Letter XIII

TO THE REVEREND FATHERS OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS

September 30, 1656

REVEREND FATHERS,
I have just seen your last production, in which you have continued
your list of Impostures up to the twentieth and intimate that you mean
to conclude with this the first part of your accusations against me,
and to proceed to the second, in which you are to adopt a new mode
of defence, by showing that there are other casuists besides those
of your Society who are as lax as yourselves. I now see the precise
number of charges to which I have to reply; and as the fourth, to
which we have now come, relates to homicide, it may be proper, in
answering it, to include the 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and
18th, which refer to the same subject.

In the present letter, therefore, my object shall be to
vindicate the correctness of my quotations from the charges of falsity
which you bring against me. But as you have ventured, in your
pamphlets, to assert that "the sentiments of your authors on murder
are agreeable to the decisions of popes and ecclesiastical laws,"
you will compel me, in my next letter, to confute a statement at
once so unfounded and so injurious to the Church. It is of some
importance to show that she is innocent of your corruptions, in
order that heretics may be prevented from taking advantage of your
aberrations, to draw conclusions tending to her dishonour. And thus,
viewing on the one hand your pernicious maxims, and on the other the
canons of the Church which have uniformly condemned them, people
will see, at one glance, what they should shun and what they should
follow.

Your fourth charge turns on a maxim relating to murder, which
you say I have falsely ascribed to Lessius. It is as follows: "That if
a man has received a buffet, he may immediately pursue his enemy,
and even return the blow with the sword, not to avenge himself, but to
retrieve his honour." This, you say, is the opinion of the casuist
Victoria. But this is nothing to the point. There is no
inconsistency in saying that it is at once the opinion of Victoria and
of Lessius; for Lessius himself says that it is also held by Navarre
and Henriquez, who teach identically the same doctrine. The only
question, then, is if Lessius holds this view as well as his brother
casuists. You maintain "that Lessius quotes this opinion solely for
the purpose of refuting it, and that I, therefore, attribute to him
a sentiment which he produces only to overthrow- the basest and most
disgraceful act of which a writer can be guilty." Now I maintain,
fathers, that he quotes the opinion solely for the purpose of
supporting it. Here is a question of fact, which it will be very
easy to settle. Let us see, then, how you prove your allegation, and
you will see afterwards how I prove mine.

To show that Lessius is not of that opinion, you tell us that he
condemns the practice of it; and in proof of this, you quote one
passage of his (l. 2, c. 9, n. 92), in which he says, in so many
words, "I condemn the practice of it." I grant that, on looking for
these words, at number 92, to which you refer, they will be found
there. But what will people say, fathers, when they discover, at the
same time, that he is treating in that place of a question totally
different from that of which we are speaking, and that the opinion
of which he there says that he condemns the practice has no connection
with that now in dispute, but is quite distinct? And yet to be
convinced that this is the fact, we have only to open the book to
which you refer, and there we find the whole subject in its connection
as follows: At number 79 he treats the question, "If it is lawful to
kill for a buffet?" and at number 80 he finishes this matter without a
single word of condemnation. Having disposed of this question, he
opens a new one at 81, namely, "If it is lawful to kill for slanders?"
and it is when speaking of this question that he employs the words you
have quoted: "I condemn the practice of it."

Is it not shameful, fathers, that you should venture to produce
these words to make it be believed that Lessius condemns the opinion
that it is lawful to kill for a buffet? and that, on the ground of
this single proof, you should chuckle over it, as you have done, by
saying: "Many persons of honour in Paris have already discovered
this notorious falsehood by consulting Lessius, and have thus
ascertained the degree of credit due to that slanderer?" Indeed! and
is it thus that you abuse the confidence which those persons of honour
repose in you? To show them that Lessius does not hold a certain
opinion, you open the book to them at a place where he is condemning
another opinion; and these persons, not having begun to mistrust
your good faith and never thinking of examining whether the author
speaks in that place of the subject in dispute, you impose on their
credulity. I make no doubt, fathers, that, to shelter yourselves
from the guilt of such a scandalous lie, you had recourse to your
doctrine of equivocations; and that, having read the passage in a loud
voice, you would say, in a lower key, that the author was speaking
there of something else. But I am not so sure whether this saving
clause, which is quite enough to satisfy your consciences, will be a
very satisfactory answer to the just complaint of those "honourable
persons," when they shall discover that you have hoodwinked them in
this style.

