within them. They
may imagine that it proceeds from a holy zeal, which will not allow
them to see their neighbour impeached without being scandalized at it;
but I would entreat them to consider that it is not impossible that it
may flow from another source, and that it is even extremely likely
that it may spring from that secret, and often self-concealed
dissatisfaction, which the unhappy corruption within us seldom fails
to stir up against those who oppose the relaxation of morals. And,
to furnish them with a rule which may enable them to ascertain the
real principle from which it proceeds, I will ask them if, while
they lament the way in which the religious have been treated, they
lament still more the manner in which these religious have treated the
truth; if they are incensed, not only against the letters, but still
more against the maxims quoted in them. I shall grant it to be
barely possible that their resentment proceeds from some zeal,
though not of the most enlightened kind; and, in this case, the
pa**ages I have just cited from the fathers will serve to enlighten
them. But if they are merely angry at the reprehension, and not at the
things reprehended, truly, fathers, I shall never scruple to tell them
that they are grossly mistaken, and that their zeal is miserably
blind.
Strange zeal, indeed! which gets angry at those that censure
public faults, and not at those that commit them! Novel charity
this, which groans at seeing error confuted, but feels no grief at
seeing morality subverted by that error. If these persons were in
danger of being a**a**inated, pray, would they be offended at one
advertising them of the stratagem that had been laid for them; and
instead of turning out of their way to avoid it, would they trifle
away their time in whining about the little charity manifested in
discovering to them the criminal design of the a**a**ins? Do they
get waspish when one tells them not to eat such an article of food,
because it is poisoned? or not to enter such a city, because it has
the plague?
Whence comes it, then, that the same persons who set down a man as
wanting in charity, for exposing maxims hurtful to religion, would, on
the contrary, think him equally deficient in that grace were he not to
disclose matters hurtful to health and life, unless it be from this,
that their fondness for life induces them to take in good part every
hint that contributes to its preservation, while their indifference to
truth leads them, not only to take no share in its defence, but even
to view with pain the efforts made for the extirpation of falsehood?
Let them seriously ponder, as in the sight of God, how shameful,
and how prejudicial to the Church, is the morality which your casuists
are in the habit of propagating; the scandalous and unmeasured license
which they are introducing into public manners; the obstinate and
violent hardihood with which you support them. And if they do not
think it full time to rise against such disorders, their blindness
is as much to be pitied as yours, fathers; and you and they have equal
reason to dread that saying of St. Augustine, founded on the words
of Jesus Christ, in the Gospel: "Woe to the blind leaders! woe to
the blind followers!- Vae caecis ducentibus! vae caecis sequentibus!"
But, to leave you no room in future, either to create such
impressions on the minds of others, or to harbour them in your own,
I shall tell you, fathers (and I am ashamed I should have to teach you
what I should have rather learnt from you), the marks which the
fathers of the Church have given for judging when our animadversions
flow from a principle of piety and charity, and when from a spirit
of malice and impiety.
The first of these rules is that the spirit of piety always
prompts us to speak with sincerity and truthfulness; whereas malice
and envy make use of falsehood and calumny. "Splendentia et
vehementia, sed rebus veris- Splendid and vehement in words, but
true in things," as St. Augustine says. The dealer in falsehood is
an agent of the devil. No direction of the intention can sanctify
slander; and though the conversion of the whole earth should depend on
it, no man may warrantably calumniate the innocent: because none may
do the least evil, in order to accomplish the greatest good; and, as
the Scripture says, "the truth of God stands in no need of our lie."
St. Hilary observes that "it is the bounden duty of the advocates of
truth, to advance nothing in its support but true things." Now,
fathers, I can declare before God that there is nothing that I
detest more than the slightest possible deviation from the truth,
and that I have ever taken the greatest care, not only not to
falsify (which would be horrible), but not to alter or wrest, in the
slightest possible degree, the sense of a single pa**age. So closely
have I adhered to this rule that, if I may presume to apply them to
the present case, I may safely say, in the words of the same St.
