" It is absolutely necessary to know
something of this before going any further; and, accordingly, the monk
judged it expedient to give me some instructions on the point,
nearly as follows:
"From what I have already stated," he observed, "you may judge
of the success with which our doctors have laboured to discover, in
their wisdom, that a great many things, formerly regarded as
forbidden, are innocent and allowable; but as there are some sins
for which one can find no excuse, and for which there is no remedy but
confession, it became necessary to alleviate, by the methods I am
now going to mention, the difficulties attending that practice.
Thus, having shown you, in our previous conversations, how we
relieve people from troublesome scruples of conscience by showing them
that what they believed to be sinful was indeed quite innocent, I
proceed now to illustrate our convenient plan for expiating what is
really sinful, which is effected by making confession as easy a
process as it was formerly a painful one."
"And how do you manage that, father?"
"Why," said he, "it is by those admirable subtleties which are
peculiar to our Company, and have been styled by our fathers in
Flanders, in The Image of the First Century, 'the pious finesse, the
holy artifice of devotion- piam et religiosam calliditatem, et
pietatis solertiam.' By the aid of these inventions, as they remark in
the same place, 'crimes may be expiated nowadays alacrius- with more
zeal and alacrity than they were committed in former days, and a great
many people may be washed from their stains almost as cleverly as they
contracted them- plurimi vix citius maculas contrahunt quam eluunt.
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