Jesuit ever held that it was lawful to kill for slander?” Is anything
more necessary to convince you of this than the very opinions of your
fathers which you quote, since they do not condemn murder in
speculation, but only in practice, and that, too, “on account of the
injury that might thereby accrue to the State?” And here I would just
beg to ask, whether the whole matter in dispute between us is not simply
and solely to ascertain if you have or have not subverted the law of God
which condemns murder? The point in question is, not whether you have
injured the commonwealth, but whether you have injured religion. What
purpose, then, can it serve, in a dispute of this kind, to show that you
have spared the State, when you make it apparent, at the same time, that
you have destroyed the faith? Is this not evident from your saying that
the meaning of Reginald, on the question of killing for slanders, is,
“that a private individual has a right to employ that mode of defence,
viewing it simply _in itself_?” I desire nothing beyond this concession
to confute you. “A private individual,” you say, “has a right to employ
that mode of defence” (that is, killing for slanders), “viewing the
thing in itself;” and, consequently, fathers, the law of God, which
forbids us to kill, is nullified by that decision.
It serves no purpose to add, as you have done, “that such a mode is
unlawful and criminal, even according to the law of God, on account of
the murders and disorders which would follow in society, because the law
of God obliges us to have regard to the good of society.” This is to
evade the question: for there are two laws to be observed—one forbidding
us to kill, and another forbidding us to harm society. Reginald has not,
perhaps, broken the law which forbids us to do harm to society; but he
has most certainly violated that which forbids us to kill. Now this is
the only point with which we have to do. I might have shown, besides,
that your other writers, who have permitted these murders in practice,
have subverted the one law as well as the other. But, to proceed, we
have seen that you _sometimes_ forbid doing harm to the State; and you
allege that your design in that is to fulfil the law of God, which
obliges us to consult the interests of society. That may be true, though
it is far from being certain, as you might do the same thing purely from
fear of the civil magistrate. With your permission, then, we shall
scrutinize the real secret of this movement.
Is it not certain, fathers, that if you had really any regard to God,
and if the observance of his law had been the prime and principal object
in your thoughts, this respect would have invariably predominated in all
your leading decisions, and would have engaged you at all times on the
side of religion? But if it turns out, on the contrary, that you
violate, in innumerable instances, the most sacred commands that God has
laid upon men, and that, as in the instances before us, you annihilate
the law of God, which forbids these actions as criminal in themselves,
and that you only scruple to approve of them in practice, from bodily
fear of the civil magistrate, do you not afford us ground to conclude
that you have no respect to God in your apprehensions, and that if you
yield an apparent obedience to his law, in so far as regards the
obligation to do no harm to the State, this is not done out of any
regard to the law itself, but to compass your own ends, as has ever been
the way with politicians of no religion?
What, fathers! will you tell us that, looking simply to the law of God,
which says, “Thou shalt not kill,” we have a right to kill for slanders?
And after having thus trampled on the eternal law of God, do you imagine
that you atone for the scandal you have caused, and can persuade us of
your reverence for him, by adding that you prohibit the practice for
State reasons, and from dread of the civil arm? Is not this, on the
contrary, to raise a fresh scandal?—I mean not by the respect which you
testify for the magistrate; that is not my charge against you, and it is
ridiculous in you to banter, as you have done, on this matter. I blame
you, not for fearing the magistrate, but for fearing none but the
magistrate. And I blame you for this, because it is making God less the
enemy of vice than man. Had you said that to kill for slander was
allowable according to men, but not according to God, that might have
been something more endurable; but when you maintain, that what is too
criminal to be tolerated among men, may yet be innocent and right in the
eyes of that Being who is righteousness itself, what is this but to
declare before the whole world, by a subversion of principle as shocking
in itself as it is alien to the spirit of the saints, that while you can
be braggarts before God, you are cowards before men?
