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 'ii^^'^i^^^
 
 CASES OF CONSCIENCE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS : 
 
 dTor tl)c U^t of tf)t Eat'tp. 
 
 EXTRACTED FROM THE MORAL THEOLOGY OF THE 
 ROMISH CLERGY. 
 
 By pascal 
 
 THE YOUNGER. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 THOMAS BOSWORTH, 215 REGENT STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLI.
 
 LONDON : 
 Printed by G Babclat, Castle St. Leicester Sq.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS ..... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CODE OF LAWS . . . . . .4 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN ITS RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD . 8 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PRACTICAL MORALITY . . . . .14 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWER ... 35 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS TAUGHT TO THE LAITY 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BLIND OBEDIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COMFORT ON DEATH-BEDS 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ROME, THE GREAT INCORPORATED ENEMY OF MAN 
 
 38 
 
 48 
 
 53 
 
 61
 
 , ujucT
 
 CASES OF CONSCIENCE; 
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS, FOR THE USE OF THE LAITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 It is well known that the Jesuits were established as a new sect 
 in 1538, by Ignatius Loyola, in order expressly to destroy Pro- 
 testantism. The Pope Paul III. at first refused to sanction the 
 new society ; but when Loyola added the additional vow of 
 absolute obedience to the Pope, he issued a bull to establish it, 
 and Loyola was made General of the Order. The implicit obe- 
 dience which he offered to the Pope he exacted from all below 
 him, so that no Jesuit can have any will of his own, but is bound 
 to go anywhere, or do anything, that his superior commands, 
 without questioning its propriety, or hesitating to fulfil the 
 order. 
 
 The maxims which the new society promulgated were con- 
 demned by the Faculty of Theology at Paris, in 1554, "as 
 dangerous to all that concerned the faith, calculated to disturb 
 the peace of the Church, to overturn the monastic order, and 
 more fit to destroy than to build it up." 
 
 In 1558, Bronswell, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of 
 Dublin, said, " There is a fraternity which has lately arisen, called 
 the Jesuits, who will seduce many : who acting, for the most 
 part, like the Scribes and Pharisees, will strive to overturn the 
 truth : they will go near to accomplish their object, for they 
 transform themselves into various shapes : among Pagans they 
 wiU be Pagans; among atheists, atheists; Jews among Jews; 
 reformers among reformers ; for the sole purpose of discovering 
 your intentions, your hearts, your desires." — Varran's Annals of 
 Ireland, 1785. 
 
 B
 
 ti CASES OF conscience; OR; 
 
 In less than fifty years the Jesuits had spread over all the 
 earth, and in 1710 they had 59 houses of probation, 340 re- 
 sidences, 613 colleges, 200 missions, 157 seminaries, and 20,000 
 members. 
 
 Pasquier, in 1564, warned his Roman Catholic brethren, 
 that the Jesuits would subvert all governments except their own. 
 
 In 1571, Arius Montanus wrote from Antwerp to Phihp II., 
 warning him to forbid any Jesuit being confessor to a governor ; 
 for he says, " I call God to witness, from my certain knowledge 
 of them, that this advice is of the utmost importance." 
 
 In 1565 the Council of Salamanca decreed, for their abomin- 
 ations as Flagellants, and the heinousness of their conduct, that 
 they should be deprived of their colleges at Milan [Histoire des 
 Religieux de la Comj)agnie de Jesus, lib. vi. 36 and 86). Car- 
 dinal Bonomeo, who had one of them for his confessor, found 
 that he was a wretch addicted to the most infamous crimes, as 
 well as the rest of them in the College of Braida, and he took it 
 from them. 
 
 In 1572 they instigated Catherine of Medicis, and her son, 
 Charles IX., to murder 30,000 Protestants on the Feast of 
 St. Bartholomew. 
 
 In 1596 they rendered themselves so odious at Riga, that 
 that town rose up as one man to turn them out. 
 
 The faculty of Theology at Paris complained against them to 
 Pope Gregory XIII. 
 
 In 1563 the Jesuits headed the league of France, and Sa- 
 mier, a Jesuit, was employed to excite Catholic princes against 
 Henry III. of France. The Pope furnished him with money 
 for this end, and a treaty was made between Philip II. of Spain 
 and the Duke of Guise, in 1584, to place Cardinal de Bourbon 
 on the throne on the death of Henry III., and exclude Henry IV. 
 as a Protestant. Clement received his instructions from them, 
 and assassinated Henry III. in 1589. In the Lettres Annuelles 
 of that year they declared this assassination to be by a miracle, 
 because it happened on the anniversary of their expulsion from 
 Bourdeaux, which he had ordered in consequence of a conspiracy 
 detected amongst them. Pope Sixtus V. sent Cardinal Cajetan, 
 with the Jesuits Bellarmine and Tyrrius, to insist upon having 
 a Popish king : and under the guidance of the Jesuits Varade, 
 Gueret, Guignard, and D'Aubigny, Barriere, Chartel, and Ra- 
 vaillac, were prepared as assassins. The first confessed that 
 Varade, the rector of the Jesuits, urged him, gave him abso- 
 lution and the sacrament : on this, all the clergy, except the 
 Jesuits, took an oath of fidelity to the king. 
 
 In 1594, the University of Paris passed an unanimous de- 
 cree against the Jesuits, as corrupters of youth, disturberar of
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 3 
 
 the public peace, and enemies of king and state; and in 1595, 
 Chatel attempted to assassinate the king at the instigation of 
 Gueret : and in Guignard^s handwriting, in the Jesuits' college, 
 was found the proof of his guilt, for which he was condemned to 
 death. 
 
 The Jesuits, although ordered to leave the country, remained 
 in secular clothes ; and in 1597 all persons were forbidden to 
 harbour them. 
 
 Le Bel, a Jesuit, published a book commending the assassin- 
 ation of Henry III.; and Francis Jacob, another Jesuit, boasted 
 that he would have done so. Mariana published another book 
 to prove the lawfulness of killing heretical kings ; and in 1610 
 the Jesuit Aubigny instigated Ravaillac to kill King Henry IV. 
 Jouvenci, the Jesuit, denied the justice of executing those as- 
 sassins, and called Guignard a hero. 
 
 Other assassins were afterwards instigated by them in the 
 same way. 
 
 The Dominicans and Jansenists charged Ricci, an Italian 
 Jesuit, with having allowed the Chinese converts to retain their 
 Pagan rites, for which the Jesuits were condemned by Pope In- 
 nocent X. in 1645; but they were afterwards approved of by Pope 
 Alexander VII. The Dominicans again attacked them in 1661 
 and 1674, under Pope Innocent XI. ; and the Jesuits were 
 again condemned by Clement XI. in 1704, but his edict was 
 mitigated in 1715. 
 
 Pascal attacked their wicked doctrines, respecting evading 
 oaths and giving permission to sin, in his Provincial Letters, 
 which the Jesuits could not answer, but had interest enough to 
 procure the book being burned. Perrault published another 
 book, containing extracts from their writings ; and Arnaud did 
 so likewise. 
 
 Complaints being made against them led to a searching of 
 their houses, when e\ddence was found of the extent of their 
 wealth in lauds, which exceeded all belief, and of theii- ultimate 
 object being to become "governors and rulers of the world." 
 In 1774, Benedict XIV. condemned their missions. They sti- 
 mulated assassins against the king in 1757: in 1755 the King 
 of Portugal was assassinated, of which they were accused, and 
 they were banished from that kingdom in 1759. They were 
 expelled from France in 1764; from Spain and Naples in 1767; 
 and the Order was suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV., 
 whom they subsequently poisoned. 
 
 This infamous Order was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. 
 
 The doctrines of the Jesuits were always denounced by the 
 rest of the Roman Catholics ; while the Jesuits, as above appears, 
 have sometimes been supported, and sometimes suppressed, by
 
 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 various Popes. When, however, Pius IX., having turned re- 
 former, was driven from Rome by the revolutionists whom he 
 had invited there from all the world, and had arrived at Capua, 
 the Jesuits came to him, and told him his position was a judg- 
 ment upon him for having thought that the Church could want 
 mending ; and they so terrified him that they obtained complete 
 possession over him. The Pope is now a mere tool in their 
 hands, and the Papacy is absorbed in Jesuitism. Thus the 
 doctrines which have been rejected hitherto by the whole 
 Christian world, are now become the doctrines of the Roman 
 sect ; and it is the object of the present work to give a short 
 account of some of the most important, particularly those that 
 are most likely to be prejudicial to the interests of the public in 
 this country. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CODE OF LAWS. 
 
 The Moral Theology of the Jesuit, Herman Busembaum, was 
 first published in Westphalia, 1645. The success of the work, 
 in the palmy days of Jesuitism, was immense. In 1770 more 
 than 200 editions had been printed. But, in the meantime, this 
 very success proved well-nigh fatal, not only to the I'cputation, 
 but to the existence of the Jesuits. Busembaum and his com- 
 mentators furnished the arms with which people, parliaments, 
 and kings struck that great enemy of conscience and of hu- 
 man society, the Company itself, whose name is since be- 
 come the vilest synonym of infamy. In vain confidence of 
 strength, it had denounced, by the mouths of its great apos- 
 tles, all organisations of human government except its own; 
 and kings, as well as common men, were told that their lives 
 depended on the judgment of any probabilist confessor ; that 
 sentence of assassination might be carried into execution any day 
 in any year, and the avowed author of the death be proclaimed, 
 in gorgeous folios, -Sternum patriae dec us. In vain the 
 crafty general of the " Military Company of Jesus," which was 
 to subjugate and govern the world, sought to appease those 
 whom, at that time, it was alone thought worth while to ap- 
 pease — the reigning sovereigns of Europe, by expunging a regi- 
 cidal proposition. In the instinct of self-preservation from the 
 most formidable, widest, and most illustrious conspiracy the world 
 had ever seen, king and people were too closely united to be se- 
 parated by any hollow promises of those whose first obligation is
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 
 
 that of treachery, and by whom an oath had been stripped of 
 all its sanctity. Busembaum's works, together with those of 
 his commentator, were ordered to be burnt by the hangman's 
 hand in the different cities of France, and the Society of Jesuits 
 was suppressed throughout that kingdom ; a society, as its apo- 
 logists boasted, approved by nine-and-twenty popes, confirmed 
 by the Council of Trent, and which it had been forbidden to 
 attack in word even, under penalty of damnation ("quod vel 
 solum verbo aut scripto aliquo impugnare vetitum severissime 
 fuerat, anathematis poena in legis contemptores constituta"). 
 
 The parliament of France had only anticipated the see of 
 Rome, and Clement XIV., in a bull which does the Popedom more 
 honour than any that had ever before appeared, solemnly con- 
 demned the Society as an irreconcileable enemy to the well-being 
 of Christendom. But Jesuitism would not have been Jesuitism 
 if it had obeyed any authority, human or divine. An invisible 
 hand at once struck down the brave Reformer Pontiff who had 
 dared attempt to strike down them ; and the Jesuits then in- 
 trigued against Europe in secret, instead of corrupting it openly. 
 The body was laid out, and seemed a corpse, but animation was 
 not for a moment suspended; and when, in a state of repose 
 from the awful reign of anarchy and terror which they them- 
 selves had brought about, kings of the old race again appeared 
 upon the scene, they found a Pope, who had climbed to the throne 
 by democratic sermons, ready to encourage them to raise anew 
 the old Prretorian army of Loyola, and they consented to reign 
 by sufferance of the priests upon condition of their subjugation 
 of the people. 
 
