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Blaise Pascal The Provincial Letters The translation is that
of Rev. Dr. Thomas M’Crie D.D., Professor of Divinity, Edinburgh and was published
in New York by Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853. [Return
to book contents page] Letter XII
TO THE
REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS September 9, 1656 REVEREND FATHERS, I was prepared to write you on
the subject of the abuse with which you have for some time past been
assailing me in your publications, in which you salute me with such epithets
as “reprobate,” “buffoon,” “blockhead,” “merry—Andrew,” “impostor,”
“slanderer,” “cheat,” “heretic,” “Calvinist in disguise,” “disciple of Du
Moulin,” “possessed with a legion of devils,” and everything else you can
think of. As I should be sorry to have all this believed of me, I was anxious
to show the public why you treated me in this manner; and I had resolved to
complain of your calumnies and falsifications, when I met with your Answers,
in which you bring these same charges against myself. This will compel me to
alter my plan; though it will not prevent me from prosecuting it in some
sort, for I hope, while defending myself, to convict you of impostures more
genuine than the imaginary ones which you have ascribed to me. Indeed,
fathers, the suspicion of foul play is much more sure to rest on you than on
me. It is not very likely, standing as I do, alone, without power or any
human defence against such a large body, and having no support but truth and
integrity, that I would expose myself to lose everything by laying myself
open to be convicted of imposture. It is too easy to discover falsifications
in matters of fact such as the present. In such a case there would have been
no want of persons to accuse me, nor would justice have been denied them.
With you, fathers, the case is very different; you may say as much as you
please against me, while I may look in vain for any to complain to. With such
a wide difference between our positions, though there had been no other
consideration to restrain me, it became me to study no little caution. By
treating me, however, as a common slanderer, you compel me to assume the
defensive, and you must be aware that this cannot be done without entering
into a fresh exposition and even into a fuller disclosure of the points of
your morality. In provoking this discussion, I fear you are not acting as
good politicians. The war must be waged within your own camp and at your own
expense; and, although you imagine that, by embroiling the questions with
scholastic terms, the answers will be so tedious, thorny, and obscure, that
people will lose all relish for the controversy, this may not, perhaps, turn
out to be exactly the case; I shall use my best endeavours to tax your
patience as little as possible with that sort of writing. Your maxims have
something diverting about them, which keeps up the good humour of people to
the last. At all events, remember that it is you that oblige me to enter upon
this eclaircissement, and let us see which of us comes off best in
self-defence. The first of your Impostures,
as you call them, is on the opinion of Vasquez upon alms-giving. To avoid all
ambiguity, then, allow me to give a simple explanation of the matter in
dispute. It is well known, fathers, that, according to the mind of the
Church, there are two precepts touching alms: 1st, “To give out of our
superfluity in the case of the ordinary necessities of the poor”; and 2nd,
“To give even out of our necessaries, according to our circumstances, in
cases of extreme necessity.” Thus says Cajetan, after St. Thomas; so that, to
get at the mind of Vasquez on this subject, we must consider the rules he
lays down, both in regard to necessaries and superfluities. With regard to superfluity,
which is the most common source of relief to the poor, it is entirely set
aside by that single maxim which I have quoted in my Letters: “That what the
men of the world keep with the view of improving their own condition, and
that of their relatives, is not properly superfluity; so that such a thing as
superfluity is rarely to be met with among men of the world, not even
excepting kings.” It is very easy to see, fathers, that, according to this
definition, none can have superfluity, provided they have ambition; and thus,
so far as the greater part of the world is concerned, alms-giving is
annihilated. But even though a man should happen to have superfluity, he
would be under no obligation, according to Vasquez, to give it away in the
case of ordinary necessity; for he protests against those who would thus bind
the rich. Here are his own words: “Corduba,” says he, “teaches that when we
have a superfluity we are bound to give out of it in cases of ordinary
necessity; but this does not please me—sed hoc non placet—for we have
demonstrated the contrary against Cajetan and Navarre.” So, fathers, the
obligation to this kind of alms is wholly set aside, according to the good
pleasure of Vasquez. With regard to necessaries,
out of which we are bound to give in cases of extreme and urgent necessity,
it must be obvious, from the conditions by which he has limited the
obligation, the richest man in all Paris may not come within its reach one in