Take care, then, fathers, to prevent them by all means from seeing
my letters; for this is the only method now left to you to preserve
your credit for a short time longer. This is not the way in which I
deal with your writings: I send them to all my friends; I wish
everybody to see them. And I verily believe that both of us are in the
right for our own interests; for, after having published with such
parade this fourth Imposture, were it once discovered that you have
made it up by foisting in one passage for another, you would be
instantly denounced. It will be easily seen that if you could have
found what you wanted in the passage where Lessius treated of this
matter, you would not have searched for it elsewhere, and that you had
recourse to such a trick only because you could find nothing in that
passage favourable to your purpose.

You would have us believe that we may find in Lessius what you
assert, "that he does not allow that this opinion (that a man may be
lawfully killed for a buffet) is probable in theory"; whereas
Lessius distinctly declares, at number 80: "This opinion, that a man
may kill for a buffet, is probable in theory." Is not this, word for
word, the reverse of your assertion? And can we sufficiently admire
the hardihood with which you have advanced, in set phrase, the very
reverse of a matter of fact! To your conclusion, from a fabricated
passage, that Lessius was not of that opinion, we have only to place
Lessius himself, who, in the genuine passage, declares that he is of
that opinion.

Again, you would have Lessius to say "that he condemns the
practice of it"; and, as I have just observed, there is not in the
original a single word of condemnation; all that he says is: "It
appears that it ought not to be easily permitted in practice- In praxi
non videtur facile permittenda." Is that, fathers, the language of a
man who condemns a maxim? Would you say that adultery and incest ought
not to be easily permitted in practice? Must we not, on the
contrary, conclude that as Lessius says no more than that the practice
ought not to be easily permitted, his opinion is that it may be
permitted sometimes, though rarely? And, as if he had been anxious
to apprise everybody when it might be permitted, and to relieve
those who have received affronts from being troubled with unreasonable
scruples from not knowing on what occasions they might lawfully kill
in practice, he has been at pains to inform them what they ought to
avoid in order to practise the doctrine with a safe conscience. Mark
his words: "It seems," says he, "that it ought not to be easily
permitted, because of the danger that persons may act in this matter
out of hatred or revenge, or with excess, or that this may occasion
too many murders." From this it appears that murder is freely
permitted by Lessius, if one avoids the inconveniences referred to- in
other words, if one can act without hatred or revenge and in
circumstances that may not open the door to a great many murders. To
illustrate the matter, I may give you an example of recent occurrence-
the case of the buffet of Compiegne. You will grant that the person
who received the blow on that occasion has shown, by the way in
which he has acted, that he was sufficiently master of the passions of
hatred and revenge. It only remained for him, therefore, to see that
he did not give occasion to too many murders; and you need hardly be
told, fathers, it is such a rare spectacle to find Jesuits bestowing
buffets on the officers of the royal household that he had no great
reason to fear that a murder committed on this occasion would be
likely to draw many others in its train. You cannot, accordingly, deny
that the Jesuit who figured on that occasion was killable with a
safe conscience, and that the offended party might have converted
him into a practical illustration of the doctrine of Lessius. And very
likely, fathers, this might have been the result had he been
educated in your school, and learnt from Escobar that the man who
has received a buffet is held to be disgraced until he has taken the
life of him who insulted him. But there is ground to believe that
the very different instructions which he received from a curate, who
is no great favourite of yours, have contributed not a little in
this case to save the life of a Jesuit.

Tell us no more, then, of inconveniences which may, in many
instances, be so easily got over, and in the absence of which,
according to Lessius, murder is permissible even in practice. This
is frankly avowed by your authors, as quoted by Escobar, in his
Practice of Homicide, according to your Society. "Is it allowable,"
asks this casuist, "to kill him who has given me a buffet? Lessius
says it is permissible in speculation, though not to be followed in
practice- non consulendum in praxi- on account of the risk of
hatred, or of murders prejudicial to the State. Others, however,
have judged that, by avoiding these inconveniences, this is
permissible and safe in practice- in praxi probabilem et tutam
judicarunt Henriquez," &c. See how your opinions mount up, by little
and little, to the climax of probabilism! The present one you have
at last elevated to this position, by permitting murder without any
distinction between speculation and practice, in the following
terms: "It is lawful, when one has received a buffet, to return the
blow immediately with the sword, not to avenge one's self, but to
preserve one's honour." Such is the decision of your fathers of Caen
in 1644, embodied in their publications produced by the university
before parliament, when they presented their third remonstrance
against your doctrine of homicide, as shown in the book then emitted
by them, on page 339.

