Letter XII

TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS

September 9, 1656

REVEREND FATHERS,
I was prepared to write you on the subject of the abuse with which
you have for some time past been assailing me in your publications, in
which you salute me with such epithets as "reprobate," "buffoon,"
"blockhead," "merry- Andrew," "impostor," "slanderer," "cheat,"
"heretic," "Calvinist in disguise," "disciple of Du Moulin,"
"possessed with a legion of devils," and everything else you can think
of. As I should be sorry to have all this believed of me, I was
anxious to show the public why you treated me in this manner; and I
had resolved to complain of your calumnies and falsifications, when
I met with your Answers, in which you bring these same charges against
myself. This will compel me to alter my plan; though it will not
prevent me from prosecuting it in some sort, for I hope, while
defending myself, to convict you of impostures more genuine than the
imaginary ones which you have ascribed to me. Indeed, fathers, the
suspicion of foul play is much more sure to rest on you than on me. It
is not very likely, standing as I do, alone, without power or any
human defence against such a large body, and having no support but
truth and integrity, that I would expose myself to lose everything
by laying myself open to be convicted of imposture. It is too easy
to discover falsifications in matters of fact such as the present.
In such a case there would have been no want of persons to accuse
me, nor would justice have been denied them. With you, fathers, the
case is very different; you may say as much as you please against
me, while I may look in vain for any to complain to. With such a
wide difference between our positions, though there had been no
other consideration to restrain me, it became me to study no little
caution. By treating me, however, as a common slanderer, you compel me
to assume the defensive, and you must be aware that this cannot be
done without entering into a fresh exposition and even into a fuller
disclosure of the points of your morality. In provoking this
discussion, I fear you are not acting as good politicians. The war
must be waged within your own camp and at your own expense; and,
although you imagine that, by embroiling the questions with scholastic
terms, the answers will be so tedious, thorny, and obscure, that
people will lose all relish for the controversy, this may not,
perhaps, turn out to be exactly the case; I shall use my best
endeavours to tax your patience as little as possible with that sort
of writing. Your maxims have something diverting about them, which
keeps up the good humour of people to the last. At all events,
remember that it is you that oblige me to enter upon this
eclaircissement, and let us see which of us comes off best in
self-defence.

The first of your Impostures, as you call them, is on the
opinion of Vasquez upon alms-giving. To avoid all ambiguity, then,
allow me to give a simple explanation of the matter in dispute. It
is well known, fathers, that, according to the mind of the Church,
there are two precepts touching alms: 1st, "To give out of our
superfluity in the case of the ordinary necessities of the poor";
and 2nd, "To give even out of our necessaries, according to our
circumstances, in cases of extreme necessity." Thus says Cajetan,
after St. Thomas; so that, to get at the mind of Vasquez on this
subject, we must consider the rules he lays down, both in regard to
necessaries and superfluities.

With regard to superfluity, which is the most common source of
relief to the poor, it is entirely set aside by that single maxim
which I have quoted in my Letters: "That what the men of the world
keep with the view of improving their own condition, and that of their
relatives, is not properly superfluity; so that such a thing as
superfluity is rarely to be met with among men of the world, not
even excepting kings." It is very easy to see, fathers, that,
according to this definition, none can have superfluity, provided they
have ambition; and thus, so far as the greater part of the world is
concerned, alms-giving is annihilated. But even though a man should
happen to have superfluity, he would be under no obligation, according
to Vasquez, to give it away in the case of ordinary necessity; for
he protests against those who would thus bind the rich. Here are his
own words: "Corduba," says he, "teaches that when we have a
superfluity we are bound to give out of it in cases of ordinary
necessity; but this does not please me- sed hoc non placet- for we
have demonstrated the contrary against Cajetan and Navarre." So,
fathers, the obligation to this kind of alms is wholly set aside,
according to the good pleasure of Vasquez.