 The treaty made ; the Jesuits restored triumphant masters 
 of Pius VII., of Rome, and of the Papal subjects throughout the 
 world, it was a point of honour to redintegrate their great apostle 
 of iniquity. The name itself of Busembaum still stank too 
 strongly in the nostrils, even of Popedom, to be openly brought 
 forward. And an obscure Neapolitan bishop was chosen as the 
 means of at once wiping out the late ignominy, and of estab- 
 lishing more solidly and more broadly the old dominion of 
 Jesuitism. The choice of an instrument was made with the 
 wisdom of the elder serpent. Simple, pious, zealous, but at 
 the same time credulous and imaginative to the verge of mad- 
 ness, Alfonso Liguori was not only not a Jesuit, but aspired to 
 be the founder of a new order. The mighty Jesuits became 
 the patrons of Liguori's rising congregation ; and Liguori be- 
 came their slave. The rugged road by which they led their 
 victim to canonization, and the patient, nay cheerful courage 
 with which he walked it, may be found in any life of St. 
 Alfonso. He died in 1787. Breaking through the prudent
 
 b CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR^ 
 
 rules of the Church of Rome, the Jesuits beatified him, by the 
 hands of the obedient Pius, in less than thirty years after his 
 death. But hei-e the crafty process stopped for an interval. 
 The costly honours of saint-hood were not indulged in until the 
 merit and the worth of Liguori to the Society of Jesus were 
 placed beyond a doubt. Again an instrument was necessary, — 
 not a Jesuit ; and some of my readers may remember the good, 
 weak, vain Duke de Rohan. The death of his duchess opened 
 for him in his grief the consolation of sacrificing himself to the 
 priesthood. The rank of Archbishop and Cardinal followed as 
 of course. But the amiable devotion which consists in striving 
 to think one's self better than other men, was not diminished 
 by these honours ; and Cardinal de Rohan added the influence 
 of his new station, and a life of submission to his directors, to 
 that of an ancient dukedom. In the eagerness of his new zeal 
 he readily consented to do the work required, and successfully ; 
 for dating, like his ignoble rival in vain-glory, out of the Flami- 
 nian Gate, on the 5th day of July, 1831, he wrote to his faith- 
 ful subjects of the province of Besancon that the Church of 
 Rome having declared, that in all the writings of Liguori there 
 was not one word that deserved censure, they could and ought 
 to adopt them, throwing aside all doubt upon the matter.* 
 
 The canonization of Liguori was now proceeded with in 
 safety. The year 1839 saw him worshipped on the altars of 
 the Church of Rome ; and the work which, by a superfluity 
 of exuberant superchery was still printed in 1840, as Com- 
 pendium Theologice moralis S. Alph. de Ligorio, is in 1846 
 printed by the Propaganda press as the " Medulla Theologi^ 
 MORALIS Her. Busembaum ;" but without losing the indelible 
 stamp of Liguori^s infallibility ! 
 
 The decree of the Church of Rome (given in ignorance, and 
 through fraud it may be), establishing for ever the morality of 
 Busembaum and Company, and the subsequent canonizations of 
 their creature Liguori, have made Jesuitism and Rome identical, 
 and begun a new and darker era in the history ofthisworld^s de- 
 ceivableness, and of the working of the great mystery of iniquity. 
 
 The system of Busembaum, in itself, was perfect. The arch- 
 fiend himself could not find one malignant link wanting in the 
 chain thus ably wrought to bind men to his service in the name 
 of God. All it now wanted was superadded obligation. It was 
 not yet unlawful for a Romanist to have a conscience. A brave 
 Papist might still stand out and perseveringly act according to 
 his own and man's universal sense of right and wrong. He 
 might stiU believe an oath for ever binding ; call a lie a lie ; and 
 hold every black deed black. 
 
 * " Doctrina quae nihil censura dignum continet."
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 7 
 
 Again an instrument was needed, but of a less scrupulous 
 sort than poor Liguori or De Rohan. The question now was, 
 Where could be found, out of the Jesuit ranks, a name of weight 
 to dare proclaim the obligation for every individual of the 
 "faithful" to follow, not his priest's conscience, but his direction; 
 which, be it known, Liguori says, may be against his (the 
 priest's) conscience ? Reckless Ireland disputes with Spain the 
 honour of furnishing to England the sin of foul Jesuit casuistry. 
 
 There was living iu Rome a prelate, not yet a bishop, whose 
 days of laborious study seemed stolen from a dream. As early 
 as 1836 the humble monsignore was put upon the track he was 
 to follow. He subsequently promised that another Farnesian 
 Gesu should rise in London, and the armies of Loyola be 
 mighty in England as at Rome. The stern silence of the 
 Dutch General of the Jesuits still pronounced " non basta" 
 plainer than words ; and the required proposition was written 
 down and printed, and made juris publici. " In the Catholic 
 Church no one is ever allowed to trust himself in spiritual mat- 
 ters. The Sovereign Pontiff is obliged to submit himself to the 
 direction of another in whatever concerns his own soul." — Pre- 
 face to the Exercises of St. Ignatius, hy Cardinal Wiseman. To 
 this must be added from the work itself, p. 180, — "That we 
 may in all things attain the truth, that we may not err in any 
 thing, we ought ever to hold it as a fixed principle, that what I 
 see white, I believe to be black, if the Hierarchical Church so 
 define it to be." Abject slavery to priestcraft cannot sink 
 lower than this : the degradation of the laity is complete. Tliree 
 lines were enough to hold it, and it was stufi'ed into an obscure 
 comer of a small ascetic work, there to have ripened unheard of 
 into a common doctrine, but for the public exposure in the 
 House of Commons. But, in the meantime, what was written was 
 written ; and he that wrote the precious lines must needs be 
 reputed learned, pious, wise. Rank, too, must add its authority 
 to make the new doctrine more than probable; and so the 
 simple priest of the Collegio luglese and of the Propaganda 
 is changed into Nicholas, Cardinal Wiseman, issuing from 
 the Flaminian Gate, in tears of ecstasy to think of the wives 
 and daughters of peers of England gazing in admiration on 
 his scarlet habiliments, and kissing, on their knees, his con- 
 descending hand. 
 
 Far less amiable and far deeper, if not more sincere, was the 
 joy of those who, at so little cost, had made him happy. For 
 more than three hundred years it had been their nil dulcius 
 
 " Certare ingenio, contendere mobilitate 
 Nodes atque dies niii pro'ifante labore 
 Ad summas emergere opes, rerumqne potiri."
 
 8 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 lo triumphe ! God is great, and Loyola is His prophet. 
 Now 
 
 " pietasque fidesque 
 Destituunt, moresque malos sperare relictum est." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHURCH OP ROME IN ITS RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD. 
 
 It is a fundamental doctrine of the Romanists, that the mys- 
 tical body of Christ, like the human body, is a visible creation 
 of God, and that, as the head is Lord of the natural body, so the 
 Pope is Lord of this supernatural body — the Church.* The 
 Church is composed of all the baptized, as a body is composed 
 of its members ;t and whether represented by national Churches 
 or by general Councils is subject always, and in all places, to 
 its Supreme Head. J This head is called Christ's Vicar, and 
 altogether infallible in controversies of faith and morals. § The 
 keys of Heaven and Hell belong to him. Urbs et orhis, Rome 
 and the world, are subject to him ; and from his Apostolic throne 
 are sent the Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops, that are to 
 GOVERN ubique terrarum in his name, and as his delegates. || 
 His dispensations release the baptized in this world from the 
 most sacred obligations, even though imposed by the law of 
 God;^ and they extend to the dead as well as to the living, 
 
 * Catechism of the Council of Trent. 
 
 f " Infideles non baptizati, etiam catechumeni, non obligantur praceptis 
 Ecclesice, obligantur tamen hteretici, et alii, qui per baptismum Ecclesiam sunt 
 subjecti." — LiGUORi, i. 154. " Heretics and schismatics no more belong to the 
 Church than a deserter belongs to the army which he has abandoned, but that 
 does not make them the less under the power of the Church, nor prevent her 
 from judging them, punishing them, and smiting them with anathema." — 
 Catechism of the Council of Trent. 
 
 X " Sententia, cui subscribimus, tenet Papain non dnbium semper esse supra 
 concilium generate, sive supra omnes Ecclesias, etiam collective sumptas, et hanc 
 tuentur S. Thomas et alii nostri auctores communiter.^^ — Liguori, i. 123. 
 
 § " Communis sententia, cui nos subscribimiis, est, quod, cum Papa loquitur 
 tanquam doctor universalis definiens ex cathedra, nempe ex potestate suprema, 
 tradita Petro docendi Ecclesiam, tunc dicimus, omnino infallibilem esse. 
 Hanc sententiam tuentur Divus Thomas et comnmniter reliqui theologi omnes." 
 —Ibid. i. 110. 
 
 II Council of Trent, passim. 
 
 •[[ " Potestas dispensandi convenit omnibus preelatis, qui habent jurisdictionem 
 inforo externa, vel privilegium. Unde dispensare possunt sequentes ; I. Papa, 
 in respectu omnium fidelium, in omnibtisvotis. II. Episcopus, in respeclu suorum 
 subditorum. III. Prcelati regulares exempli, respectu suorum religiosorum et 
 novitiorum : idque circa vota qua vel in seculo, vel in novitiatufecerunt." — 
 Liguori, iv. 256. 
 
 " Certum est posse Pontificem et pralatos dispensare in votis, cum in his 
 gerant vicem Dei." — Ibid. i. 189. 
 
 " Queeritur an Papa in rebus juris divini, possit unquam dispensare ? In
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 9 
 
 diminishing their just tormeuts beyond the grave by forty days, 
 or forty thousand years,* as in vicarious omnipotence he largely 
 or sparingly distributes his Indulgences. 
 
 Once incorporated in this visible body, the relationship of a 
 member to the head can never be dissolved. Rome pronounces 
 Anathema on all who dare claim for any baptized person the 
 right to choose whether or no they will be subject to all her 
 precepts, written or un^^Titten.t Wherever is to be found one 
 of her stoled priests, there js erected " the tribunal, before 
 which " all who are of the age to sin, and would save their souls 
 alive, must "be placed as criminals; that, by the sentence of 
 the priest, they may be freed from their sins committed. ^^ J 
 
 And what more just than that he who adjusts men^s fate in 
 the next world should direct their actions in this ? He that is 
 lord of the soul is lord of the body, as the Patriarch reminded 
 the elder Andronicus, when that emperor complained of his 
 priestly confusion of temporal and spiritual. No Pope has ever 
 renounced, or ever can renounce, the right he claims to absolve 
 his subjects from all earthly allegiance. § Nor can any Pope 
 ever renounce for himself, or for his delegates, the right of tem- 
 poral as well as spii'itual government. A proposition to that 
 effect was solemnly condemned, not sixty years ago, by the 
 Pope Pius VI., in his famous Constitution, Auctorem fidei. \\ 
 
 Emperor or Parliament may, indeed, as well as the Pope, 
 
 Us in quibusjus divinum ortum habet a voluntate humana, prout in votis etjura- 
 mentis, cerium est apud omnes habere Papam facultatem dispensandi. In iis 
 qvxB sunt de absoluto jure divino, valde probabiliter, dicuiit Suarez et alii plures, 
 posse Pontificem in aliquo casu particulari non dispensare, sed declarare , quod jus 
 divinum non ohliget." — Liguori, vi. 1119. 
 
