If these persons were in
danger of being assassinated, pray, would they be offended at one
advertising them of the stratagem that had been laid for them; and
instead of turning out of their way to avoid it, would they trifle
away their time in whining about the little charity manifested in
discovering to them the criminal design of the assassins? Do they
get waspish when one tells them not to eat such an article of food,
because it is poisoned? or not to enter such a city, because it has
the plague?
Whence comes it, then, that the same persons who set down a man as
wanting in charity, for exposing maxims hurtful to religion, would, on
the contrary, think him equally deficient in that grace were he not to
disclose matters hurtful to health and life, unless it be from this,
that their fondness for life induces them to take in good part every
hint that contributes to its preservation, while their indifference to
truth leads them, not only to take no share in its defence, but even
to view with pain the efforts made for the extirpation of falsehood?
Let them seriously ponder, as in the sight of God, how shameful,
and how prejudicial to the Church, is the morality which your casuists
are in the habit of propagating; the scandalous and unmeasured license
which they are introducing into public manners; the obstinate and
violent hardihood with which you support them. And if they do not
think it full time to rise against such disorders, their blindness
is as much to be pitied as yours, fathers; and you and they have equal
reason to dread that saying of St.
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