With regard to necessaries, out of which we are bound to give in
cases of extreme and urgent necessity, it must be obvious, from the
conditions by which he has limited the obligation, the richest man
in all Paris may not come within its reach one in a lifetime. I
shall only refer to two of these. The first is: That "we must know
that the poor man cannot be relieved from any other quarter- haec
intelligo et caetera omnia, quando SCIO nullum alium opem laturum."
What say you to this, fathers? Is it likely to happen frequently in
Paris, where there are so many charitable people, that I must know
that there is not another soul but myself to relieve the poor wretch
who begs an alms from me? And yet, according to Vasquez, if I have not
ascertained that fact, I may send him away with nothing. The second
condition is: That the poor man be reduced to such straits "that he is
menaced with some fatal accident, or the ruin of his character"-
none of them very common occurrences. But what marks still more the
rarity of the cases in which one is bound to give charity, is his
remark, in another passage, that the poor man must be so ill off,
"that he may conscientiously rob the rich man!" This must surely be
a very extraordinary case, unless he will insist that a man may be
ordinarily allowed to commit robbery. And so, after having cancelled
the obligation to give alms out of our superfluities, he obliges the
rich to relieve the poor only in those cases when he would allow the
poor to rifle the rich! Such is the doctrine of Vasquez, to whom you
refer your readers for their edification!

I now come to your pretended Impostures. You begin by enlarging on
the obligation to alms-giving which Vasquez imposes on
ecclesiastics. But on this point I have said nothing; and I am
prepared to take it up whenever you choose. This, then, has nothing to
do with the present question. As for laymen, who are the only
persons with whom we have now to do, you are apparently anxious to
have it understood that, in the passage which I quoted, Vasquez is
giving not his own judgement, but that of Cajetan. But as nothing
could be more false than this, and as you have not said it in so
many terms, I am willing to believe, for the sake of your character,
that you did not intend to say it.

You next loudly complain that, after quoting that maxim of
Vasquez, "Such a thing as superfluity is rarely if ever to be met with
among men of the world, not excepting kings," I have inferred from it,
"that the rich are rarely, if ever, bound to give alms out of their
superfluity." But what do you mean to say, fathers? If it be true that
the rich have almost never superfluity, is it not obvious that they
will almost never be bound to give alms out of their superfluity? I
might have put it into the form of a syllogism for you, if Diana,
who has such an esteem for Vasquez that he calls him "the phoenix of
genius," had not drawn the same conclusion from the same premisses;
for, after quoting the maxim of Vasquez, he concludes, "that, with
regard to the question, whether the rich are obliged to give alms
out of their superfluity, though the affirmation were true, it would
seldom, or almost never, happen to be obligatory in practice." I
have followed this language word for word. What, then, are we to
make of this, fathers? When Diana quotes with approbation the
sentiments of Vasquez, when he finds them probable, and "very
convenient for rich people," as he says in the same place, he is no
slanderer, no falsifier, and we hear no complaints of
misrepresenting his author; whereas, when I cite the same sentiments
of Vasquez, though without holding him up as a phoenix, I am a
slanderer, a fabricator, a corrupter of his maxims. Truly, fathers,
you have some reason to be apprehensive, lest your very different
treatment of those who agree in their representation, and differ
only in their estimate of your doctrine, discover the real secret of
your hearts and provoke the conclusion that the main object you have
in view is to maintain the credit and glory of your Company. It
appears that, provided your accommodating theology is treated as
judicious complaisance, you never disavow those that publish it, but
laud them as contributing to your design; but let it be held forth
as pernicious laxity, and the same interest of your Society prompts
you to disclaim the maxims which would injure you in public
estimation. And thus you recognize or renounce them, not according
to the truth, which never changes, but according to the shifting
exigencies of the times, acting on that motto of one of the
ancients, "Omnia pro tempore, nihil pro veritate- Anything for the
times, nothing for the truth." Beware of this, fathers; and that you
may never have it in your power again to say that I drew from the
principle of Vasquez a conclusion which he had disavowed, I beg to
inform you that he has drawn it himself: "According to the opinion
of Cajetan, and according to my own- et secundum nostram- (he says,
chap. i., no. 27), one is hardly obliged to give alms at all when
one is only obliged to give them out of one's superfluity." Confess
then, fathers, on the testimony of Vasquez himself, that I have
exactly copied his sentiment; and think how you could have the
conscience to say that "the reader, on consulting the original,
would see to his astonishment that he there teaches the very reverse!"