 " Pontifex, sine justa causa, no)i potest dispensare in lege Dei. In dubio de 
 valore dispensationis, validam censeri. Dispensatio potest impetrari non tantum 
 pro ignorante, sed etiam invito." — Busembaum, i. 2; iv. 
 
 * See any Roman Prayer-Book. 
 
 t " If any one saith, that the baptized are so freed from all the precepts, whether 
 written or transmitted, of holy Church, in such wise that they are not bound to 
 observe them, unless they have chosen, of their own accord, to submit themselves 
 thereunto ; let him be anathema." — Council of Trent, sess. vii. can. 8. 
 
 + " If those whom Christ our Lord has once, by the laver of baptism, made 
 the members of his own body, should afterwards have defiled themselves by any 
 crime, he would have them be placed as criminals before this Tribunal of Penance ; 
 that by the sentence of the priests they might be freed, not once, but as often as, 
 being penitent, they should flee thereunto, from their sins committed." — Council 
 of Trent, sess. xiv. c. 2. 
 
 § See note \, p. 8. 
 
 II "... . omnibus plene et mature consideratio, complures ex actis et 
 decretis memorata Synodi (Pistoriensis) prtepositiones , doctrinas, sententias, sive 
 expresse traditas sive per ambiguitatem insinuatas, suis cuique appositis notis et 
 censuris, damnandas et reprobandas censuimus, prout hac nostra perpetuo vali- 
 ttira constitutione damnamus et reprobamus. 
 
 " Sunt autem qu(e sequuntur : 
 
 "4. Propositio qffirmans, abusum fore auctoritatis Ecclesiae, transferendo illam 
 ultra limites doctrinse ac morum, et earn extendendo ad res exteriores et per vim
 
 10 CASES OF CONSCIENCE J OR, 
 
 make laws, and command them to be obeyed. But to the right 
 which they claim in common, of enforcing them by present 
 punishments, the Pope adds the awful prerogative of jurisdiction 
 in the world to come. 
 
 By the side of such, so imposingly divine, so ubiquitous, so 
 omnipotent an organisation, once recognised, the strongest 
 human government is but as a child at play, ludihrium verius 
 quam comes. A polity ordained, constructed, kept up by the 
 Almighty, with his appointed Vicar for its head, must stand 
 alone. When he, the Vice-God, " sitteth upon the circle of the 
 earth," " the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers," " the 
 princes are brought to nothing, the judges of the earth are made 
 as vanity." 
 
 No man understood this clear conclusion better than the 
 great Jesuit Mariana. Kings might dream of rights divine. 
 Priests only are of God. For the rest of rulers, their authority 
 all " is of the earth, earthy." They are raised up by the people, 
 and when their creator dooms them, the hand of any self- 
 oflfered executioner may lawfully carry out the sentence.* To 
 kill a king whose people have in their hearts condemned him, 
 is not assassination, no crime, but heroic virtue, provided only 
 
 exigendo id quod pendet a persuasione et conle ; turn etiam, raulto minus ad earn 
 pertinere exigere per vim exteriorem subjectionem suis decretis. 
 
 " Quatenus illis indeterminatis verbis extendendo ad res exteriores notet, velut 
 abtisum auctoritatis Ecclesiee, nsum ejus potestatis accepts a Deo, qua usi sunt 
 et ipsimet apostoli, in disciplina exteriore coustituenda et sancienda. — H^retica. 
 
 " 5. Qua parte insinuat, Ecclesiam non habere auctoritatem subjectionis suis 
 decretis ewigenda aliter quam per media qua pendant a persuasione ; quatenus 
 intendat Ecclesiam non habere collatam sibi a Deo potestatem non solum di- 
 riyendi per consilia et suasiones, sed etiam jubendi per leges, ac devios contuma- 
 cesque exteriore judicio ac salubribus poenis coercendi at que cogendi." — Ea; 
 Bened. XIV. brevi Ad assiduas. Inducens in systema alias damnatum 
 UT H.ERETICUM." — Dccr. de Fide, 13, 14. What the punishment considered 
 " salutaiy " for heresy is, is well known. A few other of those by which Rome, 
 in a decree '* de fide," declares her Divine right "to coerce and compel the 
 erring and contumacious," are enumerated by the Council of Trent. " In civil 
 causes, which in anyway belong to the ecclesiastical court, it shall be lawful for 
 the ecclesiastical judges, if they deem it expedient, to proceed against all persons 
 whatsoever, even laymen, and to terminate suits by means of pecuniary fines ; 
 which, by the very fact of being levied, shall be assigned to the pious places there 
 existing ; or by distress upon the goods, or arrest of the person, to be made 
 either by their own or by other officers, or even by deprivation of benefices, and 
 other remedies at law. But if the execution cannot be made in this way, either 
 upon the person or goods of the guilty, and there be contumacy towards the 
 judge, he may then, in addition to the other penalties, smite them also with the 
 
 sword of ANATHEMA, j/'^e think fit And every excommunicated person, 
 
 who, after the lawful monitions, does not repent, shall not only not be received 
 to the sacraments and to the communion, and intercourse (Jatniliaritatem) with 
 the faithful, but if, being bound with censures, he shall with obdurate heart remain 
 for a year in the defilement thereof, he mag even be proceeded against as suspected 
 of heresy'* (that is, if it be deemed expedient). — Sess. xxiv. de Ref. c. 3. 
 
 * " Principem, publicum hostem declaratum,ferro perimere eademfacultaa est 
 cuieunque private, qui, spe impunitatis abjecta, neglecta salute, in conatum juvandi
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 11 
 
 it be done without a fee.* Unreasoning Europe may be for- 
 given that it was startled and rose against this fearful develope- 
 ment of papal trath ; but, all honour to the Jesuits and their 
 General, the brave old Aquaviva : firm in conscious logic, they 
 outfaced Europe, and neither retracted nor condemned the doc- 
 trine. With the courtesy of greatness (the Jesuits then, as now, 
 reigned in Europe), Aquaviva regretted its publication, and 
 forbade it to be any longer taught in his Society ; but that was 
 the limit of conscientious concession. The doctrine was as true 
 as Popery, and just as old ; only the developements of Popery, 
 like other developements — those of steam, for instance — are 
 sometimes novel and unlooked for. 
 
 There is then, in the eyes of the truly " faithful,^^ but one 
 authority on earth that is of God ; but one polity, whose organ- 
 isation is dinnely sanctioned ; but one which is, of itself, legi- 
 timate. Christ^s Vicar, if Christ be God and the Pope be 
 recognised for his Vicar, is King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 It is his delegates alone that everywhere govern supreme de 
 jure, whoever may be de facto sovereign and usurp supremacy. 
 The first obedience of the baptized, the only obedience which no 
 power can absolve them from, is to God^s representative. They 
 belong to an empire, in the world indeed, and above it, but not 
 of it ; and it is only in the eyes of the benighted, that all men 
 are " members one of another." 
 
 Hence also flow developements that, perhaps, may startle 
 the unthinking. The natural obligations of truth are founded 
 on relationship. " Wherefore, putting away lying, speak eveiy 
 man truth \\ith his neighbour; for, we are members one of 
 another." But there is no relationship without society. There 
 
 rempublicam ingredi voluerit (p. 60) . Qui votispublicisfavens, eum perimere ten- 
 tavit, haud quaquam inique evjnfecisse existimabo (p. 60). Est qiddem majoris 
 virttitis et animi simultaiem aperte exercere, palam in hostem reipublic<e irniere ; 
 sed, non minoris prudenti(e,fraude et insidiis capfare, quod, sine motn, contingat 
 minori certe periculo publico atque privato (p. 65). Aut in apertam vim prorum- 
 pitur seditione facta, armisquepublicesumptis . . . . aut majore cautione,fraude 
 et ex insidiis pereunt , uno aut paucis in ejus caput occulte conjuratis, suoque peri- 
 culo, reipublicee in columitatem redimere satagentibus. Quid si evaserint ? Instar 
 magnorum heroum in omni vita siispiciuntur. Si secus accidat ; grata Superis, 
 grata hominibus Hostia cadunt, nobili conatu, ad omnem posteritatis illustrati 
 (p. 65)." Strange to say, Mariana (or the Order) had a scruple about making the 
 sovereign accessory to his own death, as being contrary to the doctrines of the 
 Church ; so that, if poison is used, he requires that exterius ab alio adhibeatur, 
 nihil adjurante eo qui perimendut est. But then, he suggests, some poison is of 
 such strength, ut sella eo aut vestis delibuta, vim interficiendi habeat (p. 67). — 
 De Rege et Regis institutione. The book was printed by royal permission, and, 
 with all the prescribed caution of the Order of Jesuits, declared to have been duly 
 examined by " grave and learned doctors," and sanctioned by the name, not only 
 of the local provincial, but by the visitor, or plenipotentiary of the general. 
 
 * "Non censeri assassinos, nisi qui homicidiwv patrant cum pacta, ut man- 
 dans aliquod temporale eis persolvat." — Liguori, iv. 364.
 
 12 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 are no members apart from the body they belong to. And 
 God's Vicar knows but one society, the Church of Rome ; but 
 one body, that of which be is the head. They only are mem- 
 bers one of another who are united together by the priest in 
 the confessional. The Council of Constance decreed that no 
 law^, divine or human, required faith or promises to be kept with 
 a heretic* Even the famous decree of the Council of Trent, 
 " conceding the public faith" to Protestants, made that conces- 
 sion only to those of Germany ; and in thus derogating from 
 the right and power of the Church of Rome, and notedly from 
 the canons of the Council of Constance and Sienna, that " sacro- 
 sanct Council" declared it did so only in that one regard, and 
 for that one occasion. f 
 
 As the "faithful" of the Church are thus separated wide 
 from the unfaithful (all heretics are infidels), J so are they 
 taught to cling more closely to each other. Thefts, adulteries, 
 murders, committed by the true believer, may be concealed, 
 even at the expense of what we call perjury ; § but the crime 
 even of secret heresy, nay, even of suspected heresy, stands in 
 another category. With a heretic all bonds are de jure broken ; 
 and it is only by a cursed necessity that they may be submitted 
 to de facto. No matter what may be the danger of the denun- 
 ciation, no matter what may be the fate of the denounced, the 
 brother is bound, as he hopes for heaven, to betray his brother, 
 
 * " Nee aliqua sihi fides aut jn-ofnissio, de jure naturali divino et humano, 
 fuerit in prajudicium Catholicce fidci obseivanda." — la the case of John 
 Huss. 
 
 t " Furthermore, it (the Council) promises in sincere and good faith, without 
 fraud or deceit, that the said synod will neither openly nor covertly seek for any 
 opportunity ; nor make use of, nor suffer any one else to make use of, any autho- 
 rity, power, right, or statute, privilege of laws or canons, or of any councils what- 
 soever, especially those of Constance and Sienna, under what form soever ex- 
 pressed (to the prejudice in any way of this public faith and most full security, 
 and of the public and free hearing, by this said synod granted to the above- 
 named), derogating from the aforesaid in this regard and for this occasion." — 
 Council of Trent, sess. xv. 
 
 X " Infidelitas contraria ex triplici modo repngnandi fidei est triplex, soil. 
 Pagaiiismus, Judceismus, et Hceresis." — Liguori, iii. 17. 
 