a lifetime. I shall only refer to two of these. The first is: That “we must
know that the poor man cannot be relieved from any other quarter—haec
intelligo et caetera omnia, quando SCIO nullum alium opem laturum.” What say
you to this, fathers? Is it likely to happen frequently in Paris, where there
are so many charitable people, that I must know that there is not another
soul but myself to relieve the poor wretch who begs an alms from me? And yet,
according to Vasquez, if I have not ascertained that fact, I may send him
away with nothing. The second condition is: That the poor man be reduced to
such straits “that he is menaced with some fatal accident, or the ruin of his
character”—none of them very common occurrences. But what marks still more
the rarity of the cases in which one is bound to give charity, is his remark,
in another passage, that the poor man must be so ill off, “that he may
conscientiously rob the rich man!” This must surely be a very extraordinary
case, unless he will insist that a man may be ordinarily allowed to commit
robbery. And so, after having cancelled the obligation to give alms out of
our superfluities, he obliges the rich to relieve the poor only in those
cases when he would allow the poor to rifle the rich! Such is the doctrine of
Vasquez, to whom you refer your readers for their edification! I now come to your pretended
Impostures. You begin by enlarging on the obligation to alms-giving which
Vasquez imposes on ecclesiastics. But on this point I have said nothing; and
I am prepared to take it up whenever you choose. This, then, has nothing to
do with the present question. As for laymen, who are the only persons with
whom we have now to do, you are apparently anxious to have it understood
that, in the passage which I quoted, Vasquez is giving not his own judgement,
but that of Cajetan. But as nothing could be more false than this, and as you
have not said it in so many terms, I am willing to believe, for the sake of
your character, that you did not intend to say it. You next loudly complain that,
after quoting that maxim of Vasquez, “Such a thing as superfluity is rarely
if ever to be met with among men of the world, not excepting kings,” I have
inferred from it, “that the rich are rarely, if ever, bound to give alms out
of their superfluity.” But what do you mean to say, fathers? If it be true
that the rich have almost never superfluity, is it not obvious that they will
almost never be bound to give alms out of their superfluity? I might have put
it into the form of a syllogism for you, if Diana, who has such an esteem for
Vasquez that he calls him “the phoenix of genius,” had not drawn the same
conclusion from the same premisses; for, after quoting the maxim of Vasquez,
he concludes, “that, with regard to the question, whether the rich are
obliged to give alms out of their superfluity, though the affirmation were
true, it would seldom, or almost never, happen to be obligatory in practice.”
I have followed this language word for word. What, then, are we to make of
this, fathers? When Diana quotes with approbation the sentiments of Vasquez,
when he finds them probable, and “very convenient for rich people,” as he
says in the same place, he is no slanderer, no falsifier, and we hear no
complaints of misrepresenting his author; whereas, when I cite the same
sentiments of Vasquez, though without holding him up as a phoenix, I am a
slanderer, a fabricator, a corrupter of his maxims. Truly, fathers, you have
some reason to be apprehensive, lest your very different treatment of those
who agree in their representation, and differ only in their estimate of your
doctrine, discover the real secret of your hearts and provoke the conclusion
that the main object you have in view is to maintain the credit and glory of
your Company. It appears that, provided your accommodating theology is
treated as judicious complaisance, you never disavow those that publish it,
but laud them as contributing to your design; but let it be held forth as
pernicious laxity, and the same interest of your Society prompts you to
disclaim the maxims which would injure you in public estimation. And thus you
recognize or renounce them, not according to the truth, which never changes,
but according to the shifting exigencies of the times, acting on that motto
of one of the ancients, “Omnia pro tempore, nihil pro veritate—Anything for
the times, nothing for the truth.” Beware of this, fathers; and that you may
never have it in your power again to say that I drew from the principle of
Vasquez a conclusion which he had disavowed, I beg to inform you that he has
drawn it himself: “According to the opinion of Cajetan, and according to my
own—et secundum nostram—(he says, chap. i., no. 27), one is hardly obliged to
give alms at all when one is only obliged to give them out of one’s
superfluity.” Confess then, fathers, on the testimony of Vasquez himself,
that I have exactly copied his sentiment; and think how you could have the
conscience to say that “the reader, on consulting the original, would see to
his astonishment that he there teaches the very reverse!” In fine, you insist, above all,
that if Vasquez does not bind the rich to give alms out of their superfluity,
he obliges them to atone for this by giving out of the necessaries of life.
