第101章

And the authors of a defamatory libel, who fail to prove what they have advanced, are condemned by Pope Adrian to be whipped,- yes, reverend fathers, flagellentur is the word.So strong has been the repugnance of the Church at all times to the errors of your Society- a Society so thoroughly depraved as to invent excuses for the grossest of crimes, such as calumny, chiefly that it may enjoy the greater freedom in perpetrating them itself.There can be no doubt, fathers, that you would be capable of producing abundance of mischief in this way, had God not permitted you to furnish with your own hands the means of preventing the evil, and of rendering your slanders perfectly innocuous; for, to deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough to publish the strange maxim that it is no crime to calumniate.

Calumny is nothing, if not associated with a high reputation for honesty.

The defamer can make no impression, unless he has the character of one that abhors defamation as a crime of which he is incapable.And thus, fathers, you are betrayed by your own principle.You establish the doctrine to secure yourselves a safe conscience, that you might slander without risk of damnation, and be ranked with those "pious and holy calumniators" of whom St.Athanasius speaks.To save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim which promises you this security on the faith of your doctors; but this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to their idea, against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives you of all the advantage you may have expected to reap from it in the present; so that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have lost the benefit of calumny.Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so completely does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic malignity.You might have slandered, therefore, much more advantageously for yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St.Paul, that evil speakers are not worthy to see God; for in this case, though you would indeed have been condemning yourselves, your slanders would at least have stood a better chance of being believed.But, by maintaining, as you have done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime, your slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into the bargain; for two things are certain, fathers:

first, That it will never be in the power of your grave doctors to annihilate the justice of God; and, secondly, That you could not give more certain evidence that you are not of the Truth than by your resorting to falsehood.