第93章
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS December 4, 1656 REVEREND FATHERS, I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies, and shall begin with those contained in your advertisements, which remain to be noticed.As all your other writings, however, are equally well stocked with slander, they will furnish me with abundant materials for entertaining you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient.In the first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres, Ibeg leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously wrested the meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one of his letters which, being capable of a good sense, ought, according to the spirit of the Gospel, to have been taken in good part, and could only be taken otherwise according to the spirit of your Society.For example, when he says to a friend, "Give yourself no concern about your nephew; I will furnish him with what he requires from the money that lies in my hands," what reason have you to interpret this to mean that he would take that money without restoring it, and not that he merely advanced it with the purpose of replacing it?
And how extremely imprudent was it for you to furnish a refutation of your own lie, by printing the other letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly show that, in point of fact, it was merely advanced money, which he was bound to refund.This appears, to your confusion, from the following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of July 30, 1619: "Be not uneasy about the money advanced; he shall want for nothing so long as he is here";and likewise from another, dated January 6, 1620, where he says: "You are in too great haste; when the account shall become due, I have no fear but that the little credit which I have in this place will bring me as much money as I require." If you are convicted slanderers on this subject, you are no less so in regard to the ridiculous story about the charity-box of St.Merri.What advantage, pray, can you hope to derive from the accusation which one of your worthy friends has trumped up against that ecclesiastic?
Are we to conclude that a man is guilty, because he is accused? No, fathers.
Men of piety, like him, may expect to be perpetually accused, so long as the world contains calumniators like you.We must judge of him, therefore, not from the accusation, but from the sentence; and the sentence pronounced on the case (February 23, 1656) justifies him completely.Moreover, the person who had the temerity to involve himself in that iniquitous process, was disavowed by his colleagues, and himself compelled to retract his charge.
And as to what you allege, in the same place, about "that famous director, who pocketed at once nine hundred thousand livres," I need only refer you to Messieurs the cures of St.Roch and St.Paul, who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, to his perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your inexcusable malice in that piece of imposition.Enough, however, for such paltry falsities.These are but the first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master-strokes of your "grand professed."To these do I now come, fathers; I come to a calumny which is certainly one of the basest that ever issued from the spirit of your Society.I refer to the insufferable audacity with which you have imputed to holy nuns, and to their directors, the charge of "disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation and the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist." Here, fathers, is a slander worthy of yourselves.Here is a crime which God alone is capable of punishing, as you alone were capable of committing it.To endure it with patience would require an humility as great as that of these calumniated ladies; to give it credit would demand a degree of wickedness equal to that of their wretched defamers.I propose not, therefore, to vindicate them; they are beyond suspicion.Had they stood in need of defence, they might have commanded abler advocates than me.My object in what I say here is to show, not their innocence, but your malignity.I merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves, and to let the whole world understand that, after this, there is nothing of which you are not capable.You will not fail, I am certain, notwithstanding all this, to say that I belong to Port-Royal;for this is the first thing you say to every one who combats your errors:
as if it were only at Port-Royal that persons could be found possessed of sufficient zeal to defend, against your attacks, the purity of Christian morality.I know, fathers, the work of the pious recluses who have retired to that monastery, and how much the Church is indebted to their truly solid and edifying labours.I know the excellence of their piety and their learning.
For, though I have never had the honour to belong to their establishment, as you, without knowing who or what I am, would fain have it believed, nevertheless, I do know some of them, and honour the virtue of them all.