Besides, Valentia, in the place
quoted, when treating the question- if it be sinful to give a
spiritual good for a temporal, the latter being the main
consideration- and after producing the reasons given for the
affirmative, adds, "Sed hoc non videtur mihi satis certum- But this
does not appear to my mind sufficiently certain."
Since that time, however, your father, Erade Bille, professor of
cases of conscience at Caen, has decided that there is no sin at all
in the case supposed; for probable opinions, you know, are always in
the way of advancing to maturity. This opinion he maintains in his
writings of 1644, against which M. Dupre, doctor and professor at
Caen, delivered that excellent oration, since printed and well
known. For though this Erade Bille confesses that Valentia's doctrine,
adopted by Father Milhard and condemned by the Sorbonne, "is
contrary to the common opinion, suspected of simony, and punishable at
law when discovered in practice," he does not scruple to say that it
is a probable opinion, and consequently sure in point of conscience,
and that there is neither simony nor sin in it. "It is a probable
opinion, he says, "taught by many Catholic doctors, that there is
neither any simony nor any sin in giving money, or any other
temporal thing, for a benefice, either in the way of
acknowledgement, or as a motive, without which it would not be
given, provided it is not given as a price equal to the benefice.
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