In fine, you insist, above all, that if Vasquez does not bind
the rich to give alms out of their superfluity, he obliges them to
atone for this by giving out of the necessaries of life. But you
have forgotten to mention the list of conditions which he declares
to be essential to constitute that obligation, which I have quoted,
and which restrict it in such a way as almost entirely to annihilate
it. In place of giving this honest statement of his doctrine, you tell
us, in general terms, that he obliges the rich to give even what is
necessary to their condition. This is proving too much, fathers; the
rule of the Gospel does not go so far; and it would be an error,
into which Vasquez is very far, indeed, from having fallen. To cover
his laxity, you attribute to him an excess of severity which would
be reprehensible; and thus you lose all credit as faithful reporters
of his sentiments. But the truth is, Vasquez is quite free from any
such suspicion; for he has maintained, as I have shown, that the
rich are not bound, either in justice or in charity, to give of
their superfluities, and still less of their necessaries, to relieve
the ordinary wants of the poor; and that they are not obliged to
give of the necessaries, except in cases so rare that they almost
never happen.

Having disposed of your objections against me on this head, it
only remains to show the falsehood of your assertion that Vasquez is
more severe than Cajetan. This will by very easily done. That cardinal
teaches "that we are bound in justice to give alms out of our
superfluity, even in the ordinary wants of the poor; because,
according to the holy fathers, the rich are merely the dispensers of
their superfluity, which they are to give to whom they please, among
those who have need of it." And accordingly, unlike Diana, who says of
the maxims of Vasquez that they will be "very convenient and agreeable
to the rich and their confessors," the cardinal, who has no such
consolation to afford them, declares that he has nothing to say to the
rich but these words of Jesus Christ: "It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into
heaven"; and to their confessors: "If the blind lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch." So indispensable did he deem this
obligation! This, too, is what the fathers and all the saints have
laid down as a certain truth. "There are two cases," says St.
Thomas, "in which we are bound to give alms as a matter of justice- ex
debito legali: one, when the poor are in danger; the other, when we
possess superfluous property." And again: "The three-tenths which
the Jews were bound to eat with the poor, have been augmented under
the new law; for Jesus Christ wills that we give to the poor, not
the tenth only, but the whole of our superfluity." And yet it does not
seem good to Vasquez that we should be obliged to give even a fragment
of our superfluity; such is his complaisance to the rich, such his
hardness to the poor, such his opposition to those feelings of charity
which teach us to relish the truth contained in the following words of
St. Gregory, harsh as it may sound to the rich of this world: "When we
give the poor what is necessary to them, we are not so much
bestowing on them what is our property as rendering to them what is
their own; and it may be said to be an act of justice rather than a
work of mercy."

It is thus that the saints recommend the rich to share with the
poor the good things of this earth, if they would expect to possess
with them the good things of heaven. While you make it your business
to foster in the breasts of men that ambition which leaves no
superfluity to dispose of, and that avarice which refuses to part with
it, the saints have laboured to induce the rich to give up their
superfluity, and to convince them that they would have abundance of
it, provided they measured it, not by the standard of covetousness,
which knows no bounds to its cravings, but by that of piety, which
is ingenious in retrenchments, so as to have wherewith to diffuse
itself in the exercise of charity. "We will have a great deal of
superfluity," says St. Augustine, "if we keep only what is
necessary: but if we seek after vanities, we will never have enough.
Seek, brethren, what is sufficient for the work of God"- that is,
for nature- "and not for what is sufficient for your covetousness,"
which is the work of the devil: "and remember that the superfluities
of the rich are the necessaries of the poor."