Mark, then, fathers, that your own authors have themselves
demolished this absurd distinction between speculative and practical
murder- a distinction which the university treated with ridicule,
and the invention of which is a secret of your policy, which it may
now be worth while to explain. The knowledge of it, besides being
necessary to the right understanding of your 15th, 16th, 17th, and
18th charges, is well calculated, in general, to open up, by little
and little, the principles of that mysterious policy.

In attempting, as you have done, to decide cases of conscience
in the most agreeable and accommodating manner, while you met with
some questions in which religion alone was concerned- such as those of
contrition, penance, love to God, and others only affecting the
inner court of conscience- you encountered another class of cases in
which civil society was interested as well as religion- such as
those relating to usury, bankruptcy, homicide, and the like. And it is
truly distressing to all that love the Church to observe that, in a
vast number of instances, in which you had only Religion to contend
with, you have violated her laws without reservation, without
distinction, and without compunction; because you knew that it is
not here that God visibly administers his justice. But in those
cases in which the State is interested as well as Religion, your
apprehension of man's justice has induced you to divide your decisions
into two shares. To the first of these you give the name of
speculation; under which category crimes, considered in themselves,
without regard to society, but merely to the law of God, you have
permitted, without the least scruple, and in the way of trampling on
the divine law which condemns them. The second you rank under the
denomination of practice, and here, considering the injury which may
be done to society, and the presence of magistrates who look after the
public peace, you take care, in order to keep yourselves on the safe
side of the law, not to approve always in practice the murders and
other crimes which you have sanctioned in speculation. Thus, for
example, on the question, "If it be lawful to kill for slanders?" your
authors, Filiutius, Reginald, and others, reply: "This is permitted in
speculation- ex probabile opinione licet; but is not to be approved in
practice, on account of the great number of murders which might ensue,
and which might injure the State, if all slanderers were to be killed,
and also because one might be punished in a court of justice for
having killed another for that matter." Such is the style in which
your opinions begin to develop themselves, under the shelter of this
distinction, in virtue of which, without doing any sensible injury
to society, you only ruin religion. In acting thus, you consider
yourselves quite safe. You suppose that, on the one hand, the
influence you have in the Church will effectually shield from
punishment your assaults on truth; and that, on the other, the
precautions you have taken against too easily reducing your
permissions to practice will save you on the part of the civil powers,
who, not being judges in cases of conscience, are properly concerned
only with the outward practice. Thus an opinion which would be
condemned under the name of practice, comes out quite safe under the
name of speculation. But this basis once established, it is not
difficult to erect on it the rest of your maxims. There is an infinite
distance between God's prohibition of murder and your speculative
permission of the crime; but between that permission and the
practice the distance is very small indeed. It only remains to show
that what is allowable in speculation is also so in practice; and
there can be no want of reasons for this. You have contrived to find
them in far more difficult cases. Would you like to see, fathers,
how this may be managed? I refer you to the reasoning of Escobar,
who has distinctly decided the point in the first six volumes of his
grand Moral Theology, of which I have already spoken- a work in
which he shows quite another spirit from that which appears in his
former compilation from your four-and-twenty elders. At that time he
thought that there might be opinions probable in speculation, which
might not be safe in practice; but he has now come to form an opposite
judgment, and has, in this, his latest work, confirmed it. Such is the
wonderful growth attained by the doctrine of probability in general,
as well as by every probable opinion in particular, in the course of
time. Attend, then, to what he says: "I cannot see how it can be
that an action which seems allowable in speculation should not be so
likewise in practice; because what may be done in practice depends
on what is found to be lawful in speculation, and the things differ
from each other only as cause and effect. Speculation is that which
determines to action. Whence it follows that opinions probable in
speculation may be followed with a safe conscience in practice, and
that even with more safety than those which have not been so well
examined as matters of speculation."

