I have rather indicated the wounds that might be given
you than inflicted any. If the reader has met with passages which have
excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects
themselves. There are many things which deserve to be held up in
this way to ridicule and mockery, lest, by a serious refutation, we
should attach a weight to them which they do not deserve. Nothing is
more due to vanity than laughter; and it is the Truth properly that
has a right to laugh, because she is cheerful, and to make sport of
her enemies, because she is sure of the victory. Care must be taken,
indeed, that the raillery is not too low, and unworthy of the truth;
but, keeping this in view, when ridicule may be employed with
effect, it is a duty to avail ourselves of it." Do you not think
fathers, that this passage is singularly applicable to our subject?
The letters which I have hitherto written are "merely a little sport
before a real combat." As yet, I have been only playing with the foils
and "rather indicating the wounds that might be given you than
inflicting any." I have merely exposed your passages to the light,
without making scarcely a reflection on them. "If the reader has met
with any that have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the
subjects themselves." And, indeed, what is more fitted to raise a
laugh than to see a matter so grave as that of Christian morality
decked out with fancies so grotesque as those in which you have
exhibited it? One is apt to form such high anticipations of these
maxims, from being told that "Jesus Christ himself has revealed them
to the fathers of the Society," that when one discovers among them
such absurdities as "that a priest, receiving money to say a mass, may
take additional sums from other persons by giving up to them his own
share in the sacrifice"; "that a monk is not to be excommunicated
for putting off his habit, provided it is to dance, swindle, or go
incognito into infamous houses"; and "that the duty of hearing mass
may be fulfilled by listening to four quarters of a mass at once
from different priests"- when, I say, one listens to such decisions as
these, the surprise is such that it is impossible to refrain from
laughing; for nothing is more calculated to produce that emotion
than a startling contrast between the thing looked for and the thing
looked at.
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