I would fondly trust, fathers, that what I have now said to you
may serve, not only for my vindication- that were a small matter-
but also to make you feel and detest what is corrupt in the maxims
of your casuists, and thus unite us sincerely under the sacred rules
of the Gospel, according to which we must all be judged.

As to the second point, which regards simony, before proceeding to
answer the charges you have advanced against me, I shall begin by
illustrating your doctrine on this subject. Finding yourselves
placed in an awkward dilemma, between the canons of the Church,
which impose dreadful penalties upon simoniacs, on the one hand, and
the avarice of many who pursue this infamous traffic on the other, you
have recourse to your ordinary method, which is to yield to men what
they desire, and give the Almighty only words and shows. For what else
does the simoniac want but money in return for his benefice? And yet
this is what you exempt from the charge of simony. And as the name
of simony must still remain standing, and a subject to which it may be
ascribed, you have substituted, in the place of this, an imaginary
idea, which never yet crossed the brain of a simoniac, and would not
serve him much though it did- the idea, namely, that simony lies in
estimating the money considered in itself as highly as the spiritual
gift or office considered in itself. Who would ever take it into his
head to compare things so utterly disproportionate and
heterogeneous? And yet, provided this metaphysical comparison be not
drawn, any one may, according to your authors, give away a benefice,
and receive money in return for it, without being guilty of simony.

Such is the way in which you sport with religion, in order to
gratify the worst passions of men; and yet only see with what
gravity your Father Valentia delivers his rhapsodies in the passage
cited in my letters. He says: "One may give a spiritual for a temporal
good in two ways- first, in the way of prizing the temporal more
than the spiritual, and that would be simony; secondly, in the way
of taking the temporal as the motive and end inducing one to give away
the spiritual, but without prizing the temporal more than the
spiritual, and then it is not simony. And the reason is that simony
consists in receiving something temporal as the just price of what
is spiritual. If, therefore, the temporal is sought- si petatur
temporale- not as the price, but only as the motive determining us
to part with the spiritual, it is by no means simony, even although
the possession of the temporal may be principally intended and
expected- minime erit simonia, etiamsi temporale principaliter
intendatur et expectetur." Your redoubtable Sanchez has been
favoured with a similar revelation; Escobar quotes him thus: "If one
give a spiritual for a temporal good, not as the price, but as a
motive to induce the collator to give it, or as an acknowledgement
if the benefice has been actually received, is that simony? Sanchez
assures us that it is not." In your Caen Theses of 1644 you say: "It
is a probable opinion, taught by many Catholics, that it is not simony
to exchange a temporal for a spiritual good, when the former is not
given as a price." And as to Tanner, here is his doctrine, exactly the
same with that of Valentia; and I quote it again to show you how far
wrong it is in you to complain of me for saying that it does not agree
with that of St. Thomas, for he avows it himself in the very passage
which I quoted in my letter: "There is properly and truly no
simony," says he, "unless when a temporal good is taken as the price
of a spiritual; but when taken merely as the motive for giving the
spiritual, or as an acknowledgement for having received it, this is
not simony, at least in point of conscience." And again: "The same
thing may be said, although the temporal should be regarded as the
principal end, and even preferred to the spiritual; although St.
Thomas and others appear to hold the reverse, inasmuch as they
maintain it to be downright simony to exchange a spiritual for a
temporal good, when the temporal is the end of the transaction."

