But this does not complete the sum of
your accomplishments in the art of self-defence. To render your
opponents odious, you have had recourse to the forging of documents,
such as that Letter of a Minister to M. Arnauld, which you
circulated through all Paris, to induce the belief that the work on
Frequent Communion, which had been approved by so many bishops and
doctors, but which, to say the truth, was rather against you, had been
concocted through secret intelligence with the ministers of Charenton.
At other times, you attribute to your adversaries writings full of
impiety, such as the Circular Letter of the Jansenists, the absurd
style of which renders the fraud too gross to be swallowed, and
palpably betrays the malice of your Father Meynier, who has the
impudence to make use of it for supporting his foulest slanders.
Sometimes, again, you will quote books which were never in
existence, such as The Constitution of the Holy Sacrament, from
which you extract passages, fabricated at pleasure and calculated to
make the hair on the heads of certain good simple people, who have
no idea of the effrontery with which you can invent and propagate
falsehoods, actually to bristle with horror. There is not, indeed, a
single species of calumny which you have not put into requisition; nor
is it possible that the maxim which excuses the vice could have been
lodged in better hands.
But those sorts of slander to which we have adverted are rather
too easily discredited; and, accordingly, you have others of a more
subtle character, in which you abstain from specifying particulars, in
order to preclude your opponents from getting any hold, or finding any
means of reply; as, for example, when Father Brisacier says that
"his enemies are guilty of abominable crimes, which he does not choose
to mention.
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