 § "Hie notandum, certum esse, quodjudici non legitime interroganti testis 
 nan tenetur fateri veritatem : tunc enim poterit licite respondere, etiam cum 
 juramenfo, 'crimen nescire,' ita tit teneatur illud ei manifesfare." — Ibid. v. 
 2G5. "Etiam legitime et juridice interrogatus, non teneris testari sequentibus 
 
 casis ///. Si ex testimonio, tibi, vel tuis, immineat notabile damnum : 
 
 .... Unde communiter non teneris testari contra consanguineum." — Ibid. 
 V. 268. 
 
 " Adde quod laid, in criminalibus, repelluntur a testificando contra clericos. 
 In aliquo tamen casu, possunt Episcopi uti laicis testibus probata vita ad pro- 
 banda crimina suorum irubditortim : e converso, clerici et religiosi posttmt testi- 
 ficari contra laicos, efsi ad hoc non possunt compelli a jndice scectilari. Ex 
 proffato tamen textu dare deducitur, non posse dericum testificari coram judice 
 saculari, sine licentia sui superioris." — Ibid, v, 261.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 13 
 
 the child his own father, the wife her husband.* And not only 
 is this denunciation of the nearest and dearest a bounden duty, 
 but the tierce zeal that would lead a man voluntarily to assist in 
 torturing the doomed heretic is, to this day, solemnly set forth 
 in the public liturgy of Rome as a blessed title to canonization ; 
 and year after year the people of Italy and Spain are summoned 
 to kneel before the altar of " St. Ferdinand of Castile," and 
 bless God for the model-king, who, whenever a heretic was 
 burnt, rushed forward, and with his royal hands heaped fagots 
 on the pile, which, as he believed, anticipated hell.f 
 
 In the mind of Rome, then, the " faithful" in this kingdom 
 are living, if not with their enemies, at least with God's. Queen, 
 Lords, and Commons, fall under scores of Tridentine anathemas, 
 each one equivalent to " greater excommunication." The want 
 of power it is alone, as Bellarmine owns frankly, that justifies 
 submission to them. But at least, inforo conscienti(S, ihtiv per- 
 nicious laws are no laws,| and all civil allegiance is only salvo 
 jure superioris,^ or until entirely dispensed from by some papal 
 delegate. One obligation only is ever undoubted, one allegi- 
 ance only and always unalterably due — that, namely, to God in 
 the person of his Vicar. One fountain of law only flows for ever 
 pure in the midst of error ; and, as of old, " the lips of the 
 priest kept knowledge, and the people were to seek the law at 
 his mouth," so now, in fulness of papal developement, all are 
 commanded to kneel at a priest's feet, not only for pardon of 
 the past, but for guidance and direction in whatever concerns 
 
 * " Quaritur, an sit obligatio demmtiandi htereticos cum periculo gravis 
 damni ? Distinguendum ; si demmtiandi sunt tantum suspecti df hceresi, ut sunt 
 sortilegi, blasphemi, confessarii sollicitantes, abutentes sacramentis, commune est 
 non esse tu)ic obligationem. Si vero demmtiandi sint haretici formates, etiam 
 excusare pericuJum gravis dcnnni, nisi illi dogmatizent, tenent Mazzochius, &(c. 
 Sed verius oppositum est tenendum. Ratio quia hceresis formalis de se serpit ut 
 cancer. 
 
 " Qvaritur, an teneaynur denuntiare conjimctos, quos hcereticos formates no- 
 verimus ? Fratres sine ullo dubio tenemur denurttiare : fiHos vero a denuntian- 
 tibtisparentibus, excusant,Abidensis et Simancho. Sicut ibidem Bona, Filliucceus, 
 Barbosa, i^'c. excusant etiam uxores a denuntiando viros suos. Sed dicendum 
 OMNES AD DEXUXTIATIOXEM TENERi ; ex cadcm rationc ut supra, qxiia hceresis 
 est pestis ita noxia." — Liguori, v. 249, 250. 
 
 t " In eo Regi.e virtutes emicuere, rnagnanimitas, dementia, justitia, et, prce 
 cteteris Catholicce fidei zelus, ejusque religiosi culius tuendi ac propagandi ardens 
 studiimi. Id prcestitit in primis Hcereticos insectando, qiios nullibi regnorum 
 suorum consist ere passus, propriis ijjse manibus ligna comburendis damnatis ad 
 rogum adre/iebat." — In Festo S. Ferdinand! III. die v. Junii : Breviarium Ro- 
 manum. Romse, 1843. 
 
 X " Quando lex evadit perniciosa non obligat .... Lex bono communi non 
 conveniens non est lex, neque obligationem inducit." — Liguori, vi. 612. 
 
 § " Conditiones quas in quovis promissorio juramento tacite subintelUgi na~ 
 tura et doctores docent. Tales autem sunt, 1. Si potero ; 2. Salvo jure stipe- 
 rioris ; 3. Nisi res notabiliter mutetur ; 4. Nisi obligatio tollatur." — Ibid. 
 vi. 187.
 
 14 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR^ 
 
 his soul, — that is, in every responsible action of his life.* What, 
 then, is the papal code according to which England is now to 
 be "governed" into another Ireland, by means of its Roman 
 bishops, and some forty or fifty scores of priests and their 
 " tribunals ? " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PRACTICAL MORALITY. 
 
 While the power of the Pope was acknowledged over " tem- 
 porals" as well as " spirituals," there was little need of any 
 separate code of morals. The famous ca nones concilii Illiberi- 
 tani hardly fill ten pages of a modern octavo volume. Before 
 the fifteenth century the works of casuists were few ; and mo- 
 dern Roman Doctors naively express their wonder at the few 
 and imperfect helps with which primitive and mediaeval con- 
 fessors managed the difficult administration of their " tribunals." 
 But it was in the sixteenth century, when Rome was threat- 
 ened by the spread of learning, and the breaking out of 
 intellect, that she sharpened her wits apace for the encounter 
 of these enemies. Then appeared Gerson and Bernardin of 
 Sienna. Then was invented, by Bartholomew Medina, that 
 light of the Dominicans, the grand doctrine of Probabilism ; 
 but its mighty application was undreamt of by the inventor, 
 and the friar-preachers allowed it to be snatched from them 
 by that new and ambitious order, which, but for Luther, Calvin, 
 Cranmer, and the like, might at this hour be governing Europe, 
 as the old Scythians governed their slaves, by precautionary 
 blindness unrelentingly inflicted. t The strong foundations laid 
 by these enemies of Rome and darkness, together with the 
 invention of paper and the art of printing, made a new and 
 well-digested casuistry indispensable. One-half of Europe was 
 openly in revolt, and the other of but doubtfully sincere adher- 
 ence. What armies and the treachery of princes could do was 
 done; but there still remained a great work for the Jesuits. 
 To conciliate civil governments by concordats which bound all 
 
 * " In the Catholic Church no one is ever allowed to trust himself in spiritual 
 matters. The Sovereign Pontiff is obliged to submit liimself to the direction of 
 another in whatever concerns his own soul." — N. Wiseman : Preface to " Exer- 
 cises of S. Iffnathis Loyola." 
 
 t If any one, at the time of entering the Society of the Jesuits, should, by a 
 special blessing, be ignorant of the heathen arts of reading and writing, it is 
 strictly forbidden by the Constitutions to rob him of so manifest a help to that 
 blind obedience which, in the eyes of Rome, constitutes Christian perfection .'
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 15 
 
 but herself; to maintain the " faithful" in their only legitimate 
 allegiance, and yet keep up a seeming loyalty to temporal sove- 
 reigns and a seeming submission to public conscience and the 
 laws of a common humanity, while she repudiated the authority 
 of both, was the task that Luther bequeathed to Home : and 
 Rome once and again has deputed the Jesuits to its fulfil- 
 ment. The plan which they adopted has been sketched already, 
 but to appreciate it rightly it must be looked at in detail, 
 and made clear by illustrations. 
 
 Luther never exercised his hostility to Rome more wisely or 
 more successfully than in attempting to re-establish the rights 
 of conscience. Not that the rights of conscience had ever yet 
 been directly impugned by Rome, but, like its duties, they had 
 fallen into very general desuetude ; partly from the proscription of 
 private judgment, and partly from the habitual annual reckoning 
 made in the confessional, to which reckoning doubtful, and, in- 
 deed, undoubtful cases, were easily postponed. Luther, however, 
 brought back throughout all Europe a disposition once more to 
 appeal to the long-forgotten moral sense of peoples and indi- 
 viduals. The evil was a fearful one for Rome. Northern 
 Europe was gone. Middle and Southern must follow, if this 
 King Conscience and the natural distinctions of right and wrong 
 were to get possession of men's minds. With Ignatius Loyola, 
 whom his idolaters may well call the Columbus of the Papal 
 Church, there was a remedy discovered. 
 
 Other founders of religious orders had only applied the 
 obligations of obedience to the things referred to in their own 
 rules and practised within the walls of their own convents. 
 They never dreamt of extending them to others than the mem- 
 bers of their own brotherhood. But the fascination which 
 Loyola threw around obedience, as shown not by monks within 
 their cells but by accomplished men in the world, was destined 
 to bring into captivity the whole body of the " faithful.''^ The 
 banner of obedience was set up as the great antagonistic prin- 
 ciple that was to make the power of Rome at once universal, 
 consistent, and indestructible. The new order, militarily or- 
 ganised, was to wage war not so much against sin as against 
 individual responsibility to individual or even to universal con- 
 science. Who that has a heart, who that has senses, but must 
 know himself and those around him liable to error ? How many 
 a time the wariest act before all doubt has been cast off, and 
 thus sin certainly in their uncertainty ! But obedience saves 
 from passion, saves from self-love, saves from doubt, saves from 
 sin, and yet gives larger, freer scope to every imaginable human 
 appetite. The wild denizen of the forest roams not so unre- 
 strained as he acts freely whose merit before God is not to
 
 16 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 feel the checks of his own reason, but to stop only when the 
 gentle curb of a confessor pulls him in. 
 
 The tirst use made by Loyola of the doctrine, and that use has 
 never been intermitted, was to bring into public exercise heroic 
 self-denial on the part of some of the Jesuits themselves and 
 their " directed." To deny the virtues or to doubt the sincerity 
 of men who, like Charles Borromeo, scrupled to behold his own 
 foot naked ; or of Louis Genzaga, whose modesty revolted from 
 looking his mother in the face, is ignorance or prejudice. Obe- 
 dience, indeed, as we shall see, may open the door wide to 
 almost inconceivable iniquity ; but it can make men go beyond 
 conception also in acts of faith, and hope, and charity. Such 
 virtue, however, must always be individual ; the mass of men, 
 in throwing off their conscience, do not sin less, but only more 
 contentedly. And this, though not what Loyola ever purposed 
 in himself, was the real secret of his success. His stupendous 
 " Constitutions" grasped at all believers. Once ensnared, they 
 were to be tethered close and fed on scanty herbage, or they 
 were to have hills and valleys for their pasture, just as was ex- 
 pedient, — ad diuturnitatem dominationis. The obedience that 
 was obtainable was all that was required. 
 
 " Tell me, Father Herbert," asks a timid girl, " if Charles 
 Percival should, should " 
 
 "If Charles Percival proposes for you, are you to accept 
 him ? is what you mean to say, my daughter. God has better 
 things in store for both of you, my daughter, — de si belles 
 ames !" And then he opens to her stores of mystical eloquence, 
 and tells her tales of St. Teresa and St. Valburge, and their 
 heavenly Bridegroom ; and points out the royal road of suffer- 
 ing, and sorrow, and self-forgetfulness that He walked in ; and 
 how He told us we must follow His exam pie,, and how He offered 
 glorious temptations of a hundred-fold reward to her that would 
 abandon father, and mother, and husband for Him ; and as the 
 priest sees her tears fall fast, and her eyes raised up to heaven, 
 he feels that the world and timid, misunderstood Charles Per- 
 cival are fading away before another vision. The heart, that 
 seemed rejected, has been offered up to God; and the reso- 
 lution is scarce made before it is changed to a solemn, secret 
 vow. 
 
