and Conclusions which their Authors have taught it will be very hard for them not to be surprized therein and not to be powerfully struck by so many detestable Opinions Who knows but God hearing the prayers which have now for a long time been ordained by the whole Clergy of France and which have been made publickly in some particular Diocesses to beg for them that he would open their eyes may touch them and bring them on highly to disowne the Authors of so many abominations and to make it appear by their condemning them themselves as publick Plagues and declared Enemies of all Truth and Justice that the Crimes with which they have been reproached belong only to some private men and not to the whole Society The approbation of the Doctors hath not been sought after for the Publication of this Book For besides that there was no apparent need to expose the Approbators to the indignation of a Society who hold it for a Maxime that they may with a safe conscience kill them who pretend to hurt them in their reputations it was believed that this precaution would not be necessary on this occasion Indeed the Author producing nothing of his own in this Book and having prescribed unto himself only therein to represent faithfully those Maxims alone of the Jesuits Morals which are notoriously wicked and which are the very same against which all the Parochial Rectors of the most considerable Towns of the Realm have been stirred up so that the Pope the Bishops the Sorbonne and the other Catholick Faculties have condemned by their Censures the Apology of the Casuists and that the Faculty of Divinity in Paris have now very lately censured in the Books of Vernant and Amadeus we believe all these Censures to be as so many Approbations of this Book and that for that cause the Pope the Bishops the Sorbonne and the other Faculties and the Parochial Rectors of the principal Towns of France may pass for its Approbators or at least of the Doctrine contained therein For as to the knowing whether the Author hath been a faithful Relator of the Propositions of the Authors whom he cites every one in particular may well be allowed to judge thereof because indeed better Judges of this sort of differences than the eyes of those who shall have any scruple in this point cannot be had But if the Jesuits and some of the Partisans of their Society complain of this Author because he hath so exactly represented their Extravagances there is cause to hope that all other faithful people will be satisfied therewith because that one may say in truth that he gives by his Book unto every one that which belongs unto him and which the Casuists of the Society have used their utmost force to ravish from them He gives unto God the love the acknowledgment and the worship which belongs unto him to the Church the belief and submission of the Faithful to worldly Powers their honour and the fidelity of their Subjects safety to their Estates to Fathers and Mothers the obedience and respect of their Children to Children the love and tenderness of their Fathers and Mothers Conjugal fidelity to Husbands and Wives to Masters the fidelity of their Servants to Servants kindness of their Masters to the Ecclesiasticks Piety and Religion equity and integrity to Judges true honour unto the Nobility fair dealing unto Merchants Finally he establishes in the World all those Vertues which the Jesuits seem resolved to banish from thence that they might entertain and cause to reign there all the disorders which the malice of men or the Devil himself was capable to invent The Translators Conjecture concerning the Author of this Advertisement and of the Book it self THis Advertisement seems to be Father Arnolds the Preface and Work his Nephew Monsieur Pascals who is also supposed to have written the Porvincial Letters not without his Uncles privity and assistance whose head and hand could not be wanting to this Work also if his The style much differing and Lewis Montalt affirming himself to be no Doctor makes me suspect a third hand to have been made use of in drawing up those Letters however these Doctors as I am credibly informed were the Head-contrivers of them There are also many passages in the Provincials which seeming to promise this Work confirm my Conjecture The Preface of the Author The Design and Order of this Work THE end of Morality not only among Christians but also among the Pagans hath always been to make known that which is good and to separate it from the bad to carry men on to vertue and to good actions and to turn them away from vice and from sin and in pursuit thereof to teach them the means to proceed from the one to the other It cannot be shewed more easily and more evidently how dangerous and prejudicial the Moral Divinity of the Jesuits is than by making it appear that it tends and leads to a quite contrary end and that it walks in ways opposite to Reason and to the Law of Nature as well as those of Christian Piety that it confounds good and evil or to use the words of Scripture it calls