“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 phœnix of genius,” had not drawn the same
conclusion from the same premises; 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 phœnix, 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 be 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.”[242] 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 contrariety 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 labored
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 favored 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 _acknowledgment_ 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
acknowledgment 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_.[243]
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.[244] 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 acknowledgment, 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 he 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 acknowledgment, 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 honorable 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 honorable 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 judgment of
the doctors.”