 " May I tell mamma, or sister Mary ?" 
 
 " God forbid, my daughter ! St. Liguori forbids it most 
 expressly."* 
 
 * " Ea: his omnibus concluditur non solum non peccare filios religionem assn- 
 mentes parentibus inconsultis, sed, ordinarie loquendo, valde errare, si participes 
 eos /admit de szia rocatione, ob periculum cui se exponunt se ab ilia averti, et 
 hoc utique confirmatur ob exemplis tot sanctorum." — IjIGuori, v. 68.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 17 
 
 And the timid girl leaves him, ah'eady cut off from every 
 darling tie, before even the convent-gate has opened to receive 
 her. 
 
 " Father Herbert, I want a dispensation !" cries out beau- 
 tiful Mrs. Harry Veruon, as she flings into the study, not ten 
 minutes afterward. " I can't stand this fasting : I never have 
 fasted, and I am sure I never can.'' 
 
 " You never have fasted, Mrs. Vernon, because you were 
 only twenty-one last Christmas ; and how do you know if you 
 can fast or not, since Lent only began yesterday?" 
 
 " But papa has a dispensation, and mamma has a dispensa- 
 tion ! " 
 
 " Your father is nearly sixty, and suffers from dreadful 
 headaches ; and your mamma, you know, is quite too delicate, 
 since her long illness, to think of fasting. Now, nobody can 
 set up a claim of ill-health for you." 
 
 " AVell, Father Herbert, Vernon says he'll hate me if I 
 fast ; and I am quite sure he will, for he hates all thin women : 
 he says it is a penance to look at Cousin Fanny, and that he'd 
 rather sleep with Csesar than a bony woman. And what with 
 these musical soirees in Lent, and being for ever on horseback, 
 if I fast I am sure to be a skeleton. Father Herbert, I can't 
 stand it ; Vernon will quite hate me." 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Vernon, if your husband hates thin women 
 that alters the case, certainly ; for fasting does make some people 
 thin, and might make you so ; and St. Liguori says expressly 
 that a wife's fasting must be given up if it should make her 
 person ungrateful to her husband."* 
 
 " Thank you, thank you, dear Father Herbert ! Am I to do 
 anything to make up ?" 
 
 '' You may say three 'Hail, Marys!' every day, — not as a 
 condition, so have no scruples, but — as an act of humility that 
 you are denied the privilege of keeping this holy precept of the 
 Chui-ch." 
 
 Mrs. Harry Vernon is ready to kiss dear Father Herbert, 
 and would aluiost as soon think of giving up her husband as her 
 confessor ; but she is no less obedient than her broken-hearted 
 cousin, — dark, bright- eyed Fanny Fenton. 
 
 * ^^ Ob labores prtBcedentes et subsequentes posse aliquem excusari (ajejunio) 
 si probabiliter debilitatiis vel debilitandus putetur, ita ut officio rite fungi nequeat. 
 Ex eodem capite, doctores excusant conjugem, si debitum reddere non possit, 
 quando jejunat : uti et uxorem qua ob tnaciem non possit eum jejnnio se viro 
 gratam prcEstare." — Liguori, iv. 1031. Any one may be excused from fasting 
 on account of preceding or subsequent labours, if he shall think it probable that he 
 has been or will be weakened so that he cannot properly perform his duty. 
 Under the same head the doctors excuse a wife if she cannot fulfil the duties 
 of a married woman to her husband when she fasts. The rest is untranslate- 
 able ! ! 
 
 C
 
 18 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ', OR, 
 
 Within a day or two Lady Fitzjames comes in great tribu- 
 lation to the same dear Father Herbert (her husband is a 
 Protestant, and has forbidden her ever to 2:ive a shillins; to the 
 priests without his knowledge). 
 
 " Dear Mr. Herbert, I hope I did no wrong in giWng 
 Father Pizzicotto the 100/. for building his beautiful little 
 chapel at Long-hurleigh ? I am sure you told me Fitzjames 
 had no right to meddle ^^^th my charities." 
 
 " You did perfectly right, Lady Fitzjames ; Lord Fitzjames 
 is most unreasonable, and St. Liguori says distinctly you may 
 take without his knowledge at least the twentieth of his in- 
 come."* 
 
 " Oh, Fitzjames has a great deal more than 2000Z. a-year, 
 but he is in a great rage at something, and I think that wretched 
 Burnet has been telling him I gave money to a priest ; though 
 how she ever dreamt Father Pizzicotto was a priest puzzles me, 
 for he was dressed in a dandy, very dandy shooting-jacket, and 
 came as a tradesman, and I never should have known him, I do 
 believe, if his card had not been in his own handwriting. But 
 what am I to do ? AVhat am I to say, if Fitzjames asks me ? 
 I can't bear to lie to him, for I know he will believe every word 
 that I tell him ; and I can't bear to say that Burnet lies, for 
 really Burnet is truth itself, and goodness itself, though I know 
 she watches me." (Mrs. Burnet was the housekeeper that had 
 been given her by old Lady Mountjoy, Lord Fitzjames' mother.) 
 
 "Lady Fitzjames," says grave^ gentle Father Herbert, "if 
 Mrs. Burnet is half of what you think her she will be quite 
 ready — nay, grateful to God, to atone for her indiscretion bj^ 
 sacriticing her reputation to your good opinion with Lord Fitz- 
 james. But is there any possibihty of her pro\ing that you 
 gave the money to Father Pizzicotto ? " 
 
 " Oh, none in the world! — quite impossible ! — I took precious 
 care of that ! She only brought me my little 'WTiting-case, 
 which she knows I keep the money in." 
 
 " Then, Lady Fitzjames, you must put a good face on it. If 
 
 * " Uxor potest dare eleemosynam et munera secxmdum consuetudinem 
 aliarum tmilierum Uliiis loci et conditionis , etiamsi maritus eleemosynas omnes 
 Hit prohibeat. Ita Lugo, cvni Molina et eo aliis, docet posse earn, inscio 
 mariio dare rigesimam partem annui census, rel lucri, eo quod hoc pertimt ad 
 decentiam status {.') et tnaritus irrationahiliter sit invitus. Hinc etiam potest cum 
 Abigail moderatas eleemosx/nas dare tU mariti conversionem impetret, rel ne Deus 
 ilium puniat." — Liguori, iv. 540. A wife can give alms and presents according 
 to the custom of other women of her state and condition, althoatjh her husband 
 forbids her. Cardinal LvGO, Molina, and ten other doctors, teach that she mar, 
 without the knowledge of her husband, give a twentieth part of his annual income 
 or profits, for this pertains to the decency of her station, although the husband 
 be unreasonably unwilling. Hence also slie can, like Abigail, give moderate alms 
 (to the priest for masses) that she may eflFect the conversion of her husband, or 
 lest God should punish him.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 19 
 
 Mrs. Burnet has dared to say so, and Lord Fitzjames does ask 
 you, you must coolly say she lied, and deny the whole thing 
 flatly. I will read you what our great Saint says : " Provided a 
 crime has been committed secretly, so that there is no way to 
 prove it, the guilty person may then say that the accuser lies, 
 and may, moreover, reveal any secret sin of his against him as a 
 means of self-defence."* And lowering his voice into a whisper. 
 Father Herbert asks, "Did Lady Fitzjames ever suspect that the 
 little supposed orphan who died the week that she was married 
 was Mrs. Burnet's child V 
 
 " Burnet's child ! — beautiful little Annie, Burnet's child ! " 
 
 " Hist ! hist ! Even I never dreamt it. How I know it 
 there is no need to tell you; but I know it, though no other 
 living being does. Tell this to Lord Fitzjames, if it be necessary 
 to be delivered from Mrs. Burnet." 
 
 "But, poor Burnet ! what would become of her ? and she is 
 devoted to Fitzjames ! " 
 
 " The order of charity. Lady Fitzjames, puts our own honour 
 before another's, even supposing the rank equal, and no high 
 extrinsic reasons. Dry your tears. Lady Fitzjames, and remem- 
 ber this is not your case only, but the Church's also. ' It must 
 needs be that scandals come, but ivoe to that man by whom the 
 scandal cometh .'"' 
 
 Poor Lady Fitzjames ! more to be pitied far than poor Bur- 
 net ! God asks of no human being what she has given to Father 
 Herbert ; she stands before him, not a woman, not a slave with 
 free convictions, but a thing, a thing of his. She has sold her 
 soul, renounced herself and God, who made her for his reason- 
 able service. All that is left of her for herself, her husband, 
 and her children, is the chattel of a body vAth. its animal in- 
 stincts and affections. 
 
 Father Herbert's next conscience is a dairy-maid's. Her 
 story is short and clear. She has only ten pounds a-year 
 wages, while Susan Slater, Mr. Cracroft's dairy-maid, has fifteen 
 pounds, and there is no use in speaking to her mistress; she would 
 
 * " Si reus vere commisit crimen sed occulfe, ita ut nulla modo prohari 
 possit, ufncm tunc possit dicere accumtorem mentitum fuisse ; vel possit opponere 
 crimen illius occitUum ? Affirmat Corella, et prohabile recte putant Salman- 
 TicENSES et RoxcAGLiA, quia accusans reum de crimine omnino occulta, censetur 
 in jure ac si de a-imine falsa accusaret et cahimniam afferret. Et ah eamdem 
 rationem dicunt Sanchez et alii posse eum revelare delictum occultum testis ad 
 sui defensionern." — Liguort, v. 278. Suppose the accused has really committed 
 a crime, but so secretly that it can in no way be proved, can he then say that the 
 accuser lies, or can he set some secret crime of his against him by way of proof? 
 Corella affirms, and Salmanticenses and Roxcaglia think probably rightly, 
 because accusing a man of a crime altogether hidden, is held in law as false 
 witness and calumniating. And for the same reason Saxchez and others say that 
 he can reveal any hidden crime of the witness in his own defence.
 