Verily, fathers, your friend Escobar reasons uncommonly well
sometimes; and, in point of fact, there is such a close connection
between speculation and practice, that when the former has once
taken root, you have no difficulty in permitting the latter, without
any disguise. A good illustration of this we have in the permission
"to kill for a buffet," which, from being a point of simple
speculation, was boldly raised by Lessius into a practice "which ought
not easily to be allowed"; from that promoted by Escobar to the
character of "an easy practice"; and from thence elevated by your
fathers of Caen, as we have seen, without any distinction between
theory and practice, into a full permission. Thus you bring your
opinions to their full growth very gradually. Were they presented
all at once in their finished extravagance, they would beget horror;
but this slow imperceptible progress gradually habituates men to the
sight of them and hides their offensiveness. And in this way the
permission to murder, in itself so odious both to Church and State,
creeps first into the Church, and then from the Church into the State.

A similar success has attended the opinion of "killing for
slander," which has now reached the climax of a permission without any
distinction. I should not have stopped to quote my authorities on this
point from your writings, had it not been necessary in order to put
down the effrontery with which you have asserted, twice over, in
your fifteenth Imposture, "that there never was a Jesuit who permitted
killing for slander." Before making this statement, fathers, you
should have taken care to prevent it from coming under my notice,
seeing that it is so easy for me to answer it. For, not to mention
that your fathers Reginald, Filiutius, and others, have permitted it
in speculation, as I have already shown, and that the principle laid
down by Escobar leads us safely on to the practice, I have to tell you
that you have authors who have permitted it in so many words, and
among others Father Hereau in his public lectures, on the conclusion
of which the king put him under arrest in your house, for having
taught, among other errors, that when a person who has slandered us in
the presence of men of honour, continues to do so after being warned
to desist, it is allowable to kill him, not publicly, indeed, for fear
of scandal, but in a private way- sed clam.

I have had occasion already to mention Father Lamy, and you do not
need to be informed that his doctrine on this subject was censured
in 1649 by the University of Louvain. And yet two months have not
elapsed since your Father Des Bois maintained this very censured
doctrine of Father Lamy and taught that "it was allowable for a monk
to defend the honour which he acquired by his virtue, even by
killing the person who assails his reputation- etiam cum morte
invasoris"; which has raised such a scandal in that town that the
whole of the cures united to impose silence on him, and to oblige him,
by a canonical process, to retract his doctrine. The case is now
pending in the Episcopal court.

What say you now, fathers? Why attempt, after that, to maintain
that "no Jesuit ever held that it was lawful to kill for slander?"
Is anything more necessary to convince you of this than the very
opinions of your fathers which you quote, since they do not condemn
murder in speculation, but only in practice, and that, too, "on
account of the injury that might thereby accrue to the State"? And
here I would just beg to ask whether the whole matter in dispute
between us is not simply and solely to ascertain if you have or have
not subverted the law of God which condemns murder? The point in
question is, not whether you have injured the commonwealth, but
whether you have injured religion. What purpose, then, can it serve,
in a dispute of this kind, to show that you have spared the State,
when you make it apparent, at the same time, that you have destroyed
the faith? Is this not evident from your saying that the meaning of
Reginald, on the question of killing for slanders, is, "that a private
individual has a right to employ that mode of defence, viewing it
simply in itself"? I desire nothing beyond this concession to
confute you. "A private individual," you say, "has a right to employ
that mode of defence" (that is, killing for slanders), "viewing the
thing in itself'; and, consequently, fathers, the law of God, which
forbids us to kill, is nullified by that decision.

It serves no purpose to add, as you have done, "that such a mode
is unlawful and criminal, even according to the law of God, on account
of the murders and disorders which would follow in society, because
the law of God obliges us to have regard to the good of society." This
is to evade the question: for there are two laws to be observed- one
forbidding us to kill, and another forbidding us to harm society.
Reginald has not, perhaps, broken the law which forbids us to do
harm to society; but he has most certainly violated that which forbids
us to kill. Now this is the only point with which we have to do. I
might have shown, besides, that your other writers, who have permitted
these murders in practice, have subverted the one law as well as the
other. But, to proceed, we have seen that you sometimes forbid doing
harm to the State; and you allege that your design in that is to
fulfil the law of God, which obliges us to consult the interests of
society. That may be true, though it is far from being certain, as you
might do the same thing purely from fear of the civil magistrate. With
your permission, then, we shall scrutinize the real secret of this
movement.