But you have forgotten to mention the list of conditions which he declares to
be essential to constitute that obligation, which I have quoted, and which
restrict it in such a way as almost entirely to annihilate it. In place of
giving this honest statement of his doctrine, you tell us, in general terms,
that he obliges the rich to give even what is necessary to their condition.
This is proving too much, fathers; the rule of the Gospel does not go so far;
and it would be an error, into which Vasquez is very far, indeed, from having
fallen. To cover his laxity, you attribute to him an excess of severity which
would be reprehensible; and thus you lose all credit as faithful reporters of
his sentiments. But the truth is, Vasquez is quite free from any such
suspicion; for he has maintained, as I have shown, that the rich are not
bound, either in justice or in charity, to give of their superfluities, and
still less of their necessaries, to relieve the ordinary wants of the poor;
and that they are not obliged to give of the necessaries, except in cases so
rare that they almost never happen. Having disposed of your
objections against me on this head, it only remains to show the falsehood of
your assertion that Vasquez is more severe than Cajetan. This will by very
easily done. That cardinal teaches “that we are bound in justice to give alms
out of our superfluity, even in the ordinary wants of the poor; because,
according to the holy fathers, the rich are merely the dispensers of their
superfluity, which they are to give to whom they please, among those who have
need of it.” And accordingly, unlike Diana, who says of the maxims of Vasquez
that they will be “very convenient and agreeable to the rich and their
confessors,” the cardinal, who has no such consolation to afford them,
declares that he has nothing to say to the rich but these words of Jesus
Christ: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for
a rich man to enter into heaven”; and to their confessors: “If the blind lead
the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” So indispensable did he deem this
obligation! This, too, is what the fathers and all the saints have laid down
as a certain truth. “There are two cases,” says St. Thomas, “in which we are
bound to give alms as a matter of justice—ex debito legali: one, when the
poor are in danger; the other, when we possess superfluous property.” And
again: “The three-tenths which the Jews were bound to eat with the poor, have
been augmented under the new law; for Jesus Christ wills that we give to the
poor, not the tenth only, but the whole of our superfluity.” And yet it does
not seem good to Vasquez that we should be obliged to give even a fragment of
our superfluity; such is his complaisance to the rich, such his hardness to
the poor, such his opposition to those feelings of charity which teach us to
relish the truth contained in the following words of St. Gregory, harsh as it
may sound to the rich of this world: “When we give the poor what is necessary
to them, we are not so much bestowing on them what is our property as
rendering to them what is their own; and it may be said to be an act of
justice rather than a work of mercy.” It is thus that the saints
recommend the rich to share with the poor the good things of this earth, if
they would expect to possess with them the good things of heaven. While you
make it your business to foster in the breasts of men that ambition which
leaves no superfluity to dispose of, and that avarice which refuses to part
with it, the saints have laboured to induce the rich to give up their
superfluity, and to convince them that they would have abundance of it, provided
they measured it, not by the standard of covetousness, which knows no bounds
to its cravings, but by that of piety, which is ingenious in retrenchments,
so as to have wherewith to diffuse itself in the exercise of charity. “We
will have a great deal of superfluity,” says St. Augustine, “if we keep only
what is necessary: but if we seek after vanities, we will never have enough.