 30 CASES OP CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 only lose her place. '^Is there no way," asks gentle Father 
 Herbert, "that she can pay herself the reuiainmg five pounds 
 which is her due ?" Oh, yes ! a very easy one ! She sells the 
 surplus butter. " God bless you, my child ; but be very careful, 
 for fear of scandal." And the dairy-maid thanks God that she 
 does not keep her conscience for herself. But Father Herbert 
 was quite right. Here are the great Saint's words : — ' Servants 
 commit no sin, should their master refuse them just wages, if 
 they secretly balance accounts for themselves ; provided always 
 that there be no other way, that they take no more than their 
 due, and that there is no fear of scandal or other serious mis- 
 chief.'* 
 
 Father Herbert's last penitent that day is our friend the 
 dairymaid's master's eldest son. Small blame to his proud old 
 father for husbanding his resources, for he has thirteen children. 
 This boy of his, as he said, had gone down into Snobland to 
 look for a wife, and had found one that father and son both 
 thought they might not be much ashamed of. The young 
 people had been engaged a year; for old Hibbert would not 
 allow his daughter to marry till she was twenty. Frank Furnival 
 would have run off with her, for he was horribly bored with 
 the connexions, but the rich railway director might cut him off 
 with some twenty thousand or so, and he would rather marry a 
 certain cousin of his at that price. All of a sudden comes a 
 smash. Old Hibbert is ruined. He has given up all, and is 
 living on an allowance. Frank Furnival wants to know if he is 
 bound by his engagement. Grave Father Herbert says, "that 
 depends. A betrothment is a sort of promissory vow : a religious 
 sanction is attached to a certain intention. The intention is 
 principal, the sanction is accessory; the accessory follows the 
 principal. The vow follows the intention, and is to be explained 
 accordingly. Now it may happen, that by keeping the vow 
 you would act contrary to your intention, which is clearly what 
 you are not bound to do. If your intention was to marry a 
 rich girl, or a pretty girl, and she turns out poor, or is pitted 
 with the small-pox, the obligation ceases to exist. This is the 
 decision of St. Liguori, or rather, let me say, the decision of 
 the Church, for the Church answers for every decision of 
 St. Liguori."t 
 
 * '^Famuli non peccant, si, sustentationem vel mercedem justam domino 
 negante, utantur compensatione occulta, dummodo tamen, alius modus non sit im- 
 petrandi, nee plus accipiatur quam debetur, neque scandalum, a%it aliud inconi- 
 modum grave timeatur." — Liguori, iv. 349. Servants do not sin if, when their 
 masters refuse them support or just wages, they take secret compensation, so 
 long at least as there are no other means of effecting it, and no more is taken 
 than ought, and no scandal or other inconvenience to be feared. 
 
 f " .furamentum promissorium eamdem habet condiiionem, eodemque modo
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 21 
 
 Our whereabout is now transferred to the sister island. Pat 
 Father O'Flannigan keeps the conscience of two lords, a score of 
 squires, and some three thousand of her Majesty's supposed 
 lieges, in the parish of Ballinadrum. 
 
 " Father O'Flannigan," says a little man, " Father O'Flan- 
 nigan, Mat D'Arcey won't hear a word about fighting. He 
 swears by all the saints it's a horse-whipping he'll give me the 
 first time we meet. Father O'Flannigan, what's to be done 
 with a clean conscience?" 
 
 " It is not a thing I should like to advise, Mr. O'Shaugh- 
 nessy; but it is quite in the line of your duty to shoot him." 
 
 " By J , Father O'Flannigan ! it is just what I have been 
 
 satisfied of all the while, and I have challenged him three times, 
 besides once on the floor of the House." 
 
 " You misunderstand me, Mr. O'Shaughnessy : sending a 
 challenge is a delicate question in morals, which, I understood 
 from yourself, we were not now to touch on. This is a case of 
 defence against aggression ; not of life, indeed, but of honour, 
 bonum prcestantius, Mr. O'Shaughnessy ; and now we shall see 
 St. Liguori. Here it is, chapter and verse : — ' For a mere con- 
 tumely ; for example, an honourable gentleman is told that he 
 lies ; it is not allowed to put the offender to death, for there is 
 another way of wiping ofi" that, and one sanctioned by custom : 
 but the thing is quite different if one should offer to lay a whip 
 or the palm of his hand on any particularly honourable gentle- 
 man, and there is no other way to avert it, Diana — not the 
 heathen divinity, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, but one of the great lights 
 of the Church — Diana, Lessius, Hurtado, and twelve other 
 doctors, teach that it is lawful to slay the aggressor on the 
 spot.* There is no sinning in such company; and though holy 
 
 explicandum est, quo p7'omissio veljjropositum, cui est annexum. Ratio est, quia, 
 accessorium sequitur principale, ideoqtie, quando non ohligat promissio, nee ob- 
 ligatjuramentum appositum. Unde resolvet, Titius, qui cumjuramentOfjiromisit 
 miptias Berthcp diviti, sance, etc., non tenettir stare juramento postquam Bertha 
 incidit in paupertatem vel infirmitatem, quia promissio non ohligat eo casu." — 
 Liguori, iv. 180. An oath with a promise has the same condition, and is to be 
 explained in the same way, as the promise or intention that is annexed to it. The 
 reason is, because the accessory follows the principal ; and so when the promise 
 does not bind, neither does the oath annexed to it. Thence resolve that Titius, who 
 with an oath promised to marry Bertha rich and well, &c. is not bound to marry 
 her if she become poor or sick, because in that case the promise is not obligatory. 
 * " Etsi ob contumeliam aliquam, verbi gratia, si viro honorato dicatur, men- 
 tiris, non liceat altemm, occidire, eo quod aliter repelli possit, ac soleat, licere 
 tamen, si aggressor fustem, vel alapam, viro valde honorato (an M.P., for instance) 
 impingere conaretur, quam aliter avertere non posset, docent, cum Diana, Lessius, 
 Hurtado, et alii 12. Sed in praxi rarissime uti licet prcedicta opinions, nam 
 Silvius, recte sic ait," &c. — Ibid. iv. 381. Although on account of any 
 contumely, such as if a gentleman is called a liar, it is not lawful to kill another, 
 because it may be repelled otherwise, and Diana, Lessius, Hurtado, and twelve 
 others think that it is lawful only if the aggressor should try to strike with a stick 
 or hand, which cannot be otherwise prevented, &c.
 
 2Z CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 Liguori has found out a certain Don Sylvio, who stands by him- 
 self in liis singular opinion^ who says that it is very rarely that 
 this opinion should be put 'nto practice, his own (the Saint's) 
 o])iuion is quite clear on the nde of authority ; and I hope, Mr. 
 O'Shaughnessy, you are pr'ivided with one of the patent re- 
 volvers ?" 
 
 That day week Father O'Flannigan celebrated a solemn 
 dead mass for the repose of the soul of poor Mat D'Arcey, who 
 died " of a gun-shot wound inflicted by some person or persons 
 unknown/' And of all the crowd that " assisted" at that sad 
 mass, there was no one dreamt less of compunction than the 
 fat easy celebrant. He bore malice to no man. If the gen- 
 tlemen had changed places, his advice or his information would 
 have been exactly the same. It was purely professional ; and 
 though given with national relish, was given conscientiously, 
 the true Catholic doctrine of the holy Catholic Church, as laid 
 down by an authority pronounced to be infallible. 
 
 To account for the next " penitent," it should be mentioned 
 that Father O'Flannigan was educated in the " Eternal City," 
 and had all the benefit of the learned lectm-cs and argumentations 
 of the great Culler/io Romano itself The tall, fine-looking 
 Hercules that just enters, is IMister Roe, domestic chaplain to 
 the old Earl of Kilmallock. He boasts of but small store of 
 theology, but amply makes up for that by his knowledge of 
 horses, and is the very best rider in all county Clare. 
 
 " Here is an ugly business. Father O'Flannigan — a question 
 of irregularity;" and, dropping on one knee as he takes off 
 his hat, he repeats the first half of the Confiteor, the form of 
 beginning confession, — which puts everything sub sigillo ; and 
 Father O'Flannigan politely bids him be seated. "I've mur- 
 dered young Grogan, Father O'Flannigan." 
 
 "Pray who is young Grogan, my dear?" says Father 
 O'Flannigan. 
 
 " Why, he is the late gardener's small son-in-law," replies 
 Mister Roe; " and the question is. Can I sing mass upon Sun- 
 day or not?" 
 
 " How did the thing fall out, Mister Roe?" 
 
 " Why, Father O'Flannigan, to tell you the truth, as I am 
 bound by the Sacrament, I was not precisely in the line of my 
 duty, and that is the ground of my scruple. You must know 
 that poor Hunter" [Father O'Flannigan takes it for granted 
 that poor Hunter was the "late gardener"] "left me his exe- 
 cutor, and guardian of his whole family by way of protector, 
 and that brought us together in occasione proxima ; and little 
 Grogan, last night, found me where it was quite natural he should 
 little like me to be. The creature just opened his jaws for to
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 23 
 
 shout, when I seized hiui tight by the throat, and never left 
 hold of him till the breath was out of his body." 
 
 " A very ugly business, Mister Roe — a very ugly business ; 
 and you must give the poor boy a ' character,^ to save him from 
 felo de se, and have it brought in insanity : but there is nothing 
 to constitute an 'irregularity.^ Excusable homicide does not 
 incur ecclesiastical censures ; that is, always sujDposing you used 
 proper diligence against all risks of that sort." 
 
 " Oh ! as for that, Father O'Flannigan, in the natural course 
 of events there could not be considered any danger at all." 
 
 " Then that makes the case still clearer by far, my dear ; 
 for Liguori, distinguendo, explains, that though the work one is 
 at be ever so criminal, yet if not of itself dangerous, a homicide 
 that accidentally, casu, grows out of it, is not to be imputed to 
 the unfortunate gentleman : and here is your own very case set 
 down by the Saint: — ' Puta,' says he, 'si adulter cum disci'i- 
 mine incu^mtce tutelcB virum adultercB occidat'* And Urban II. 
 
 * " Oportet hie aliqua adders de homicidio casuali, multum scitu neeessaria. 
 Duplicifer contingere potest homicidium casuale, vel dando operam rei licitce, vel 
 rei illicitce. Unde has regulas dat S. Thomas (Aquinas) : Secundum jura, si 
 aliquis det operam rei licitse debitam diligentiam adhibens, et ex hoc homicidium 
 sequatur, non incurrit homicidii reatum. Et hoc etiamsi-, homicidium in causa 
 prcEvisumfuerit. Si xexo, prosequitur S. doctor det operam rei illicitae non evadit 
 homicidii reatum. Dua igitur sunt regula, qua in hoc materia communitcr 
 assignanfur. I. Qiiando quis dat operam rei licitce, et ex ea per accidens sequitur 
 homicidium, iste excusatur, etiamsi illud provider it, modo non intenderit et suf- 
 ficientem diligentiam posuerit ad ilium vitandum. II. Secus vera si dat operam 
 rei illicitce, et homicidium praevideat quia tunc, licet illud non intendat, et dili- 
 gentiam adhibeat, ne sequatur, non excusatur. Sed advertendum, quod ad impu- 
 tandum huic homicidium, non sufficit quod opus sit per se illicitum, sed requiritur 
 amplius, quod sit illicitum prcecise respectu ad homicidium. Hinc quseritur quod 
 nam opus dicendum sit proprie illicitum respectu ad homicidium ? Et dicen- 
 dum. III. Quod si opus non sit de se periculosum, quamvis sit illicitum, num- 
 quam. imputatur homicidium illud exercenti, si casu, ex eo mors eveniat. Puta 
 si adulter, cum discrimine inculpates tuielce, virum adulterce occidat. Hoc 
 tantum certum est in ordine ad restitutionem. In ordine vera ad irregularitatem 
 magna est inter doctores controversia an evadat irregularis adulter qui occidit 
 maritum aggressorem oh inculpatam sui vitce defensionem, ? Sententia quam 
 tenent Suarez, Layman, Sporer, cum Filliuccio, Roncaglia et Salmanticensibus, 
 cum Palatio, Concina, Villabolo, Cornejo, &c. distinguit, et dicit, quod si, 
 adulter prcevidendo invasionem mariti, temere accedat, et ilium occidat, tunc fit 
 irregularis ! secus, si clam accedat, et cum debiia cautela ne a marito in- 
 veniatur. Et huic sentetitice me adjicio." — Liguori, iv. 398. I must here 
 add some things concerning casual homicide, very necessary to be known. 
 Casual homicide can occur in two ways, either when doing a lawful or 
 an unlawful thing. Whence St. Thomas gives these rules : — According to 
 law, if any one using due diligence does a lawful thing, and from this, homicide 
 occurs, he does not incur the guilt ; and this even if homicide should be fore- 
 seen in the case. But if, says the holy doctor, it occurs in doing an unlawful 
 thing, he does not avoid the guilt of homicide. Therefore there are two rules, 
 &c. Hence it is asked, &c., and it is to be said. TIL But if the work be 
 not in itself dangerous, although it be unlawful, homicide is never imputed to 
 him who commits it, if by chance death follows. Suppose if an adulterer with 
 distinction of blameless defence kills the lover of an adulteress, this certeunly is
 