Had you really been anxious to condemn these homicides, you would have
allowed the commandment of God which forbids them to remain intact; and
had you dared at once to permit them, you would have permitted them
openly, in spite of the laws of God and men. But your object being to
permit them imperceptibly, and to cheat the magistrate, who watches over
the public safety, you have gone craftily to work. You separate your
maxims into two portions. On the one side, you hold out “that it is
lawful in speculation to kill a man for slander;”—and nobody thinks of
hindering you from taking a speculative view of matters. On the other
side, you come out with this detached axiom, “that what is permitted in
speculation is also permissible in practice;”—and what concern does
society seem to have in this general and metaphysical-looking
proposition? And thus these two principles, so little suspected, being
embraced in their separate form, the vigilance of the magistrate is
eluded; while it is only necessary to combine the two together, to draw
from them the conclusion which you aim at—namely, that it is lawful in
practice to put a man to death for a simple slander.
It is, indeed, fathers, one of the most subtle tricks of your policy, to
scatter through your publications the maxims which you club together in
your decisions. It is partly in this way that you establish your
doctrine of probabilities, which I have frequently had occasion to
explain. That general principle once established, you advance
propositions harmless enough when viewed apart, but which, when taken in
connection with that pernicious dogma, become positively horrible. An
example of this, which demands an answer, may be found in the 11th page
of your “Impostures,” where you allege that “several famous theologians
have decided that it is lawful to kill a man for a box on the ear.” Now,
it is certain, that if that had been said by a person who did not hold
probabilism, there would be nothing to find fault with in it; it would
in this case amount to no more than a harmless statement, and nothing
could be elicited from it. But you, fathers, and all who hold that
dangerous tenet, “that whatever has been approved by celebrated authors
is probable and safe in conscience,” when _you_ add to this “that
several celebrated authors are of opinion that it is lawful to kill a
man for a box on the ear,” what is this but to put a dagger into the
hand of all Christians, for the purpose of plunging it into the heart of
the first person that insults them, and to assure them that, having the
judgment of so many grave authors on their side, they may do so with a
perfectly safe conscience?
What monstrous species of language is this, which, in announcing that
certain authors hold a detestable opinion, is at the same time giving a
decision in favor of that opinion—which solemnly teaches whatever it
simply tells! We have learnt, fathers, to understand this peculiar
dialect of the Jesuitical school; and it is astonishing that you have
the hardihood to speak it out so freely, for it betrays your sentiments
somewhat too broadly. It convicts you of permitting murder for a buffet,
as often as you repeat that many celebrated authors have maintained that
opinion.
This charge, fathers, you will never be able to repel; nor will you be
much helped out by those passages from Vasquez and Suarez that you
adduce against me, in which they condemn the murders which their
associates have approved. These testimonies, disjoined from the rest of
your doctrine, may hoodwink those who know little about it; but we, who
know better, put your principles and maxims together. You say, then,
that Vasquez condemns murders; but what say you on the other side of the
question, my reverend fathers? Why, “that the probability of one
sentiment does not hinder the probability of the opposite sentiment; and
that it is warrantable to follow the less probable and less safe
opinion, giving up the more probable and more safe one.” What follows
from all this taken in connection, but that we have perfect freedom of
conscience to adopt any one of these conflicting judgments which pleases
us best? And what becomes of all the effect which you fondly anticipate
from your quotations? It evaporates in smoke, for we have no more to do
than to conjoin for your condemnation the maxims which you have
disjoined for your exculpation. Why, then, produce those passages of
your authors which I have not quoted, to qualify those which I have
quoted, as if the one could excuse the other? What right does that give
you to call me an “impostor?” Have I said that all your fathers are
implicated in the same corruptions? Have I not, on the contrary, been at
pains to show that your interest lay in having them of all different
minds, in order to suit all your purposes? Do you wish to kill your
man?—here is Lessius for you. Are you inclined to spare him?—here is
Vasquez. Nobody need go away in ill humor—nobody without the authority
of a grave doctor. Lessius will talk to you like a Heathen on homicide,
and like a Christian, it may be, on charity. Vasquez, again, will
descant like a Heathen on charity, and like a Christian on homicide. But
by means of probabilism, which is held both by Vasquez and Lessius, and
which renders all your opinions common property, they will lend their
opinions to one another, and each will be held bound to absolve those
who have acted according to opinions which each of them has condemned.
