Reverend Father, if you have found any difficulty in deciphering
this letter, which is certainly not printed in the best possible type,
blame nobody but yourself. Privileges are not so easily granted to
me as they are to you. You can procure them even for the purpose of
combating miracles; I cannot have them even to defend myself. The
printing-houses are perpetually haunted. In such circumstances, you
yourself would not advise me to write you any more letters, for it
is really a sad annoyance to be obliged to have recourse to an
Osnabruck impression.
LETTER XVIII
TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT
March 24, 1657
REVEREND FATHER,
Long have you laboured to discover some error in the creed or
conduct of your opponents; but I rather think you will have to
confess, in the end, that it is a more difficult task than you
imagined to make heretics of people who, are not only no heretics, but
who hate nothing in the world so much as heresy. In my last letter I
succeeded in showing that you accuse them of one heresy after another,
without being able to stand by one of the charges for any length of
time; so that all that remained for you was to fix on their refusal to
condemn "the sense of Jansenius," which you insist on their doing
without explanation. You must have been sadly in want of heresies to
brand them with, when you were reduced to this.
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