Such, then, being your doctrine on simony, as taught by your
best authors, who follow each other very closely in this point, it
only remains now to reply to your charges of misrepresentation. You
have taken no notice of Valentia's opinion, so that his doctrine
stands as it was before. But you fix on that of Tanner, maintaining
that he has merely decided it to be no simony by divine right; and you
would have it to be believed that, in quoting the passage, I have
suppressed these words, divine right. This, fathers, is a most
unconscionable trick; for these words, divine right, never existed
in that passage. You add that Tanner declares it to be simony
according to positive right. But you are mistaken; he does not say
that generally, but only of particular cases, or, as he expresses
it, in casibus a jure expressis, by which he makes an exception to the
general rule he had laid down in that passage, "that it is not
simony in point of conscience," which must imply that it is not so
in point of positive right, unless you would have Tanner made so
impious as to maintain that simony, in point of positive right, is not
simony in point of conscience. But it is easy to see your drift in
mustering up such terms as "divine right, positive right, natural
right, internal and external tribunal, expressed cases, outward
presumption," and others equally little known; you mean to escape
under this obscurity of language, and make us lose sight of your
aberrations. But, fathers, you shall not escape by these vain
artifices; for I shall put some questions to you so simple, that
they will not admit of coming under your distinguo.

I ask you, then, without speaking of "positive rights," of
"outward presumptions," or "external tribunals"- I ask if, according
to your authors, a beneficiary would be simoniacal, were he to give
a benefice worth four thousand livres of yearly rent, and to receive
ten thousand francs ready money, not as the price of the benefice, but
merely as a motive inducing him to give it? Answer me plainly,
fathers: What must we make of such a case as this according to your
authors? Will not Tanner tell us decidedly that "this is not simony in
point of conscience, seeing that the temporal good is not the price of
the benefice, but only the motive inducing to dispose of it?" Will not
Valentia, will not your own Theses of Caen, will not Sanchez and
Escobar, agree in the same decision and give the same reason for it?
Is anything more necessary to exculpate that beneficiary from
simony? And, whatever might be your private opinion of the case, durst
you deal with that man as a simonist in your confessionals, when he
would be entitled to stop your mouth by telling you that he acted
according to the advice of so many grave doctors? Confess candidly,
then, that, according to your views, that man would be no simonist;
and, having done so, defend the doctrine as you best can.

Such, fathers, is the true mode of treating questions, in order to
unravel, instead of perplexing them, either by scholastic terms, or,
as you have done in your last charge against me here, by altering
the state of the question. Tanner, you say, has, at any rate, declared
that such an exchange is a great sin; and you blame me for having
maliciously suppressed this circumstance, which, you maintain,
"completely justifies him." But you are wrong again, and that in
more ways than one. For, first, though what you say had been true,
it would be nothing to the point, the question in the passage to which
I referred being, not if it was sin, but if it was simony. Now,
these are two very different questions. Sin, according to your maxims,
obliges only to confession- simony obliges to restitution; and there
are people to whom these may appear two very different things. You
have found expedients for making confession a very easy affair; but
you have not fallen upon ways and means to make restitution an
agreeable one. Allow me to add that the case which Tanner charges with
sin is not simply that in which a spiritual good is exchanged for a
temporal, the latter being the principal end in view, but that in
which the party "prizes the temporal above the spiritual," which is
the imaginary case already spoken of. And it must be allowed he
could not go far wrong in charging such a case as that with sin, since
that man must be either very wicked or very stupid who, when permitted
to exchange the one thing for the other, would not avoid the sin of
the transaction by such a simple process as that of abstaining from
comparing the two things together. Besides, Valentia, in the place
quoted, when treating the question- if it be sinful to give a
spiritual good for a temporal, the latter being the main
consideration- and after producing the reasons given for the
affirmative, adds, "Sed hoc non videtur mihi satis certum- But this
does not appear to my mind sufficiently certain."