Seek, brethren, what is sufficient for the work of God”—that is, for
nature—“and not for what is sufficient for your covetousness,” which is the
work of the devil: “and remember that the superfluities of the rich are the
necessaries of the poor.” I would fondly trust, fathers,
that what I have now said to you may serve, not only for my vindication—that
were a small matter—but also to make you feel and detest what is corrupt in
the maxims of your casuists, and thus unite us sincerely under the sacred
rules of the Gospel, according to which we must all be judged. As to the second point, which
regards simony, before proceeding to answer the charges you have advanced
against me, I shall begin by illustrating your doctrine on this subject.
Finding yourselves placed in an awkward dilemma, between the canons of the
Church, which impose dreadful penalties upon simoniacs, on the one hand, and
the avarice of many who pursue this infamous traffic on the other, you have
recourse to your ordinary method, which is to yield to men what they desire,
and give the Almighty only words and shows. For what else does the simoniac
want but money in return for his benefice? And yet this is what you exempt
from the charge of simony. And as the name of simony must still remain
standing, and a subject to which it may be ascribed, you have substituted, in
the place of this, an imaginary idea, which never yet crossed the brain of a
simoniac, and would not serve him much though it did—the idea, namely, that
simony lies in estimating the money considered in itself as highly as the
spiritual gift or office considered in itself. Who would ever take it into
his head to compare things so utterly disproportionate and heterogeneous? And
yet, provided this metaphysical comparison be not drawn, any one may,
according to your authors, give away a benefice, and receive money in return
for it, without being guilty of simony. Such is the way in which you
sport with religion, in order to gratify the worst passions of men; and yet
only see with what gravity your Father Valentia delivers his rhapsodies in
the passage cited in my letters. He says: “One may give a spiritual for a temporal
good in two ways—first, in the way of prizing the temporal more than the
spiritual, and that would be simony; secondly, in the way of taking the
temporal as the motive and end inducing one to give away the spiritual, but
without prizing the temporal more than the spiritual, and then it is not
simony. And the reason is that simony consists in receiving something
temporal as the just price of what is spiritual. If, therefore, the temporal
is sought—si petatur temporale—not as the price, but only as the motive
determining us to part with the spiritual, it is by no means simony, even
although the possession of the temporal may be principally intended and
expected—minime erit simonia, etiamsi temporale principaliter intendatur et
expectetur.” Your redoubtable Sanchez has been favoured with a similar
revelation; Escobar quotes him thus: “If one give a spiritual for a temporal
good, not as the price, but as a motive to induce the collator to give it, or
as an acknowledgement if the benefice has been actually received, is that
simony? Sanchez assures us that it is not.” In your Caen Theses of 1644 you
say: “It is a probable opinion, taught by many Catholics, that it is not
simony to exchange a temporal for a spiritual good, when the former is not
given as a price.” And as to Tanner, here is his doctrine, exactly the same
with that of Valentia; and I quote it again to show you how far wrong it is
in you to complain of me for saying that it does not agree with that of St.
