This they stated to the commissary of the Holy Office,
one of the principal examiners, stating that they could not be
censured according to the sense of any author, because they had been
presented for examination on their own merits; and without considering
to what author they might belong: further, that upwards of sixty
doctors, and a vast number of other persons of learning and piety, had
read that book carefully over, without ever having encountered the
proscribed propositions, and that they have found some of a quite
opposite description: that those who had produced that impression on
the mind of the Pope might be reasonably presumed to have abused the
confidence he reposed in them, inasmuch as they had an interest in
decrying that author, who has convicted Molina of upwards of fifty
errors: that what renders this supposition still more probable is that
they have a certain maxim among them, one of the best authenticated in
their whole system of theology, which is, "that they may, without
criminality, calumniate those by whom they conceive themselves to be
unjustly attacked"; and that, accordingly, their testimony being so
suspicious, and the testimony of the other party so respectable,
they had some ground for supplicating his holiness, with the most
profound humility, that he would ordain an investigation to be made
into this fact, in the presence of doctors belonging to both
parties, in order that a solemn and regular decision might be formed
on the point in dispute.
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