 24 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 0. Quia te, decides that, where you are known to have done it 
 casually, non tua sponte, you are not canonically culpable. I 
 will read you the whole passage in the vernacular, to quiet your 
 conscience, and save you from distraction whilst celebrating the 
 holy sacrifice. 'I must,' says St. Alfonso de Liguori (and 
 Father O^Flannigan bowed his head reverentially as he men- 
 tioned the name), 'I must add here a few things, highly neces- 
 sary to be knoicn, about casual homicide. Casual homicide may 
 happen dupliciter, while you are after what's lawful, or quite the 
 contrary. And the angelical Doctor St. Thomas gives these 
 rules : — If a man using due diligence in any lawful work that he 
 is at, occasion a homicide, he does not thereby incur the guilt of 
 if, not even though the homicide itself was foreseen ; bid, adds 
 the holy Doctor, if the business he is in be unlaivful, he does not 
 escape the guilt of it. And there are two rules commonly laid 
 down on the subject. 1. When a man, doing a laivful ivork, 
 occasions a homicide, he is excused, even though he foresaw it, 
 provided he did not intend it, and took sufficient care to avoid it. 
 2. If he is doing what is unlawful and foresees the homicide, 
 then, even though lie does not intend it, and uses proper diligence 
 to prevent it, he is not excused. But, it must be taken notice, 
 that in order that the homicide be imputed to him, it is not enough 
 that the work he is at be in itself unlawful, but it is necessary 
 further, that it be unlawful precisely in respect to the homi- 
 cide.'' Hence arise sundry queries as to what is to be called pro- 
 perly unlawful />r«me in respect to homicide. And, skipping 
 the two first, IVIister Hoe, we come at once to the third ; and the 
 Saint decides, — ' It must be held, that if the business you are at be 
 not of itself dangerous, casual homicide is never culpably chargeable 
 on you while engaged in it ;' and then he gives the case I first 
 
 only in order to restitution. But in the order of irregularity, there is great con- 
 troversy amongst the doctors whether the irregular adulterer may escape who 
 kills a husband attacking him on account of a blameless defence of his life. The 
 opinion which (many) hold, distinguishes, and says that if the adulterer, foresee- 
 ing the attack of the husband, rashly proceeds and kills him, then he becomes 
 irregular ; but otherwise if he proceeds secretly, and with due caution, lest he be 
 found by the husband : and to this opinion I adhere. 
 
 " Quceritur an occidem alterum ob defeimonem Ubertatis, honoris, pudicitice 
 vel bonorum temporalium, cum moderamine inculpates tutelm fiat irregularis ? 
 Sententia communior et probabilior negat. Et probatnr ex cap. Quia te, ubi 
 cum quidam Episcopus captus a Saracenis aliquos occiderit ut suam libertatem 
 defenderet, Urban II. ita ei respondit, Sed quoniam non tua sponte id fecisse 
 cognosceris, canonice nullo modo judicaris." — Liguori, vii. 389. It is asked 
 whether killing another for defence of his liberty, honour, modesty, or temporal 
 goods with moderation of blameless defence, becomes irregular ? The common 
 and more probable opinion denies it ; and it is proved from the chapter Quia te 
 of Urban II., where, when a certain bishop taken by the Saracens had killed 
 some that he might defend his hberty. Urban said to him, " But since you did 
 not of yom- own will know that you had done this, you cannot be condemned 
 canonically."
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 25 
 
 mentioned si adulter, which you can translate for yourself, Mis- 
 ter Roe. Now, as to the irregularity. St. Alfonso says, ' That 
 a mighty controversy exists among doctors whether a priest, who, 
 in the position yourself were with Mrs. Grogan, invaded by 
 her husband, should slay him, becomes thereby irregular, consider- 
 ing it is blameless to take care of his life.' And the Saint gives 
 the opinion of the string of holy divines that you see here, and 
 to which he declares his adhesion, which is, ' That if the priest 
 foresees the husband's invasion, but makes no account of it what- 
 ever, and puts him to death, then he is irregular.' No doubt of 
 it, my dear; but quite the contrary, says holy Liguori, 'pro- 
 vided he go to the creature secretly, and take the proper precau- 
 tions not to be caught by her husband.'" 
 
 Mister E,oe finished his confession, received absolution, and 
 went away with a load off his mind about the mass of next 
 Sunday. Poor Grogan had, of course, been found hanging 
 from a girder in the roof of his cottage, and, by the kind inter- 
 ference of the lord's chaplain, was saved from a verdict oifelo 
 de se, and buried with due Roman i"ites. 
 
 St. Liguori's next practical commentator is " square" Father 
 KilinaDy, living in what is very properly called one of " the 
 disturbed districts." Of his "penitents" there are now three 
 seated on a bench in the passage, waiting as patiently as any 
 Italian, born and bred to far I'anticamera. One by one they 
 are let into the sanctum of the father's study. 
 
 "Your reverence," says Phelim McLaughlin, squeezing his 
 indescribable head- gear into "no shape at all;" "please your 
 reverence. Lord Skelter's ' gentleman ' has just got down at the 
 Star and Garter, and before three days it will be all over with 
 most of us. It is no use to talk of defence, for we have not 
 the means. But what I'm thinking of, your reverence, is to 
 'anticipate' him." 
 
 " You must mind what you are after, Phelim M'Laughlin," 
 says Father Kilmany ; " but, by the law of God, his life is a 
 forfeit :" and after a stirring outburst against the curse of bad 
 landlords and bad agents, he ends by assuring Phelim, on 
 Liguori's authority, that, barring the risk, there is nothing to 
 hinder his " anticipating " the gentleman — that is, with a ball or 
 a slug !* 
 
 * " Qutestio est, An liceat prcevenire aggressorem ? Lugo, Bannez, Vasquez, 
 Molina, i^'c. dicunt, ad occidendum invaiorem pro sui defensione, non est opus, 
 ut alter jam incoeperit ladere ; sed sufficit, si sit paratus ad ladendum." — 
 Ibid. iv. 387. The question is, Wliether it is lawful to anticipate an aggressor ? 
 Lugo, Bannez, Vasquez, Molina, &c. say, that it is not necessary in order to kill 
 an invader in your own defence, that the other should have begun to attack you ; 
 it is sufficient if he is prepared to injure you.
 
 26 CASES OF CONSCIENCE; OR, 
 
 Phelim M'Laughlin is not allowed to trespass long- on the 
 time of the priest, and Bill Brady succeeds him. Saluting his 
 reverence after his peculiar fashion, he begs to know if it is at 
 all "improper" for him and a few more friends and neighbours 
 to barricade the house of Peter Maloney, and shoot out " pro- 
 miscuously " at the expected invaders. Father Kilmany, with 
 his finger still on the very same page of his infallible au- 
 thority, tells him that even a priest or a monk may slay the 
 man who unjustly invades his honour, his property, or his 
 life* 
 
 Once more the creaking door opens and shuts, and a wizened 
 little abortion of manhood whispers to Father Kilmany that, 
 under God, it depends wholly on his reverence whether his life 
 be worth a day's purchase or not. Tim Derry is ready to swear 
 before the " crowner" to-morrow that it was he, Luke Donohue, 
 that murdered Dolly Binns for the sake of the forty gold pieces 
 he had got as her heir ; " and I'm as innocent, your reverence, as 
 the babe unborn, '^ 
 
 " What proof has Tim Derry V 
 
 " None under the sun, your reverence, barring he saw us, 
 the night of the murder, alone together, crossing the ' lame' 
 bridge.'' 
 
 " Can you leave the country in time, Luke Donohue ?" 
 
 '' Never a chance. Tim Derry's cronies are at the heels of 
 me all the day long ; and though it is mighty harmless they 
 look, I know they mean hanging." 
 
 " And what do you think of doing yourself, Luke Donohue ?" 
 
 "I have never missed aim these twenty years, your reve- 
 rence ; and Tim Derry crosses the lame bridge evei-y night of his 
 
 * " Silvius tenet licitum esse occidere aggressorem rerum, si sint magni 
 momenti, et non possint aliter aut defendi aut recvperar-i, qumn per mortem 
 diripientis. Idem docuit olim Divus Raymundus, qui dixit : Non possum repellere 
 a possessione nisi illos occidam, et sic erit licita talis defensio." — Liguori, 
 iv. 383. Silvius holds it lawful to kill one who attacks your property, if it is 
 of value, and cannot be otherwise defended or recovered again, than by the death 
 of the robber. The divine Raymund formerly taught the same, who said, "I 
 cannot repel them from my possessions unless I kill them, and thus this defence 
 is lawful." 
 
 " Quseritur, An liceatetiara clericis et religiosis occidere injustum aggressorem 
 suorum bonorum magni momenti ? Affirmant probabilius cum Busembaum, 
 Lugo, Elbel, et Salman ticenses, cum Lessio, Becano, et ahis communius, quia 
 jus defensionis est de lege naturali et ideo unicuique competit." — Ibid. iv. 384. 
 It is asked. Whether it is lawful for clergy and monks to kill an unjust attacker of 
 their valuable goods .' Lugo and others affirm this as more probable, because 
 the right of defence belongs to natural law, and, therefore, competent to every one. 
 