Thomas, for he avows it himself in the very passage which I quoted in my
letter: “There is properly and truly no simony,” says he, “unless when a
temporal good is taken as the price of a spiritual; but when taken merely as
the motive for giving the spiritual, or as an acknowledgement for having received
it, this is not simony, at least in point of conscience.” And again: “The
same thing may be said, although the temporal should be regarded as the
principal end, and even preferred to the spiritual; although St. Thomas and
others appear to hold the reverse, inasmuch as they maintain it to be
downright simony to exchange a spiritual for a temporal good, when the
temporal is the end of the transaction.” Such, then, being your
doctrine on simony, as taught by your best authors, who follow each other very
closely in this point, it only remains now to reply to your charges of
misrepresentation. You have taken no notice of Valentia’s opinion, so that
his doctrine stands as it was before. But you fix on that of Tanner,
maintaining that he has merely decided it to be no simony by divine right;
and you would have it to be believed that, in quoting the passage, I have
suppressed these words, divine right. This, fathers, is a most unconscionable
trick; for these words, divine right, never existed in that passage. You add
that Tanner declares it to be simony according to positive right. But you are
mistaken; he does not say that generally, but only of particular cases, or,
as he expresses it, in casibus a jure expressis, by which he makes an
exception to the general rule he had laid down in that passage, “that it is
not simony in point of conscience,” which must imply that it is not so in
point of positive right, unless you would have Tanner made so impious as to
maintain that simony, in point of positive right, is not simony in point of
conscience. But it is easy to see your drift in mustering up such terms as
“divine right, positive right, natural right, internal and external tribunal,
expressed cases, outward presumption,” and others equally little known; you mean
to escape under this obscurity of language, and make us lose sight of your
aberrations. But, fathers, you shall not escape by these vain artifices; for
I shall put some questions to you so simple, that they will not admit of
coming under your distinguo. I ask you, then, without
speaking of “positive rights,” of “outward presumptions,” or “external
tribunals”—I ask if, according to your authors, a beneficiary would be
simoniacal, were he to give a benefice worth four thousand livres of yearly
rent, and to receive ten thousand francs ready money, not as the price of the
benefice, but merely as a motive inducing him to give it? Answer me plainly,
fathers: What must we make of such a case as this according to your authors?
Will not Tanner tell us decidedly that “this is not simony in point of
conscience, seeing that the temporal good is not the price of the benefice,
but only the motive inducing to dispose of it?” Will not Valentia, will not
your own Theses of Caen, will not Sanchez and Escobar, agree in the same
decision and give the same reason for it? Is anything more necessary to
exculpate that beneficiary from simony? And, whatever might be your private
opinion of the case, durst you deal with that man as a simonist in your
confessionals, when he would be entitled to stop your mouth by telling you
that he acted according to the advice of so many grave doctors? Confess
candidly, then, that, according to your views, that man would be no simonist;
and, having done so, defend the doctrine as you best can. Such, fathers, is the true
mode of treating questions, in order to unravel, instead of perplexing them,
either by scholastic terms, or, as you have done in your last charge against
me here, by altering the state of the question. Tanner, you say, has, at any
rate, declared that such an exchange is a great sin; and you blame me for
having maliciously suppressed this circumstance, which, you maintain,
“completely justifies him.” But you are wrong again, and that in more ways
than one. For, first, though what you say had been true, it would be nothing
to the point, the question in the passage to which I referred being, not if
it was sin, but if it was simony. Now, these are two very different
questions. Sin, according to your maxims, obliges only to confession—simony obliges
to restitution; and there are people to whom these may appear two very
different things. You have found expedients for making confession a very easy
affair; but you have not fallen upon ways and means to make restitution an
agreeable one. Allow me to add that the case which Tanner charges with sin is
not simply that in which a spiritual good is exchanged for a temporal, the
latter being the principal end in view, but that in which the party “prizes
the temporal above the spiritual,” which is the imaginary case already spoken
of. And it must be allowed he could not go far wrong in charging such a case
as that with sin, since that man must be either very wicked or very stupid
who, when permitted to exchange the one thing for the other, would not avoid the
