But you have sinned no less flagrantly against
the rule which obliges us to speak of them with truth and
discretion. What is more common in your writings than calumny? Can
those of Father Brisacier be called sincere? Does he speak with
truth when he says that "the nuns of Port-Royal do not pray to the
saints, and have no images in their church?" Are not these most
outrageous falsehoods, when the contrary appears before the eyes of
all Paris? And can he be said to speak with discretion when he stabs
the fair reputation of these virgins, who lead a life so pure and
austere, representing them as "impenitent, unsacramentalists,
uncommunicants, foolish virgins, visionaries, Calagans, desperate
creatures, and anything you please," loading them with many other
slanders, which have justly incurred the censure of the late
Archbishop of Paris? Or when he calumniates priests of the most
irreproachable morals, by asserting "that they practise novelties in
confession, to entrap handsome innocent females, and that he would
be horrified to tell the abominable crimes which they commit." Is it
not a piece of intolerable assurance to advance slanders so black
and base, not merely without proof, but without the slightest
shadow, or the most distant semblance of truth? I shall not enlarge on
this topic, but defer it to a future occasion, for I have something
more to say to you about it; but what I have now produced is enough to
show that you have sinned at once against truth and discretion.
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