evil good and good evil that the more part of the resolutions which it gives upon the points and particular cases which respect conscience tend to the stopping up in men the lights and motions of conscience it self and favours lust which corrupts it that the Principles from which they draw their Resolutions and the Reasons of which they make use for to support them are so many means and expedients proper for to authorize vice to sustain sin to excuse the most criminal actions and to entertain loosness and disorder in all sorts of Professions This is that which I have a design to make appear in this Book And to the end that I may before-hand give a general Idea of all that which I handle therein and represent most clearly the Method and consequence of the means whereof I make use to justifie that which I pretend I will expose here in a few words the whole order and disposition of my Discourse I reduce all these matters to certain principal Points which I handle after such manner and in such order as seems to me most clear and most proper to make appear the consequence of the Moral Doctrine of the Jesuits the connexion of their Principles with their Conclusions and the conformity of their practice with their Opinions For the consort and the resemblance which is between their Doctrine and their Conduct is so perfect that it is visible it proceeds from the same Spirit tends to the same end which is to please men to satisfie them by flattering their passions and their interests and to train them up in vice and disorder To see clearly the truth of this point which is the whole subject of this Book it must first be considered that there seems not possible to be found a way more proper to
destroy themselves and are refuted themselves by themselves and it suffices simply to report their Doctrine to make appear that it overturns the Foundations of Religion and that it is not only opposite to the Wisdom of the Cross and Christian Philosophy but also to Reason and the Philosophy of the Heathens It is true that this corruption is not equally evident in all their Maxims and that to surprize more easily those who have some fear of God they do propose these unto them with some kind of temperament covering them with some specious pretences which serve for reasons to engage them to follow them without scruple But the Author of these Morals hath so dextrously unfolded all these Artifices and all these studied subtilties and hath so neatly discovered their malignity that there is no fear that those who read them will suffer themselves to be deceived by them nor that they can have any confidence in the people whom he hath made clearly to appear to have a priviledge to speak every thing that they please and not to contradict themselves at all in speaking things altogether contrary according to the diversity of places times and the interest of their Society who give themselves the liberty and the right not only of two contrary opinions to chuse that which is most for their commodity but even to follow both the two according to divers occasions and the different relishes of those who consult with them finally who content not themselves only to refute the holy Fathers the Popes and the Councils when they are not for their convenience but who also take the confidence to make them speak what they please altogether contrary to what they do speak It is true also that this Author having undertaken to make us see the general corruption which the Jesuits have spread all over the Morals could not avoid to speak of those matters which S. Paul saith ought not to be proceeded in so far as to be named by Christians and that he is forced to shew how they would make Marriage which is the Image of all pure and all holy Union of Jesus Christ with the Church and which ought to be handled with all honour to give right to shameful filthinesses which even the Pagan Philosophers themselves have condemned according to these excellent words of an ancient Author Adulter estuxoris amator acrior He is an Adulterer who is too eager a Lover of his Wife Notwithstanding he hath been careful not to transcribe those ordures with which Sanchez hath filled whole Volumes among which some have been so scandalous that they have been left out in some Editions which yet have been no hinderance to Tambourin and Amadeus to renew them where he speaks of these excesses and other such like it is with such temperance that discharging the Reader of a good part of the confusion which he might have received thereby he doth not forbear at all to instruct him sufficiently and make him conceive all that horrour wherein he ought to have these miserable Writers who seem principally to be composed to satiate their imagination with most enormous unheard of crimes Finally That which doth yet more justifie the design of the Author of these Morals and the manner wherein he handles these things is that now of a long time all these excesses which are herein rehearsed have been made publick by the Jesuits themselves who