How comes it to
pass, then, that when placed in precisely the same predicament, your
friends are Catholics and your opponents heretics? On what strange
principle of exception do you deprive the latter of a liberty which
you freely award to all the rest of the faithful? What answer will you
make to this, father? Will you say, "The pope has confirmed his
constitution by a brief." To this I would reply, that two general
councils and two popes confirmed the condemnation of the letters of
Honorius. But what argument do you found upon the language of that
brief, in which all that the Pope says is that "he has condemned the
doctrine of Jansenius in these five propositions"? What does that
add to the constitution, or what more can you infer from it?
Nothing, certainly, except that as the sixth council condemned the
doctrine of Honorius, in the belief that it was the same with that
of the Monothelites, so the Pope has said that he has condemned the
doctrine of Jansenius in these five propositions, because he was led
to suppose it was the same with that of the five propositions. And how
could he do otherwise than suppose it? Your Society published
nothing else; and you yourself, father, who have asserted that the
said propositions were in that author "word for word," happened to
be in Rome (for I know all your motions) at the time when the
censure was passed. Was he to distrust the sincerity or the competence
of so many grave ministers of religion? And how could he help being
convinced of the fact, after the assurance which you had given him
that the propositions were in that author "word for word"? It is
evident, therefore, that in the event of its being found that
Jansenius has not supported these doctrines, it would be wrong to say,
as your writers have done in the cases before mentioned, that the Pope
has deceived himself in this point of fact, which it is painful and
offensive to publish at any time; the proper phrase is that you have
deceived the Pope, which, as you are now pretty well known, will
create no scandal.
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