I put this
question to your doctors: When a person has given me a blow on the
cheek, ought I rather to submit to the injury than kill the
offender? or may I not kill the man in order to escape the affront?
Kill him by all means- it is quite lawful! exclaim, in one breath,
Lessius, Molina, Escobar, Reginald, Filiutius, Baldelle, and other
Jesuits. Is that the language of Jesus Christ? One question more:
Would I lose my honour by tolerating a box on the ear, without killing
the person that gave it? "Can there be a doubt," cries Escobar,
"that so long as a man suffers another to live who has given him a
buffet, that man remains without honour?" Yes, fathers, without that
honour which the devil transfuses, from his own proud spirit into that
of his proud children. This is the honour which has ever been the idol
of worldly-minded men. For the preservation of this false glory, of
which the god of this world is the appropriate dispenser, they
sacrifice their lives by yielding to the madness of duelling; their
honour, by exposing themselves to ignominious punishments; and their
salvation, by involving themselves in the peril of damnation- a
peril which, according to the canons of the Church, deprives them even
of Christian burial. We have reason to thank God, however, for
having enlightened the mind of our monarch with ideas much purer
than those of your theology. His edicts bearing so severely on this
subject, have not made duelling a crime- they only punish the crime
which is inseparable from duelling.
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