It is this very variety, then, that confounds you. Uniformity, even in
evil, would be better than this. Nothing is more contrary to the orders
of St. Ignatius[252] and the first generals of your Society, than this
confused medley of all sorts of opinions, good and bad. I may, perhaps,
enter on this topic at some future period; and it will astonish many to
see how far you have degenerated from the original spirit of your
institution, and that your own generals have foreseen that the
corruption of your doctrine on morals might prove fatal, not only to
your Society, but to the Church universal.[253]
Meanwhile, I repeat that you can derive no advantage from the doctrine
of Vasquez. It would be strange, indeed, if, out of all the Jesuits that
have written on morals, one or two could not be found who may have hit
upon a truth which has been confessed by all Christians. There is no
glory in maintaining the truth, according to the Gospel, that it is
unlawful to kill a man for smiting us on the face; but it is foul shame
to deny it. So far, indeed, from justifying you, nothing tells more
fatally against you than the fact that, having doctors among you who
have told you the truth, you abide not in the truth, but love the
darkness rather than the light. You have been taught by Vasquez that it
is a heathen, and not a Christian, opinion to hold that we may knock
down a man for a blow on the cheek; and that it is subversive both of
the Gospel and of the decalogue to say that we may kill for such a
matter. The most profligate of men will acknowledge as much. And yet you
have allowed Lessius, Escobar, and others, to decide, in the face of
these well-known truths, and in spite of all the laws of God against
manslaughter, that it is quite allowable to kill a man for a buffet!
What purpose, then, can it serve to set this passage of Vasquez over
against the sentiment of Lessius, unless you mean to show that, in the
opinion of Vasquez, Lessius is a “heathen” and a “profligate?” and that,
fathers, is more than I durst have said myself. What else can be deduced
from it than that Lessius “subverts both the Gospel and the decalogue;”
that, at the last day, Vasquez will condemn Lessius on this point, as
Lessius will condemn Vasquez on another; and that all your fathers will
rise up in judgment one against another, mutually condemning each other
for their sad outrages on the law of Jesus Christ?
To this conclusion, then, reverend fathers, must we come at length, that
as your probabilism renders the good opinions of some of your authors
useless to the Church, and useful only to your policy, they merely serve
to betray, by their contrariety, the duplicity of your hearts. This you
have completely unfolded, by telling us, on the one hand, that Vasquez
and Suarez are against homicide, and on the other hand, that many
celebrated authors are for homicide; thus presenting two roads to our
choice, and destroying the simplicity of the Spirit of God, who
denounces his anathema on the deceitful and the double-hearted: “_Væ
duplici corde, et ingredienti duabus viis!_—Woe be to the double hearts,
and the sinner that goeth two ways!”[254]
-----
Footnote 248:
The Church of Rome has not left those whom she terms heretics so
doubtfully to “take advantage” of Jesuitical aberrations. She has done
everything in her power to _give_ them this advantage. By identifying
herself, at various times, with the Jesuits, she has virtually stamped
their doctrines with her approbation.
Footnote 249:
The reference here is to an affray which made a considerable noise at
the time, between Father Borin, a Jesuit, and M. Guille, one of the
officers of the royal kitchen, in the College of Compiègne. A quarrel
having taken place, the enraged Jesuit struck the royal cook in the
face while he was in the act of preparing dinner, by his majesty’s
order, for Christina, queen of Sweden, in honor, perhaps, of her
conversion to the Romish faith. (Nicole, iv. 37)
Footnote 250:
In Prælog., n. 15.
Footnote 251:
The doctrines advanced by Lamy are too gross for repetition. Suffice
it to say, that they sanctioned the murder not only of the slanderer,
but of the person who might tell tales against a religious order, of
one who might stand in the way of another enjoying a legacy or a
benefice, and even of one whom a priest might have robbed of her
honor, if she threatened to rob him of his. These horrid maxims were
condemned by civil tribunals and theological faculties; but the
Jesuits persisted in justifying them. (Nicole, Notes, iv. 41, &c.)
