Why did you not take the plan which I followed
in bringing to light the wicked maxims of your authors- which was to
cite faithfully the passages of their writings from which they were
extracted? This was the mode followed by the cures of Paris, and it
never fails to produce conviction. But, when you were charged by
them with holding, for example, the proposition of Father Lamy, that a
"monk may kill a person who threatens to publish calumnies against
himself or his order, when he cannot otherwise prevent the
publication," what would you have thought, and what would the public
have said, if they had not quoted the place where that sentiment is
literally to be found? or if, after having been repeatedly demanded to
quote their authority, they still obstinately refused to do it? or if,
instead of acceding to this, they had gone off to Rome and procured
a bull, ordaining all men to acknowledge the truth of their statement?
Would it not be undoubtedly concluded that they had surprised the
Pope, and that they would never have had recourse to this
extraordinary method, but for want of the natural means of
substantiating the truth, which matters of fact furnish to all who
undertake to prove them? Accordingly, they had no more to do than to
tell us that Father Lamy teaches this doctrine in Book 5, disp.36,
n.118, page 544. of the Douay edition; and by this means everybody who
wished to see it found it out, and nobody could doubt about it any
longer.
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