Seriously, fathers, it would be extremely easy to hold you up to
ridicule in this matter, and I am at a loss to know why you expose
yourselves to such treatment. To produce this effect, I have nothing
more to do than simply to quote Escobar, in his Practice of Simony
according to the Society of Jesus; "Is it simony when two Churchmen
become mutually pledged thus: Give me your vote for my election as
Provincial, and I shall give you mine for your election as prior? By
no means." Or take another: "It is not simony to get possession of a
benefice by promising a sum of money, when one has no intention of
actually paying the money; for this is merely making a show of simony,
and is as far from being real simony as counterfeit gold is from the
genuine." By this quirk of conscience, he has contrived means, in
the way of adding swindling to simony, for obtaining benefices without
simony and without money.
But I have no time to dwell longer on the subject, for I must
say a word or two in reply to your third accusation, which refers to
the subject of bankrupts. Nothing can be more gross than the manner in
which you have managed this charge. You rail at me as a libeller in
reference to a sentiment of Lessius, which I did not quote myself, but
took from a passage in Escobar; and, therefore, though it were true
that Lessius does not hold the opinion ascribed to him by Escobar,
what can be more unfair than to charge me with the
misrepresentation? When I quote Lessius or others of your authors
myself, I am quite prepared to answer for it; but, as Escobar has
collected the opinions of twenty-four of your writers, I beg to ask if
I am bound to guarantee anything beyond the correctness of my
citations from his book? Or if I must, in addition, answer for the
fidelity of all his quotations of which I may avail myself? This would
be hardly reasonable; and yet this is precisely the case in the
question before us.
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