sin of the transaction by such a simple process as that of abstaining from
comparing the two things together. Besides, Valentia, in the place quoted,
when treating the question—if it be sinful to give a spiritual good for a
temporal, the latter being the main consideration—and after producing the
reasons given for the affirmative, adds, “Sed hoc non videtur mihi satis
certum—But this does not appear to my mind sufficiently certain.” Since that time, however, your
father, Erade Bille, professor of cases of conscience at Caen, has decided
that there is no sin at all in the case supposed; for probable opinions, you
know, are always in the way of advancing to maturity. This opinion he
maintains in his writings of 1644, against which M. Dupre, doctor and professor
at Caen, delivered that excellent oration, since printed and well known. For
though this Erade Bille confesses that Valentia’s doctrine, adopted by Father
Milhard and condemned by the Sorbonne, “is contrary to the common opinion,
suspected of simony, and punishable at law when discovered in practice,” he
does not scruple to say that it is a probable opinion, and consequently sure
in point of conscience, and that there is neither simony nor sin in it. “It
is a probable opinion, he says, “taught by many Catholic doctors, that there
is neither any simony nor any sin in giving money, or any other temporal
thing, for a benefice, either in the way of acknowledgement, or as a motive,
without which it would not be given, provided it is not given as a price equal
to the benefice.” This is all that could possibly be desired. In fact,
according to these maxims of yours, simony would be so exceedingly rare that
we might exempt from this sin even Simon Magus himself, who desired to
purchase the Holy Spirit and is the emblem of those simonists that buy
spiritual things; and Gehazi, who took money for a miracle and may be
regarded as the prototype of the simonists that sell them. There can be no
doubt that when Simon, as we read in the Acts, “offered the apostles money,
saying, Give me also this power”; he said nothing about buying or selling, or
fixing the price; he did no more than offer the money as a motive to induce
them to give him that spiritual gift; which being, according to you, no
simony at all, he might, had be but been instructed in your maxims, have
escaped the anathema of St. Peter. The same unhappy ignorance was a great
loss to Gehazi, when he was struck with leprosy by Elisha; for, as he
accepted the money from the prince who had been miraculously cured, simply as
an acknowledgement, and not as a price equivalent to the divine virtue which
had effected the miracle, he might have insisted on the prophet healing him
again on pain of mortal sin; seeing, on this supposition, he would have acted
according to the advice of your grave doctors, who, in such cases, oblige
confessors to absolve their penitents and to wash them from that spiritual
leprosy of which the bodily disease is the type. Seriously, fathers, it would
be extremely easy to hold you up to ridicule in this matter, and I am at a
loss to know why you expose yourselves to such treatment. To produce this
effect, I have nothing more to do than simply to quote Escobar, in his
Practice of Simony according to the Society of Jesus; “Is it simony when two Churchmen
become mutually pledged thus: Give me your vote for my election as
Provincial, and I shall give you mine for your election as prior? By no
means.” Or take another: “It is not simony to get possession of a benefice by
promising a sum of money, when one has no intention of actually paying the
money; for this is merely making a show of simony, and is as far from being
real simony as counterfeit gold is from the genuine.” By this quirk of
conscience, he has contrived means, in the way of adding swindling to simony,
for obtaining benefices without simony and without money. But I have no time to dwell
longer on the subject, for I must say a word or two in reply to your third
accusation, which refers to the subject of bankrupts. Nothing can be more
gross than the manner in which you have managed this charge. You rail at me
as a libeller in reference to a sentiment of Lessius, which I did not quote
myself, but took from a passage in Escobar; and, therefore, though it were
true that Lessius does not hold the opinion ascribed to him by Escobar, what
can be more unfair than to charge me with the misrepresentation? When I quote
Lessius or others of your authors myself, I am quite prepared to answer for
it; but, as Escobar has collected the opinions of twenty-four of your
writers, I beg to ask if I am bound to guarantee anything beyond the
correctness of my citations from his book? Or if I must, in addition, answer
for the fidelity of all his quotations of which I may avail myself? This
would be hardly reasonable; and yet this is precisely the case in the
question before us. I produced in my letter the following passage from
Escobar, and you do not object to the fidelity of my translation: “May the
bankrupt, with a good conscience, retain as much of his property as is