Hilary: "If we advance things that are false, let our statements be
branded with infamy; but if we can show that they are public and
notorious, it is no breach of apostolic modesty or liberty to expose
them."
It is not enough, however, to tell nothing but the truth; we
must not always tell everything that is true; we should publish only
those things which it is useful to disclose, and not those which can
only hurt, without doing any good. And, therefore, as the first rule
is to speak with truth, the second is to speak with discretion. "The
wicked," says St. Augustine, "in persecuting the good, blindly
follow the dictates of their pa**ion; but the good, in their
prosecution of the wicked, are guided by a wise discretion, even as
the surgeon warily considers where he is cutting, while the murderer
cares not where he strikes." You must be sensible, fathers, that in
selecting from the maxims of your authors, I have refrained from
quoting those which would have galled you most, though I might have
done it, and that without sinning against discretion, as others who
were both learned and Catholic writers, have done before me. All who
have read your authors know how far I have spared you in this respect.
Besides, I have taken no notice whatever of what might be brought
against individual characters among you; and I would have been
extremely sorry to have said a word about secret and personal
failings, whatever evidence I might have of them, being persuaded that
this is the distinguishing property of malice, and a practice which
ought never to be resorted to, unless where it is urgently demanded
for the good of the Church. It is obvious, therefore, that, in what
I have been compelled to advance against your moral maxims, I have
been by no means wanting in due consideration: and that you have
more reason to congratulate yourself on my moderation than to complain
of my indiscretion.
The third rule, fathers, is: That when there is need to employ a
little raillery, the spirit of piety will take care to employ it
against error only, and not against things holy; whereas the spirit of
buffoonery, impiety, and heresy, mocks at all that is most sacred. I
have already vindicated myself on that score; and indeed there is no
great danger of falling into that vice so long as I confine my remarks
to the opinions which I have quoted from your authors.
In short, fathers, to abridge these rules, I shall only mention
another, which is the essence and the end of all the rest: That the
spirit of charity prompts us to cherish in the heart a desire for
the salvation of those against whom we dispute, and to address our
prayers to God while we direct our accusations to men. "We ought
ever," says St. Augustine, "to preserve charity in the heart, even
while we are obliged to pursue a line of external conduct which to man
has the appearance of harshness; we ought to smite them with a
sharpness, severe but kindly, remembering that their advantage is more
to be studied than their gratification." I am sure, fathers, that
there is nothing in my letters from which it can be inferred that I
have not cherished such a desire towards you; and as you can find
nothing to the contrary in them, charity obliges you to believe that I
have been really actuated by it. It appears, then, that you cannot
prove that I have offended against this rule, or against any of the
other rules which charity inculcates; and you have no right to say,
therefore, that I have violated it.
But, fathers, if you should now like to have the pleasure of
seeing, within a short compa**, a course of conduct directly at
variance with each of these rules, and bearing the genuine stamp of
the spirit of buffoonery, envy, and hatred, I shall give you a few
examples of it; and, that they may be of the sort best known and
most familiar to you, I shall extract them from your own writings.
To begin, then, with the unworthy manner in which your authors
speak of holy things, whether in their sportive and gallant effusions,
or in their more serious pieces, do you think that the parcel of
ridiculous stories, which your father Binet has introduced into his
Consolation to the Sick, are exactly suitable to his professed object,
which is that of imparting Christian consolation to those whom God has
chastened with affliction? Will you pretend to say that the profane,
foppish style in which your Father Le Moine has talked of piety in his
Devotion made Easy is more fitted to inspire respect than contempt for
the picture that he draws of Christian virtues? What else does his
whole book of Moral Pictures breathe, both in its prose and poetry,
but a spirit full of vanity, and the follies of this world? Take,
for example, that ode in his seventh book, entitled, "Eulogy on
Bashfulness, showing that all beautiful things are red, or inclined to
redden." Call you that a production worthy of a priest? The ode is
intended to comfort a lady, called Delphina, who was sadly addicted to
blushing. Each stanza is devoted to show that certain red things are
the best of things, such as roses, pomegranates, the mouth, the
tongue; and it is in the midst of this badinage, so disgraceful in a
clergyman, that he has the effrontery to introduce those blessed
spirits that minister before God, and of whom no Christian should
speak without reverence:
"The cherubim- those glorious choirs-
Composed of head and plumes,
Whom God with His own Spirit inspires,
And with His eyes illumes.
