I am, &c.
LETTER XI
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS
August 18, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
I have seen the letters which you are circulating in opposition to
those which I wrote to one of my friends on your morality; and I
perceive that one of the principal points of your defence is that I
have not spoken of your maxims with sufficient seriousness. This
charge you repeat in all your productions, and carry it so far as to
allege, that I have been "guilty of turning sacred things into
ridicule."
Such a charge, fathers, is no less surprising than it is
unfounded. Where do you find that I have turned sacred things into
ridicule? You specify "the Mohatra contract, and the story of John
d'Alba." But are these what you call "sacred things?" Does it really
appear to you that the Mohatra is something so venerable that it would
be blasphemy not to speak of it with respect? And the lessons of
Father Bauny on larceny, which led John d'Alba to practise it at
your expense, are they so sacred as to entitle you to stigmatize all
who laugh at them as profane people?
What, fathers! must the vagaries of your doctors pass for the
verities of the Christian faith, and no man be allowed to ridicule
Escobar, or the fantastical and unchristian dogmas of your authors,
without being stigmatized as jesting at religion? Is it possible you
can have ventured to reiterate so often an idea so utterly
unreasonable? Have you no fears that, in blaming me for laughing at
your absurdities, you may only afford me fresh subject of merriment;
that you may make the charge recoil on yourselves, by showing that I
have really selected nothing from your writings as the matter of
raillery but what was truly ridiculous; and that thus, in making a
jest of your morality, I have been as far from jeering at holy things,
as the doctrine of your casuists is far from being the holy doctrine
of the Gospel?
Indeed, reverend sirs, there is a vast difference between laughing
at religion and laughing at those who profane it by their
extravagant opinions.
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