I can easily believe that a man
may be damned for not having good thoughts; but it never would have
entered my head to imagine that any man could be subjected to that
doom for not believing that all mankind must have good thoughts!
But, father, I hold myself bound in conscience to disabuse you and
to inform you that there are thousands of people who have no such
desires- who sin without regret- who sin with delight- who make a
boast of sinning. And who ought to know better about these things than
yourself.? You cannot have failed to have confessed some of those to
whom I allude; for it is among persons of high rank that they are most
generally to be met with. But mark, father, the dangerous consequences
of your maxim. Do you not perceive what effect it may have on those
libertines who like nothing better than to find out matter of doubt in
religion? What a handle do you give them, when you assure them, as
an article of faith, that, on every occasion when they commit a sin,
they feel an inward presentiment of the evil and a desire to avoid it?
Is it not obvious that, feeling convinced by their own experience of
the falsity of your doctrine on this point, which you say is a
matter of faith, they will extend the inference drawn from this to all
the other points? They will argue that, since you are not
trustworthy in one article, you are to be suspected in them all; and
thus you shut them up to conclude either that religion is false or
that you must know very little about it.
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