Since that time, however, your father, Erade Bille, professor of
cases of conscience at Caen, has decided that there is no sin at all
in the case supposed; for probable opinions, you know, are always in
the way of advancing to maturity. This opinion he maintains in his
writings of 1644, against which M. Dupre, doctor and professor at
Caen, delivered that excellent oration, since printed and well
known. For though this Erade Bille confesses that Valentia's doctrine,
adopted by Father Milhard and condemned by the Sorbonne, "is
contrary to the common opinion, suspected of simony, and punishable at
law when discovered in practice," he does not scruple to say that it
is a probable opinion, and consequently sure in point of conscience,
and that there is neither simony nor sin in it. "It is a probable
opinion, he says, "taught by many Catholic doctors, that there is
neither any simony nor any sin in giving money, or any other
temporal thing, for a benefice, either in the way of
acknowledgement, or as a motive, without which it would not be
given, provided it is not given as a price equal to the benefice."
This is all that could possibly be desired. In fact, according to
these maxims of yours, simony would be so exceedingly rare that we
might exempt from this sin even Simon Magus himself, who desired to
purchase the Holy Spirit and is the emblem of those simonists that buy
spiritual things; and Gehazi, who took money for a miracle and may
be regarded as the prototype of the simonists that sell them. There
can be no doubt that when Simon, as we read in the Acts, "offered
the apostles money, saying, Give me also this power"; he said
nothing about buying or selling, or fixing the price; he did no more
than offer the money as a motive to induce them to give him that
spiritual gift; which being, according to you, no simony at all, he
might, had be but been instructed in your maxims, have escaped the
anathema of St. Peter. The same unhappy ignorance was a great loss
to Gehazi, when he was struck with leprosy by Elisha; for, as he
accepted the money from the prince who had been miraculously cured,
simply as an acknowledgement, and not as a price equivalent to the
divine virtue which had effected the miracle, he might have insisted
on the prophet healing him again on pain of mortal sin; seeing, on
this supposition, he would have acted according to the advice of
your grave doctors, who, in such cases, oblige confessors to absolve
their penitents and to wash them from that spiritual leprosy of
which the bodily disease is the type.

Seriously, fathers, it would be extremely easy to hold you up to
ridicule in this matter, and I am at a loss to know why you expose
yourselves to such treatment. To produce this effect, I have nothing
more to do than simply to quote Escobar, in his Practice of Simony
according to the Society of Jesus; "Is it simony when two Churchmen
become mutually pledged thus: Give me your vote for my election as
Provincial, and I shall give you mine for your election as prior? By
no means." Or take another: "It is not simony to get possession of a
benefice by promising a sum of money, when one has no intention of
actually paying the money; for this is merely making a show of simony,
and is as far from being real simony as counterfeit gold is from the
genuine." By this quirk of conscience, he has contrived means, in
the way of adding swindling to simony, for obtaining benefices without
simony and without money.