Is it not certain, fathers, that if you had really any regard to
God, and if the observance of his law had been the prime and principal
object in your thoughts, this respect would have invariably
predominated in all your leading decisions and would have engaged
you at all times on the side of religion? But, if it turns out, on the
contrary, that you violate, in innumerable instances, the most
sacred commands that God has laid upon men, and that, as in the
instances before us, you annihilate the law of God, which forbids
these actions as criminal in themselves, and that you only scruple
to approve of them in practice, from bodily fear of the civil
magistrate, do you not afford us ground to conclude that you have no
respect to God in your apprehensions, and that if you yield an
apparent obedience to his law, in so far as regards the obligation
to do no harm to the State, this is not done out of any regard to
the law itself, but to compass your own ends, as has ever been the way
with politicians of no religion?

What, fathers! will you tell us that, looking simply to the law of
God, which says, "Thou shalt not kill," we have a right to kill for
slanders? And after having thus trampled on the eternal law of God, do
you imagine that you atone for the scandal you have caused, and can
persuade us of your reverence for Him, by adding that you prohibit the
practice for State reasons and from dread of the civil arm? Is not
this, on the contrary, to raise a fresh scandal? I mean not by the
respect which you testify for the magistrate; that is not my charge
against you, and it is ridiculous in you to banter, as you have
done, on this matter. I blame you, not for fearing the magistrate, but
for fearing none but the magistrate. And I blame you for this, because
it is making God less the enemy of vice than man. Had you said that to
kill for slander was allowable according to men, but not according
to God, that might have been something more endurable; but when you
maintain that what is too criminal to be tolerated among men may yet
be innocent and right in the eyes of that Being who is righteousness
itself, what is this but to declare before the whole world, by a
subversion of principle as shocking in itself as it is alien to the
spirit of the saints, that while you can be braggarts before God,
you are cowards before men?

Had you really been anxious to condemn these homicides, you
would have allowed the commandment of God which forbids them to remain
intact; and had you dared at once to permit them, you would have
permitted them openly, in spite of the laws of God and men. But,
your object being to permit them imperceptibly, and to cheat the
magistrate, who watches over the public safety, you have gone craftily
to work. You separate your maxims into two portions. On the one
side, you hold out "that it is lawful in speculation to kill a man for
slander"; and nobody thinks of hindering you from taking a speculative
view of matters. On the other side, you come out with this detached
axiom, "that what is permitted in speculation is also permissible in
practice"; and what concern does society seem to have in this
general and metaphysical-looking proposition? And thus these two
principles, so little suspected, being embraced in their separate
form, the vigilance of the magistrate is eluded; while it is only
necessary to combine the two together to draw from them the conclusion
which you aim at- namely, that it is lawful in practice to put a man
to death for a simple slander.

It is, indeed, fathers, one of the most subtle tricks of your
policy to scatter through your publications the maxims which you
club together in your decisions. It is partly in this way that you
establish your doctrine of probabilities, which I have frequently
had occasion to explain. That general principle once established,
you advance propositions harmless enough when viewed apart, but which,
when taken in connection with that pernicious dogma, become positively
horrible. An example of this, which demands an answer, may be found in
the 11th page of your Impostures, where you allege that "several
famous theologians have decided that it is lawful to kill a man for
a box on the ear." Now, it is certain that, if that had been said by a
person who did not hold probabilism, there would be nothing to find
fault with in it; it would in this case amount to no more than a
harmless statement, and nothing could be elicited from it. But you,
fathers, and all who hold that dangerous tenet, "that whatever has
been approved by celebrated authors is probable and safe in
conscience," when you add to this "that several celebrated authors are
of opinion that it is lawful to kill a man for a box on the ear," what
is this but to put a dagger into the hand of all Christians, for the
purpose of plunging it into the heart of the first person that insults
them, and to assure them that, having the judgement of so many grave
authors on their side, they may do so with a perfectly safe
conscience?

What monstrous species of language is this, which, in announcing
that certain authors hold a detestable opinion, is at the same time
giving a decision in favour of that opinion- which solemnly teaches
whatever it simply tells! We have learnt, fathers, to understand
this peculiar dialect of the Jesuitical school; and it is
astonishing that you have the hardihood to speak it out so freely, for
it betrays your sentiments somewhat too broadly. It convicts you of
permitting murder for a buffet, as often as you repeat that many
celebrated authors have maintained that opinion.