necessary to afford him an honourable maintenance—ne indecore vivat? I
answer, with Lessius, that he may—cum Lessio assero posse.” You tell me that
Lessius does not hold that opinion. But just consider for a moment the
predicament in which you involve yourselves. If it turns out that he does
hold that opinion, you will be set down as impostors for having asserted the
contrary; and if it is proved that he does not hold it, Escobar will be the
impostor; so it must now of necessity follow that one or other of the Society
will be convicted of imposture. Only think what a scandal! You cannot, it
would appear, foresee the consequences of things. You seem to imagine that
you have nothing more to do than to cast aspersions upon people, without
considering on whom they may recoil. Why did you not acquaint Escobar with
your objection before venturing to publish it? He might have given you
satisfaction. It is not so very troublesome to get word from Valladolid,
where he is living in perfect health, and completing his grand work on Moral
Theology, in six volumes, on the first of which I mean to say a few words
by-and-by. They have sent him the first ten letters; you might as easily have
sent him your objection, and I am sure he would have soon returned you an
answer, for he has doubtless seen in Lessius the passage from which he took
the ne indecore vivat. Read him yourselves, fathers, and you will find it
word for word, as I have done. Here it is: “The same thing is apparent from
the authorities cited, particularly in regard to that property which he
acquires after his failure, out of which even the delinquent debtor may
retain as much as is necessary for his honourable maintenance, according to
his station of life—ut non indecore vivat. Do you ask if this rule applies to
goods which he possessed at the time of his failure? Such seems to be the
judgement of the doctors.” I shall not stop here to show
how Lessius, to sanction his maxim, perverts the law that allows bankrupts
nothing more than a mere livelihood, and that makes no provision for
“honourable maintenance.” It is enough to have vindicated Escobar from such
an accusation—it is more, indeed, than what I was in duty bound to do. But
you, fathers, have not done your duty. It still remains for you to answer the
passage of Escobar, whose decisions, by the way, have this advantage, that,
being entirely independent of the context and condensed in little articles,
they are not liable to your distinctions. I quoted the whole of the passage,
in which “bankrupts are permitted to keep their goods, though unjustly
acquired, to provide an honourable maintenance for their families”—commenting
on which in my letters, I exclaim: “Indeed, father! by what strange kind of
charity would you have the ill-gotten property of a bankrupt appropriated to
his own use, instead of that of his lawful creditors?” This is the question
which must be answered; but it is one that involves you in a sad dilemma, and
from which you in vain seek to escape by altering the state of the question,
and quoting other passages from Lessius, which have no connection with the
subject. I ask you, then: May this maxim of Escobar be followed by bankrupts
with a safe conscience, or no? And take care what you say. If you answer,
“No,” what becomes of your doctor, and your doctrine of probability? If you
say, “Yes,” I delate you to the Parliament. In this predicament I must now
leave you, fathers; for my limits will not permit me to overtake your next
accusation, which respects homicide. This will serve for my next letter, and
the rest will follow. In the
meanwhile, I shall make no remarks on the advertisements which you have
tagged to the end of each of your charges, filled as they are with scandalous
falsehoods. I mean to answer all these in a separate letter, in which I hope
to show the weight due to your calumnies. I am sorry, fathers, that you
should have recourse to such desperate resources. The abusive terms which you
heap on me will not clear up our disputes, nor will your manifold threats
hinder me from defending myself You think you have power and impunity on your
side; and I think I have truth and innocence on mine. It is a strange and
tedious war when violence attempts to vanquish truth. All the efforts of
violence cannot weaken truth, and only serve to give it fresh vigour. All the
lights of truth cannot arrest violence, and only serve to exasperate it. When
force meets force, the weaker must succumb to the stronger; when argument is
opposed to argument, the solid and the convincing triumphs over the empty and
the false; but violence and verity can make no impression on each other. Let
none suppose, however, that the two are, therefore, equal to each other; for
there is this vast difference between them, that violence has only a certain
course to run, limited by the appointment of Heaven, which overrules its
effects to the glory of the truth which it assails; whereas verity endures
forever and eventually triumphs over its enemies, being eternal and almighty
as God himself. |
Blaise Pascal |