These splendid faces, as they fly,
Are ever red and burning high,
With fire angelic or divine;
And while their mutual flames combine,
The waving of their wings supplies
A fan to cool their ecstasies!
But redness shines with better grace,
Delphina, on thy beauteous face,
Where modesty sits revelling-
Arrayed in purple, like a king," &c.
What think you of this, fathers? Does this preference of the
blushes of Delphina to the ardour of those spirits, which is neither
more nor less than the ardour of divine love, and this simile of the
fan applied to their mysterious wings, strike you as being very
Christian-like in the lips which consecrate the adorable body of Jesus
Christ? I am quite aware that he speaks only in the character of a
gallant and to raise a smile; but this is precisely what is called
laughing at things holy. And is it not certain, that, were he to get
full justice, he could not save himself from incurring a censure?
although, to shield himself from this, he pleads an excuse which is
hardly less censurable than the offence, "that the Sorbonne has no
jurisdiction over Parna**us, and that the errors of that land are
subject neither to censure nor the Inquisition"; as if one could act
the blasphemer and profane fellow only in prose! There is another
pa**age, however, in the preface, where even this excuse fails him,
when he says, "that the water of the river, on whose banks he composes
his verses, is so apt to make poets, that, though it were converted
into holy water, it would not chase away the demon of poesy." To match
this, I may add the following flight of your Father Gara**e, in his
Summary of the Capital Truths in Religion, where, speaking of the
sacred mystery of the incarnation, he mixes up blasphemy and heresy in
this fashion: "The human personality was grafted, as it were, or set
on horseback, upon the personality of the Word!" And omitting many
others, I might mention another pa**age from the same author, who,
speaking on the subject of the name of Jesus, ordinarily written thus,
+
I.H.S.
observes that "some have taken away the cross from the top of it,
leaving the characters barely thus, I.H.S.- which," says he, "is a
stripped Jesus!"
Such is the indecency with which you treat the truths of religion,
in the face of the inviolable law which binds us always to speak of
them with reverence. But you have sinned no less flagrantly against
the rule which obliges us to speak of them with truth and
discretion. What is more common in your writings than calumny? Can
those of Father Brisacier be called sincere? Does he speak with
truth when he says that "the nuns of Port-Royal do not pray to the
saints, and have no images in their church?" Are not these most
outrageous falsehoods, when the contrary appears before the eyes of
all Paris? And can he be said to speak with discretion when he stabs
the fair reputation of these virgins, who lead a life so pure and
austere, representing them as "impenitent, unsacramentalists,
uncommunicants, foolish virgins, visionaries, Calagans, desperate
creatures, and anything you please," loading them with many other
slanders, which have justly incurred the censure of the late
Archbishop of Paris? Or when he calumniates priests of the most
irreproachable morals, by a**erting "that they practise novelties in
confession, to entrap handsome innocent females, and that he would
be horrified to tell the abominable crimes which they commit." Is it
not a piece of intolerable a**urance to advance slanders so black
and base, not merely without proof, but without the slightest
shadow, or the most distant semblance of truth? I shall not enlarge on
this topic, but defer it to a future occasion, for I have something
more to say to you about it; but what I have now produced is enough to
show that you have sinned at once against truth and discretion.