Footnote 252:
It is very sad to see Pascal reduced to the necessity of saluting the
founder of the sect which he held up to the scorn of the world, as
_Saint Ignatius_! Ignatius Loyola was a native of Spain, and born in
1491. At first a soldier of fortune, he was disabled from service by a
wound in the leg at the siege of Pampeluna, and his brain having
become heated by reading romances and legendary tales, he took it into
his head to become the Don Quixote of the Virgin, and wage war against
all heretics and infidels. By indomitable perseverance he succeeded in
establishing the sect calling itself “the Society of Jesus.” This
ignorant fanatic, who, in more enlightened times, would have been
consigned to a mad-house, was beatified by one pope, and canonized, or
put into the list of saints, by another! Jansenius, in his
correspondence with St. Cyran, indignantly complains of pope Gregory
XV. for having canonized Ignatius and Xavier. (Leydecker, Hist.
Jansen. 23.)
Footnote 253:
This is rather a singular fact, and applies only to one of the
Society’s generals, viz., Vitelleschi, who, in a circular letter,
addressed, January 1617, to the Company, much to his own honor,
strongly recommended a purer morality, and denounced probabilism. But,
says Nicole, the Jesuits did not profit by his good advice. (Nicole,
iv., p. 33.) It is true, however, that the Jesuits, during this
century, had lost sight of the original design of their order, and of
all the ascetic rules of their founders, Ignatius and Aquaviva. “The
spirit which once animated them had fallen before the temptations of
the world, and their sole endeavor now was to make themselves
necessary to mankind, let the means be what they might.” (Ranke’s
Hist. of the Popes, iii. 139.)
Footnote 254:
Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha), ii. 12.
LETTER XIV.
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS.
IN WHICH THE MAXIMS OF THE JESUITS ON MURDER ARE REFUTED FROM THE
FATHERS—SOME OF THEIR CALUMNIES ANSWERED BY THE WAY—AND THEIR
DOCTRINE COMPARED WITH THE FORMS OBSERVED IN CRIMINAL TRIALS.
_October 23, 1656._
REVEREND FATHERS,—If I had merely to reply to the three remaining
charges on the subject of homicide, there would be no need for a long
discourse, and you will see them refuted presently in a few words; but
as I think it of much more importance to inspire the public with a
horror at your opinions on this subject, than to justify the fidelity of
my quotations, I shall be obliged to devote the greater part of this
letter to the refutation of your maxims, to show you how far you have
departed from the sentiments of the Church, and even of nature itself.
The permissions of murder, which you have granted in such a variety of
cases, render it very apparent, that you have so far forgotten the law
of God, and quenched the light of nature, as to require to be remanded
to the simplest principles of religion and of common sense.
What can be a plainer dictate of nature than that “no private individual
has a right to take away the life of another?” “So well are we taught
this of ourselves,” says St. Chrysostom, “that God, in giving the
commandment not to kill, did not add as a reason that homicide was an
evil; because,” says that father, “the law supposes that nature has
taught us that truth already.” Accordingly, this commandment has been
binding on men in all ages. The Gospel has confirmed the requirement of
the law; and the decalogue only renewed the command which man had
received from God before the law, in the person of Noah, from whom all
men are descended. On that renovation of the world, God said to the
patriarch: “At the hand of man, and at the hand of every man’s brother,
will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall
his blood be shed; for man is made in the image of God.” (Gen. ix. 5,
6.) This general prohibition deprives man of all power over the life of
man. And so exclusively has the Almighty reserved this prerogative in
his own hand, that, in accordance with Christianity, which is at utter
variance with the false maxims of Paganism, man has no power even over
his own life. But, as it has seemed good to his providence to take human
society under his protection, and to punish the evil-doers that give it
disturbance, he has himself established laws for depriving criminals of
life; and thus those executions which, without his sanction, would be
punishable outrages, become, by virtue of his authority, which is the
rule of justice, praiseworthy penalties. St. Augustine takes an
admirable view of this subject. “God,” he says, “has himself qualified
this general prohibition against manslaughter, both by the laws which he
has instituted for the capital punishment of malefactors, and by the