This charge, fathers, you will never be able to repel; nor will
you be much helped out by those passages from Vasquez and Suarez
that you adduce against me, in which they condemn the murders which
their associates have approved. These testimonies, disjoined from
the rest of your doctrine, may hoodwink those who know little about
it; but we, who know better, put your principles and maxims
together. You say, then, that Vasquez condemns murders; but what say
you on the other side of the question, my reverend fathers? Why, "that
the probability of one sentiment does not hinder the probability of
the opposite sentiment; and that it is warrantable to follow the
less probable and less safe opinion, giving up the more probable and
more safe one." What follows from all this taken in connection, but
that we have perfect freedom of conscience to adopt any one of these
conflicting judgements which pleases us best? And what becomes of
all the effect which you fondly anticipate from your quotations? It
evaporates in smoke, for we have no more to do than to conjoin for
your condemnation the maxims which you have disjoined for your
exculpation. Why, then, produce those passages of your authors which I
have not quoted, to qualify those which I have quoted, as if the one
could excuse the other? What right does that give you to call me an
"impostor"? Have I said that all your fathers are implicated in the
same corruptions? Have I not, on the contrary, been at pains to show
that your interest lay in having them of all different minds, in order
to suit all your purposes? Do you wish to kill your man?- here is
Lessius for you. Are you inclined to spare him?- here is Vasquez.
Nobody need go away in ill humour- nobody without the authority of a
grave doctor. Lessius will talk to you like a Heathen on homicide, and
like a Christian, it may be, on charity. Vasquez, again, will
descant like a Heathen on charity, and like a Christian on homicide.
But by means of probabilism, which is held both by Vasquez and
Lessius, and which renders all your opinions common property, they
will lend their opinions to one another, and each will be held bound
to absolve those who have acted according to opinions which each of
them has condemned. It is this very variety, then, that confounds you.
Uniformity, even in evil, would be better than this. Nothing is more
contrary to the orders of St. Ignatius and the first generals of
your Society than this confused medley of all sorts of opinions,
good and bad. I may, perhaps, enter on this topic at some future
period; and it will astonish many to see how far you have
degenerated from the original spirit of your institution, and that
your own generals have foreseen that the corruption of your doctrine
on morals might prove fatal, not only to your Society, but to the
Church universal.

Meanwhile, I repeat that you can derive no advantage from the
doctrine of Vasquez. It would be strange, indeed, if, out of all the
that have written on morals, one or two could not be found who may
have hit upon a truth which has been confessed by all Christians.
There is no glory in maintaining the truth, according to the Gospel,
that it is unlawful to kill a man for smiting us on the face; but it
is foul shame to deny it. So far, indeed, from justifying you, nothing
tells more fatally against you than the fact that, having doctors
among you who have told you the truth, you abide not in the truth, but
love the darkness rather than the light. You have been taught by
Vasquez that it is a Heathen, and not a Christian, opinion to hold
that we may knock down a man for a blow on the cheek; and that it is
subversive both of the Gospel and of the Decalogue to say that we
may kill for such a matter. The most profligate of men will
acknowledge as much. And yet you have allowed Lessius, Escobar, and
others, to decide, in the face of these well-known truths, and in
spite of all the laws of God against manslaughter, that it is quite
allowable to kill a man for a buffet!

What purpose, then, can it serve to set this passage of Vasquez
over against the sentiment of Lessius, unless you mean to show that,
in the opinion of Vasquez, Lessius is a "Heathen" and a
"profligate"? and that, fathers, is more than I durst have said
myself. What else can be deduced from it than that Lessius "subverts
both the Gospel and the Decalogue"; that, at the last day, Vasquez
will condemn Lessius on this point, as Lessius will condemn Vasquez on
another; and that all your fathers will rise up in judgement one
against another, mutually condemning each other for their sad outrages
on the law of Jesus Christ?

To this conclusion, then, reverend fathers, must we come at
length, that, as your probabilism renders the good opinions of some of
your authors useless to the Church, and useful only to your policy,
they merely serve to betray, by their contrariety, the duplicity of
your hearts. This you have completely unfolded, by telling us, on
the one hand, that Vasquez and Suarez are against homicide, and on the
other hand, that many celebrated authors are for homicide; thus
presenting two roads to our choice and destroying the simplicity of
the Spirit of God, who denounces his anathema on the deceitful and the
double-hearted: "Voe duplici corde, et ingredienti duabus viis!- Woe
be to the double hearts, and the sinner that goeth two ways!"