For who can
fail to admire this speech of Father Alby? He does not say that he
retracts, in consequence of having learnt that a change had taken
place in the faith and manners of M. Puys, but solely because,
having understood that he had no intention of attacking your
Society, there was nothing further to prevent him from regarding the
author as a good Catholic. He did not then believe him to be
actually a heretic! And yet, after having, contrary to his conviction,
accused him of this crime, he will not acknowledge he was in the
wrong, but has the hardihood to say that he considered the method he
adopted to be "such as he was permitted to employ!"
What can you possibly mean, fathers, by so publicly avowing the
fact that you measure the faith and the virtue of men only by the
sentiments they entertain towards your Society? Had you no
apprehension of making yourselves pass, by your own acknowledgement,
as a band of swindlers and slanderers? What, fathers! must the same
individual without undergoing any personal transformation, but
simply according as you judge him to have honoured or assailed your
community, be "pious" or "impious," "irreproachable" or
"excommunicated," "a pastor worthy of the Church," or "worthy of the
stake"; in short, "a Catholic" or "a heretic"? To attack your
Society and to be a heretic are, therefore, in your language,
convertible terms! An odd sort of heresy this, fathers! And so it
would appear that, when we see many good Catholics branded, in your
writings, by the name of heretia, it means nothing more than that
you think they attack you! It is well, fathers, that we understand
this strange dialect, according to which there can be no doubt that
I must be a great heretic.
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