Roch and St. Paul,
who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, to his
perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your inexcusable
malice in that piece of imposition.
Enough, however, for such paltry falsities. These are but the
first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master-strokes of your
"grand professed." To these do I now come, fathers; I come to a
calumny which is certainly one of the basest that ever issued from the
spirit of your Society. I refer to the insufferable audacity with
which you have imputed to holy nuns, and to their directors, the
charge of "disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation and the real
presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist." Here, fathers, is a
slander worthy of yourselves. Here is a crime which God alone is
capable of punishing, as you alone were capable of committing it. To
endure it with patience would require an humility as great as that
of these calumniated ladies; to give it credit would demand a degree
of wickedness equal to that of their wretched defamers. I propose not,
therefore, to vindicate them; they are beyond suspicion. Had they
stood in need of defence, they might have commanded abler advocates
than me. My object in what I say here is to show, not their innocence,
but your malignity. I merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves,
and to let the whole world understand that, after this, there is
nothing of which you are not capable.
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