But it may be said, perhaps, that you have not offended against
the last rule at least, which binds you to desire the salvation of
those whom you denounce, and that none can charge you with this,
except by unlocking the secrets of your breasts, which are only
known to God. It is strange, fathers, but true, nevertheless, that
we can convict you even of this offence; that while your hatred to
your opponents has carried you so far as to wish their eternal
perdition, your infatuation has driven you to discover the
abominable wish that, so far from cherishing in secret desires for
their salvation, you have offered up prayers in public for their
damnation; and that, after having given utterance to that hideous
vow in the city of Caen, to the scandal of the whole Church, you
have since then ventured, in Paris, to vindicate, in your printed
books, the diabolical transaction. After such gross offences against
piety, first ridiculing and speaking lightly of things the most
sacred; next falsely and scandalously calumniating priests and
virgins; and lastly, forming desires and prayers for their
damnation, it would be difficult to add anything worse. I cannot
conceive, fathers, how you can fail to be ashamed of yourselves, or
how you could have thought for an instant of charging me with a want
of charity, who have acted all along with so much truth and
moderation, without reflecting on your own horrid violations of
charity, manifested in those deplorable exhibitions, which make the
charge recoil against yourselves.
In fine, fathers, to conclude with another charge which you
bring against me, I see you complain that among the vast number of
your maxims which I quote, there are some which have been objected
to already, and that I "say over again, what others have said before
me." To this I reply that it is just because you have not profited
by what has been said before that I say it over again. Tell me now
what fruit has appeared from all the castigations you have received in
all the books written by learned doctors and even the whole
University? What more have your Fathers Annat, Caussin, Pintereau, and
Le Moine done, in the replies they have put forth, except loading with
reproaches those who had given them salutary admonitions? Have you
suppressed the books in which these nefarious maxims are taught?
Have you restrained the authors of these maxims? Have you become
more circumspect in regard to them? On the contrary, is it not the
fact that since that time Escobar has been repeatedly reprinted in
France and in the Low Countries, and that your fathers Cellot,
Bagot, Bauny, Lamy, Le Moine, and others, persist in publishing
daily the same maxims over again, or new ones as licentious as ever?
Let us hear no more complaints, then, fathers, either because I have
charged you with maxims which you have not disavowed, or because I
have objected to some new ones against you, or because I have
laughed equally at them all. You have only to sit down and look at
them, to see at once your own confusion and my defence. Who can look
without laughing at the decision of Bauny, respecting the person who
employs another to set fire to his neighbour's barn; that of Cellot on
restitution; the rule of Sanchez in favour of sorcerers; the plan of
Hurtado for avoiding the sin of duelling by taking a walk through a
field and waiting for a man; the compliments of Bauny for escaping
usury; the way of avoiding simony by a detour of the intention, and
keeping clear of falsehood by speaking high and low; and such other
opinions of your most grave and reverend doctors? Is there anything
more necessary, fathers, for my vindication? And, as Tertullian
says, "can anything be more justly due to the vanity and weakness of
these opinions than laughter?" But, fathers, the corruption of
manners, to which your maxims lead, deserves another sort of
consideration; and it becomes us to ask, with the same ancient writer:
"Whether ought we to laugh at their folly, or deplore their
blindness?- Rideam vanitatem, an exprobrem caecitatem?" My humble
opinion is that one may either laugh at them or weep over them, as one
is in the humour. "Haec tolerabilius vel ridentur, vel flentur, " as
St. Augustine says. The Scripture tells us that "there is a time to
laugh, and a time to weep"; and my hope is, fathers, that I may not
find verified, in your case, these words in the Proverbs: "If a wise
man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there
is no rest."
P.S.- On finishing this letter, there was put in my hands one of
your publications, in which you accuse me of falsification, in the
case of six of your maxims quoted by me, and also with being in
correspondence with heretics. You will shortly receive, I trust, a
suitable reply; after which, fathers, I rather think you will not feel
very anxious to continue this species of warfare.