But I have no time to dwell longer on the subject, for I must
say a word or two in reply to your third accusation, which refers to
the subject of bankrupts. Nothing can be more gross than the manner in
which you have managed this charge. You rail at me as a libeller in
reference to a sentiment of Lessius, which I did not quote myself, but
took from a passage in Escobar; and, therefore, though it were true
that Lessius does not hold the opinion ascribed to him by Escobar,
what can be more unfair than to charge me with the
misrepresentation? When I quote Lessius or others of your authors
myself, I am quite prepared to answer for it; but, as Escobar has
collected the opinions of twenty-four of your writers, I beg to ask if
I am bound to guarantee anything beyond the correctness of my
citations from his book? Or if I must, in addition, answer for the
fidelity of all his quotations of which I may avail myself? This would
be hardly reasonable; and yet this is precisely the case in the
question before us. I produced in my letter the following passage from
Escobar, and you do not object to the fidelity of my translation: "May
the bankrupt, with a good conscience, retain as much of his property
as is necessary to afford him an honourable maintenance- ne indecore
vivat? I answer, with Lessius, that he may- cum Lessio assero
posse." You tell me that Lessius does not hold that opinion. But
just consider for a moment the predicament in which you involve
yourselves. If it turns out that he does hold that opinion, you will
be set down as impostors for having asserted the contrary; and if it
is proved that he does not hold it, Escobar will be the impostor; so
it must now of necessity follow that one or other of the Society
will be convicted of imposture. Only think what a scandal! You cannot,
it would appear, foresee the consequences of things. You seem to
imagine that you have nothing more to do than to cast aspersions
upon people, without considering on whom they may recoil. Why did
you not acquaint Escobar with your objection before venturing to
publish it? He might have given you satisfaction. It is not so very
troublesome to get word from Valladolid, where he is living in perfect
health, and completing his grand work on Moral Theology, in six
volumes, on the first of which I mean to say a few words by-and-by.
They have sent him the first ten letters; you might as easily have
sent him your objection, and I am sure he would have soon returned you
an answer, for he has doubtless seen in Lessius the passage from which
he took the ne indecore vivat. Read him yourselves, fathers, and you
will find it word for word, as I have done. Here it is: "The same
thing is apparent from the authorities cited, particularly in regard
to that property which he acquires after his failure, out of which
even the delinquent debtor may retain as much as is necessary for
his honourable maintenance, according to his station of life- ut non
indecore vivat. Do you ask if this rule applies to goods which he
possessed at the time of his failure? Such seems to be the judgement
of the doctors."

I shall not stop here to show how Lessius, to sanction his
maxim, perverts the law that allows bankrupts nothing more than a mere
livelihood, and that makes no provision for "honourable
maintenance." It is enough to have vindicated Escobar from such an
accusation- it is more, indeed, than what I was in duty bound to do.
But you, fathers, have not done your duty. It still remains for you to
answer the passage of Escobar, whose decisions, by the way, have
this advantage, that, being entirely independent of the context and
condensed in little articles, they are not liable to your
distinctions. I quoted the whole of the passage, in which "bankrupts
are permitted to keep their goods, though unjustly acquired, to
provide an honourable maintenance for their families"- commenting on
which in my letters, I exclaim: "Indeed, father! by what strange
kind of charity would you have the ill-gotten property of a bankrupt
appropriated to his own use, instead of that of his lawful creditors?"
This is the question which must be answered; but it is one that
involves you in a sad dilemma, and from which you in vain seek to
escape by altering the state of the question, and quoting other
passages from Lessius, which have no connection with the subject. I
ask you, then: May this maxim of Escobar be followed by bankrupts with
a safe conscience, or no? And take care what you say. If you answer,
"No," what becomes of your doctor, and your doctrine of probability?
If you say, "Yes," I delate you to the Parliament.

In this predicament I must now leave you, fathers; for my limits
will not permit me to overtake your next accusation, which respects
homicide. This will serve for my next letter, and the rest will
follow.

In the meanwhile, I shall make no remarks on the advertisements
which you have tagged to the end of each of your charges, filled as
they are with scandalous falsehoods. I mean to answer all these in a
separate letter, in which I hope to show the weight due to your
calumnies. I am sorry, fathers, that you should have recourse to
such desperate resources. The abusive terms which you heap on me
will not clear up our disputes, nor will your manifold threats
hinder me from defending myself You think you have power and
impunity on your side; and I think I have truth and innocence on mine.
It is a strange and tedious war when violence attempts to vanquish
truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, and only serve
to give it fresh vigour. All the lights of truth cannot arrest
violence, and only serve to exasperate it. When force meets force, the
weaker must succumb to the stronger; when argument is opposed to
argument, the solid and the convincing triumphs over the empty and the
false; but violence and verity can make no impression on each other.
Let none suppose, however, that the two are, therefore, equal to each
other; for there is this vast difference between them, that violence
has only a certain course to run, limited by the appointment of
Heaven, which overrules its effects to the glory of the truth which it
assails; whereas verity endures forever and eventually triumphs over
its enemies, being eternal and almighty as God himself.