have caused them to be printed and sold and who have delivered them into the hands of an infinite of Religious persons and Directors of others not very clear sighted who think that they cannot better learn the Maxims of Christian Morality than in reading the most famous Authors of so celebrated a Society So that it will be of very great importance to make the corruptions of these Authors so known that no man may hereafter be mistaken in them And this cannot be better executed than by proposing those very same Maxims as impious and detestable which the Jesuits have propounded in their Books as good and safe this alone being sufficient to work effects altogether contrary in mens spirits as may be seen in the Example of Escobar who having been imprinted thirty nine times as a very good Book hath been now imprinted the fortieth time as one of the most mischievous Books in the whole World which hath so wrought that whereas the first thirty nine Editions were very prejudicial to the Church this fortieth hath been very beneficial unto it And the same we believe may happen in the publication of these Morals which the alone zeal and love of the purity of the Morality of Jesus Christ hath induced us to make publick It is hoped that this Publication will prevail to remove the scandal which the Jesuits have caused from the Church to which they gave place to the Hereticks to attribute those Opinions for which it hath the greatest horrour and that these unhappy persons who are separated from its communion shall not impute them unto it any more after so publick a disavowing of these Maxims altogether abominable as they are not giving them yet any advantage above the Jesuits themselves because it is not hard to make appear that the Principles of their Morality are no less corrupted nor pernicious than those of these Fathers It is hoped that this Publication will stir up the Pastors of the Church to renew the zeal which they have already made appear against the Authors of so many corruptions that they will interdict in their Diocesses the reading of these Books that they will take the ways which the Sacred Canons have prescribed them 2 Tim. 2.17 to repress so pernicious Novelties and that they will hinder them that they spread not over mens spirits as Gangrenes which waste and corrupt by little and little that which was sound and that they will fear lest while they dissemble these excesses and pass by those who are their Authors they make themselves culpable of the loss of a great number of Souls which these blind Guides seduce and train along with them into the pit We despair not even of the Jesuits themselves that they also may draw from thence the advantage which this Author hath earnestly desired to procure them For although it seems by their conduct which they have hitherto held herein that they are resolved to persevere in maintaining these damnable Maxims and to despise the wholesom advertisements which the whole Church hath given them to abandon them yet notwithstanding it may be said that if they have used them in this sort it hath been perhaps because they were not yet sufficiently convinced of the justice of the reproaches which have been cast on them and that some secret interest hath hindred them from perceiving them in the Writings of those whom they looked upon as their Adversaries But now that a person whom they cannot suspect and who hath never been engaged against them hath presented unto them so distinctly the concatenation of the Maxims
it self If these questions be Problematick that is to say doubtful and probable It is probable that a man may save himself by the powers of Nature only because a man may demand Baptism upon the last gasp of life by a purely humane motive according to that probable opinion which maintains that this motive is sufficient After so gross an errour against Faith that which the same Author saith concerning Witnesses will seem little considerable but yet I cannot omit it because it shews that the Jesuits accommodations go so far as to give Hereticks a part in the Ceremonies of the Church He proposes this Question 2 Quando Gatholicus reperiri non pâ—test qui soiceptoris in baptismo munus â—beat haereticus potest non porest adnâ—…tri When we cannot find a Catholick to be a witness may we take an Heretick He answers 3 Fateor primam sententiam satis esse probabilem qula esto regulariter in quantum est haereticus non tamen est simpliciter docendi alumnum incapex tum qula potest ad fidem converti cum opus sit alumnum instruere tum quia licet in haeresi perseveret fidem Caâ—nolicam docere poterit sicuti potest peccator concionator persuadere virtuâ—em licet ipse sit à virtute alienus ergo potest Patrinus haereticus levando de facro fonte bapâ—ismatum legitimam promittere instructionem quod maximè verum baber si Sacerdos ut debet parences ac patrinum de obligatione iâ— struendi baptizatum in fide Catholica per baptismum suscepta moneat Escobar tom 2. lib. 11. Probl. 