special orders which he has sometimes issued to put to death certain
individuals. And when death is inflicted in such cases, it is not man
that kills, but God, of whom man may be considered as only the
instrument, in the same way as a sword in the hand of him that wields
it. But, these instances excepted, whosoever kills incurs the guilt of
murder.”[255]
It appears, then, fathers, that the right of taking away the life of man
is the sole prerogative of God, and that having ordained laws for
executing death on criminals, he has deputed kings or commonwealths as
the depositaries of that power—a truth which St. Paul teaches us, when,
speaking of the right which sovereigns possess over the lives of their
subjects, he deduces it from Heaven in these words: “He beareth not the
sword in vain; for he is the minister of God to execute wrath upon him
that doeth evil.” (Rom. xiii. 4.) But as it is God who has put this
power into their hands, so he requires them to exercise it in the same
manner as he does himself; in other words, with perfect justice;
according to what St. Paul observes in the same passage: “Rulers are not
a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou, then, not be afraid
of the power? Do that which is good: for he is the minister of God to
thee for good.” And this restriction, so far from lowering their
prerogative, exalts it, on the contrary, more than ever; for it is thus
assimilated to that of God, who has no power to do evil, but is
all-powerful to do good; and it is thus distinguished from that of
devils, who are impotent in that which is good, and powerful only for
evil. There is this difference only to be observed betwixt the King of
Heaven and earthly sovereigns, that God, being justice and wisdom
itself, may inflict death instantaneously on whomsoever and in
whatsoever manner he pleases; for, besides his being the sovereign Lord
of human life, it is certain that he never takes it away either without
cause or without judgment, because he is as incapable of injustice as he
is of error. Earthly potentates, however, are not at liberty to act in
this manner; for, though the ministers of God, still they are but men,
and not gods. They may be misguided by evil counsels, irritated by false
suspicions, transported by passion, and hence they find themselves
obliged to have recourse, in their turn also, to human agency, and
appoint magistrates in their dominions, to whom they delegate their
power, that the authority which God has bestowed on them may be employed
solely for the purpose for which they received it.
I hope you understand, then, fathers, that to avoid the crime of murder,
we must act at once by the authority of God, and according to the
justice of God; and that when these two conditions are not united, sin
is contracted; whether it be by taking away life with his authority, but
without his justice; or by taking it away with justice, but without his
authority. From this indispensable connection it follows, according to
St. Augustine, “that he who, without proper authority, kills a criminal,
becomes a criminal himself, chiefly for this reason, that he usurps an
authority which God has not given him;” and on the other hand,
magistrates, though they possess this authority, are nevertheless
chargeable with murder, if, contrary to the laws which they are bound to
follow, they inflict death on an innocent man.
Such are the principles of public safety and tranquillity which have
been admitted at all times and in all places, and on the basis of which
all legislators, sacred and profane, from the beginning of the world,
have founded their laws. Even Heathens have never ventured to make an
exception to this rule, unless in cases where there was no other way of
escaping the loss of chastity or life, when they conceived, as Cicero
tells us, “that the law itself seemed to put its weapons into the hands
of those who were placed in such an emergency.”
But with this single exception, which has nothing to do with my present
purpose, that such a law was ever enacted, authorizing or tolerating, as
you have done, the practice of putting a man to death, to atone for an
insult, or to avoid the loss of honor or property, where life is not in
danger at the same time; that, fathers, is what I deny was ever done,
even by infidels. They have, on the contrary, most expressly forbidden
the practice. The law of the Twelve Tables of Rome bore, “that it is
unlawful to kill a robber in the day-time, when he does not defend
himself with arms;” which, indeed, had been prohibited long before in
the 22d chapter of Exodus. And the law _Furem_, in the _Lex Cornelia_,
which is borrowed from Ulpian, forbids the killing of robbers even by
night, if they do not put us in danger of our lives.[256]