Calumny is nothing, if not associated with a high reputation for
honesty. The defamer can make no impression, unless he has the
character of one that abhors defamation as a crime of which he is
incapable. And thus, fathers, you are betrayed by your own
principle. You establish the doctrine to secure yourselves a safe
conscience, that you might slander without risk of damnation, and be
ranked with those "pious and holy calumniators" of whom St. Athanasius
speaks. To save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim
which promises you this security on the faith of your doctors; but
this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to their idea,
against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives you of all
the advantage you may have expected to reap from it in the present; so
that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have lost the benefit
of calumny. Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so completely
does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic malignity.
You might have slandered, therefore, much more advantageously
for yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St. Paul, that evil
speakers are not worthy to see God; for in this case, though you would
indeed have been condemning yourselves, your slanders would at least
have stood a better chance of being believed. But, by maintaining,
as you have done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime,
your slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into
the bargain; for two things are certain, fathers: first, That it
will never be in the power of your grave doctors to annihilate the
justice of God; and, secondly, That you could not give more certain
evidence that you are not of the Truth than by your resorting to
falsehood.
Pages:
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322