" So say your ordinances, and so say the letters of your
generals, Aquaviva, Vitelleschi, &c. We have good reason, therefore,
for charging upon you the errors of your associates, when we find they
are sanctioned by your superiors and the divines of your Society. With
me, however, father, the case stands otherwise. I have not
subscribed to the book of the Holy Virginity. All the alms-boxes in
Paris may be broken into, and yet I am not the less a good Catholic
for all that. In short, I beg to inform you, in the plainest terms,
that nobody is responsible for my letters but myself, and that I am
responsible for nothing but my letters.
Here, father, I might fairly enough have brought our dispute to an
issue, without saying a word about those other persons whom you
stigmatize as heretics, in order to comprehend me under the
condemnation. But, as I have been the occasion of their ill treatment,
I consider myself bound in some sort to improve the occasion, and I
shall take advantage of it in three particulars. One advantage, not
inconsiderable in its way, is that it will enable me to vindicate
the innocence of so many calumniated individuals. Another, not
inappropriate to my subject, will be to disclose, at the same time,
the artifices of your policy in this accusation. But the advantage
which I prize most of all is that it affords me an opportunity of
apprising the world of the falsehood of that scandalous report which
you have been so busily disseminating, namely, "that the Church is
divided by a new heresy.
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