130. That the opinion which permits this for which he cites Layman appears unto him probable enough for saith he this Heretick may be converted unto the Faith and though be be not converted at all he may teach the Catholick Religion to his Godâ—son as a vicious Preacher may perswade unto vertue So an Heretical God-father receiving a Child from the Font may promise to instruct him as he ought Which is especially true if the Priest do admonish as he ought the Father and God-father of their obligation to instruct him that is baptized in the Catholick Faith which he hath received by Baptism We must have very much faith or rather none at all and as little reason to believe and imagine that the Faithful may be made believe that an Heretick who hath lost the faith may be received and be proper to communicate it to an infant in Baptism so that the Church may or ought receive him as a surety of the promises which the infant is to make by his mouth who hath satisfified his own and that this is not to treat unworthily the most holy things and to prophane them to commit them to an excommunicated person Tambourin may pretend himself exempt from one part of this reproach because he maintains 1 Probabilius est ex Sanch. l. 4. m. d. c. 1. n. ult in baptismo nullum fiâ—…i votum aut promissionem de obedientia fidei Tamb. meth confess lib. 2. cap. 2. That it is more probable that in Baptism there is no vow nor promise made to obey the Faith But I know not whether he pretend that those who receive Baptism or those who answer for them to whom it is administred do therein make use of the Art of Aequivocations For there is no other means not to oblige ones self to obey the Faith when one protests solemnly to believe in God and for ever renounce the Devil his Works and Pomps II. POINT That the Jesuits divert the Faithful from Confirmation by discharging them from the Obligation to receive it AS for what concerns Confirmation Filliutius treating of the Obligation to receive it saith 2 Olim â—b frequentes persecutiones videtur fuisse praeceptum divinum obligans vel semel in vita vel in neeâ—sitate confessionis fidei habita opportunitate That it seems that heretofore because of the Persecutions which then were frequent there was a Commandment from God which obliged to receive this Sacrament once in the time of life or at least when there happened any necessity of confessing the Faith if convenience were had for it He forbears not to say a little after that according to his advice 3 Cessante necessitate videtur expirasse praeceptum abrogatum consuetudine Filliut tom 1. mor. qq ir 3. c. 2. n. 40. 41. p 55. The necessity being past the Commandment hath been abrogated and extinguished by custom He believes then that custom that is to say the will and negligence of men is capable to abolish the Commands of God without regard to the protestation which the Son of God himself makes in the Gospel that Heaven and Earth may change sooner than his Word and that one sole letter or single point of the Law shall never be defaced The Jesuits may well despise this Word and craze this Law out of their Writings and out of their Books but it shall abide eternally in the Book of God which is the Gospel who shall condemn them at the day of Judgment who have taught as well as those who have done contrary to what he saith The Errour of this Jesuit is a Principle for the destruction of the Gospel and all Religion For if customs of men and length of time may destroy one Commandment of God it may also destroy all the rest and Christian Religion shall depend upon the times and the fancies of men it shall be altogether voluntary and temporal and not eternal and founded on the unmoveable Rock of Gods Will but on the moveable sand of mans But as these people play with the Word and Commandments of God making them depend on the Creatures they also sport themselves with their own opinions by overturning them as soon as they have establisht them For the same Filliutius who acknowledges that there was at the beginning in the Church a divine Command to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation testifies a little after that there was never any such So there is nothing certain according to these Doctors neither in the divine Law and Word nor in their own imaginations 4 Dico 3. probâ—bile esse per se loquendo non fuisse daâ—um pâ—aeceptum hujus Sacramenti Ibid. n. 42. I say in the third place saith he that speaking absolutely it is probable that there never was any Precept to receive this Sacrament He speaks generally of any Commandment whatsoever acknowledging none neither from God nor the Church for the Sacrament of Confirmation making us see also that the Doctrine of the English Jesuits who took away all fort of obligation to receive this Sacrament came not from themselves only but from the Spirit and School of their Society as well as the other errours of their Books condemned by the Faculty of Paris and by the Authority of the Clergy of France Escobar discovers yet more clearly this Doctrine of his Company in his Problems amongst