 " Quaeritur, An liceat occidere invasorem pudicitiee ? Si licitum est hoc ad 
 TUENDUM HONOREM, et facilitates, multo mayis dicendum licere pro tuenda 
 pudicitia." —Ibid. iv. 386. It is asked, Whether it is lawful to kill the invader of 
 chastity ? If this is lawful for defence of honour and goods, much more it is 
 lawful for defence of chastity.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 27 
 
 life, all alone, as lie comes from Dolly Binns's godchild, the 
 girl he^s a-courting/' 
 
 "It is an awful thing, Luke Donohue," says Father Kil- 
 many, "to send a poor soul to his reckoning without oils or 
 viaticum ; but you have a perfect right to take care of yourself. 
 I can^t enjoin it on you to shoot him — God forbid ! but I 
 cannot pretend it is a sin.'^* 
 
 Cursed in the moral laws that govern her people, poor 
 Ireland is still more cursed in the " tribunals^' where these 
 laws are administered. This same Father Kilmany, two years 
 before, had, as confessor, authorised the English wife of an 
 Irish gentleman to poison her husband, under the conviction 
 that he had resolved her death. It was the hallucination of 
 guilt, confirmed by a lie of her seducer, the agent of the mur- 
 dered gentleman. The story was believed readily by the 
 wretched priest, and St. Liguori taught him the rest.f 
 
 Father Kilmany was, if ever man was, just what his religious 
 education had made him, an odd mixture of dandyism, dirt, and 
 divinity, and habitually selfish. A monk by education and by vow, 
 the missionary character of Ireland threw him into the world, 
 freed from all the restraints of obedience and poverty, and at the 
 mercy of all the temptations of unaccustomed liberty and super- 
 fluous wealth. In the midst of indescribable misery, there were 
 heavy rings of gold on his fingers, a heavy chain of gold on his 
 breast, and a heavy pencil-case of gold in his pocket. Some of 
 the gewgaws on his table would not have been out of place on 
 that of a duchess. His umbrella was of some beautiful wood, ex- 
 quisitely inlaid with silver ; and he had had stolen from him in 
 Dublin a watch and seals, for which he had paid 50/. Even 
 his notes were for the most part written on gilt-edged paper. 
 He took the world and the church as he found them. Death 
 
 * " Dicunt alii, ut Sanchez et alii, licere occidere eum qui apud jndicem 
 falsa accusatione, aut testimonio, ^■c. id agit unde certo tibi constet quod sis 
 occidendus, vel mutilandus, vel eiiam amissdrus bona temporalia, hono- 
 REM," &c. " Prcefata opinio damnata est in Prop. 18 pros, ah Alex. VII. 
 ' Licet interficere falsum accusatorem, falsos testes, ac etiam judicem a quo 
 iniqua imminet sententia, si alia via non potest innocens damnum vitare,' " — 
 LiG. iv. 388. [But Father Kilmany made a " distinction." The whole proposi- 
 tion was condemned, but not the details of it ; and besides, an " imminens sen- 
 tentia" was one thing, and certain death quite another.] Others say, as Sanchez 
 and others, that it is lawful to kill him who before a judge by false accusation, 
 &c. does that which is certain to be the occasion of your being killed or maimed, 
 or even losing your temporal goods, honour, &c. 
 
 f " Licet occidere eum de quo certo constat quod de facto paret insidias 
 ad mortem, ut si uxor, e. g. Sciat noctu occidexdam a marito, si nox 
 
 POSSIT EFFUGERE, LICET EUM PR-EVENIRE." Ibid. iv. 387. It is lawful to 
 
 kill him from whom it certainly appears that snares are prepared to kill you ; as 
 if a wife, for example, knows that in the night she is to be killed by her husband, 
 if she cannot escape she may anticipate him.
 
 28 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 by shooting seemed to him as natural and as well-established a 
 thing as death by starvation; and "square^^ Father Kilmany 
 was no more disposed to interfere with the established order of 
 things than if he had been a lord chancellor. 
 
 To be a member of a cabinet, or of any corporate body, is a 
 sad snare for individual conscience. To be a corporate body 
 one's self — a bishop, for instance — often proves still more so. 
 But what must the case be where the great polity, in which 
 priest and people are alike incorporated, avowedly takes the 
 charge and responsibility of all consciences, and, by a sort of 
 moral communism, makes the very lowest level the universal 
 standard? There are moments when even a Father Kilmany 
 has a misgiving about his " charter,'^ indulges in a sort of 
 aristocratic scruple, and is tempted to have something of a 
 conscience not in common. Lord Skelter's "gentleman," wliom 
 he had so summarily sentenced, turned out not to be the gen- 
 tleman supposed, but another, whom poor Lord Skelter had 
 sent to make amends for his predecessor's recklessness and 
 cruelty. But Father Kilmany's denunciation in public and his 
 " direction " in private had worked all the same, and the bullet 
 intended for one took efiect on the other. It was only too 
 natural, in weakness of faith and self-sufficiency, to indulge a 
 scruple; and the indulgence might, perha])s, have run into 
 remorse, but for the lucid and pious arguments of a wise 
 director, — no less a personage than Dr. Kilmore himself, the 
 bishop of the diocese. 
 
 " No evil had been intended to the murdered man ! " 
 began his lordship ; " and, therefore, the very first condition 
 necessary to constitute a sin was wanting. No act can be a 
 serious sin unless the will consent to it with deliberation, and 
 with full, actual, not semiplenal, virtual, advertency.* The 
 
 * " Nullus actus qui neque est in, neque a voluniate, est peccatum, nisi 
 voluntas eum acceptet, sive is sit internum, ut, etc. Sive externus ac violentus. 
 
 " A pcccato excusantur vehementissimi motus irce, aut concupiscentice , quibus 
 vsus rationis perturbatur, et libertas tollitur." — Liguori, ii. 2. No act which 
 neither is in, nor from the will, is a sin, unless the will shall accept it, or it is 
 internal, &c. Whether external and violent. Verjr violent movements of anger 
 or concupiscence, by which the use of reason is disturbed, and liberty is de- 
 stroyed, are excused from sin. 
 
 " Notandum quod intellectus duplici modo advertere potest vet plene, vet 
 semiplene. Motus primo primi, qui antevertunt omneni advertentiam rationis 
 sunt omnino culpa expertes. Motus secundo primi, qui fiunt cum semiplena 
 advertentia culpani venialeni non excedunt." — Ibid. ii. 3. It is to be observed, 
 that the reason can give consent in two ways, either fully, or half-fully. The 
 first motions in the first way, which precede all consent of the reason, are en- 
 tirely without blame. The first motions in the second, which are made with half- 
 attention, do not exceed venial faults. 
 
 " Si advertatur tantum in actum materialiter sive physice consideratum, et 
 non formaliter sen moraliter, erit tantum volitus actm iste ut est quid physicum
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 29 
 
 man's death was as much an accident as if he had been mis- 
 taken for a deer. And sup])osing the nun-dered man had been 
 the man denounced, clearly you are not culpably the author of 
 his death. Defamation or detraction is not unlawful, if uttered 
 with good intent ; he only is a defamer, as St. Thomas says, 
 who speaks evil of his neighbour with the purpose and object of 
 blackening his character, not the man who has no such purpose, 
 but quite another, — namely, some public good, to which his 
 intention is directed, as in your case.* And if it be thus lawful 
 to detract, which is to defame or to speak evil of one in private, 
 it is clearly no less lawful to denounce, which is only to detract 
 in public ; since a man cannot have a twofold or manifold right 
 to his reputation : that right is only one — the same before one 
 as before many, before many as one.^^f 
 
 But what his "lordship" most enlarged upon was the great 
 danger of being given to scruples. " Not only peace of mind, 
 devotion, progress in every virtue, is at an end, but how often 
 does mind as well as body fall a victim ! and, worse than all, 
 how many a soul makes shipwreck, driven by despair to suicide 
 or sin unbridled ! And is not the first symptom of this vice a 
 pertinacity of judgment, which declines obedience to the counsels 
 of the wise ? J What says the great St. Philip Neri, founder of 
 
 et non ut est quid morale ; ergo, non ut malum ; et in hoc non erit malitia." — 
 LiGuoRi, ii. 4. If the reason adverts to the act only materially or physically con- 
 sidered, and not formally or morally, the v^dlling act will be only that which is 
 physical, and not that which is moral, therefore not as wrong ; and in this there 
 will be no evil. 
 
 * " Maxima hie advertenda doctrina S. Thom. ubi docet, ilium projnie 
 detrahere qui male loquitur de altero intendens ejus famam denigrare, secus, 
 autem si hoc non intendat sed aliquid aliud. Si verba per quse fama alterius 
 diminuitur, proferat aliquis propter aliquod bonum necessarium, delitis circum- 
 stantiis observatis, non est peccatum, neque potest dici detractio. Hinc dicen- 
 dum, quod unusquisque ad evitandum grave dammmi sui vel aliorum etiam in 
 bonis fortunce, liciie ]}otest detegere grave crimen alterius, modo non intendat 
 ilium infamare, sed damnum proprium vel alienum vitare : stifficit autem, ut 
 damnum vitandum sit grave, quamvis majus damnum immineat diffamato." — 
 Ibid. iv. 968. Here the doctrine of St. Thomas is particularly to be ob- 
 served, where he teaches that he properly detracts who speaks evil of another, 
 intending to blacken his character ; but otherwise if he does not mean this, but 
 something else. To injure another's reputation for any needful good, if due 
 attention to circumstantials be obseiTed, is not sin, nor can it be called detrac- 
 tion. Hence it is to be said that every one, to avoid a great danger to himself 
 or others, even in the goods of fortune, may lawfully expose the great crime of 
 another, provided he does not mean to defame him, but to avoid his own or 
 another's loss : only it is sufficient that the loss to be avoided is serious, how- 
 ever greater loss may accrue to him who is defamed. 
 
 ■f " Detrahere coram pluribus est tantmn circumstantia aggravant, cum jus 
 ad famam sit tmicum apud omnes, non autem multiplex." — Ibid. ii. 49. To 
 detract before many is only au aggravating circumstance, since right to reputa- 
 tion is equally to all, but not multiplied. 
 
 X " Confessarius enixe inculcet magno suae salutis discrimine se committere, 
 qui prseceptis sui confessarii renuit obedientiam prsestare ; tunc enim periculum
 
 30 CASES OF conscience; or, 
 
 the Oratorians? — 'Let him that desires to grow in god- 
 liness GIVE HIMSELF UP TO A LEARNED CONFESSOR, AND BE 
 OBEDIENT TO HIM AS TO GoD. He THAT THUS ACTS IS SAFE 
 
 from having any account to render of all his actions. 
 The Lord will see to it that his confessor leads him 
 NOT astray/* Go, my son, trust in me and be happy. 
 Vade, et in fide mea mactus sit." 
 
 The father knelt down and kissed the hand of his learned 
 bishop, and then turned his face homewards, quite satisfied of 
 the reality of the dangers which he had escaped from, and fully 
 resolved to listen to no more scruples in future. 
 
 Sir Thomas Thornton was a Roman Catholic Sir Stephen 
 Penrhyn, whose character is given in Mrs. Norton^s novel, 
 "Stuart of Dunleath;" his maiden sister was a Roman Ca- 
 tholic Lady Macfarren, and the story of Lady Thornton was the 
 sad story of sweet Eleanor Raymond ; only Lady Thornton was 
 not of the religion of her husband. She was a Protestant. 
 Miss Thornton had the very Rev. Dr. Brady for her " Tib," 
 and Sir Thomas had not " an instinctive involuntary conviction 
 of his wife's purity." Sir Thomas had no instinctive conviction 
 of anybody's virtue of any sort. How could he ? He had 
 been born in Spain. He had been educated in Italy. He had 
 been watched through a little tinned hole in the school-room 
 door; he and his tutor. He had been watched in his bed. 
 He had been watched in his path. He had had his spies 
 relieved as regularly as sentinels upon an outpost. He had 
 been taught to conceal the truth from everybody, to lie 
 
 se exponit amittendi non tantum cordis pacem, devotionem, et in virtute progres- 
 sum, verum etiam mentem, item corporis valetudinetn : imo quod deterius est 
 etiain animse jacturam faciendi ; nam eo possent scrupuli devenire ut ad tantam 
 eum redigerent desperationem, qua vel sibimet mortem inferret, ut pluribus con- 
 tigit, vel ut sic de sua salute desperans habenas ad omnia vitia amplectenda lax- 
 aret." — Liguori, i. 13. Let the confessor strenuously inculcate that he should 
 commit himself with great discernment of his salvation who refuses to yield obe- 
 dience to the precepts of his confessor ; for then he exposes himself to the danger, 
 not only of losing the peace of his heart, devotion and progress in virtue, but 
 even his mind, and the health of his body also ; and, what is worse than all, 
 even of making shipwreck of his soul ! for scruples may come to him that would 
 reduce him to such despair that he might commit suicide, as has happened to 
 many, or so despairing of his salvation he may loosen the reins to the embracing 
 of all vices. 
 
 " Signa conscientiae scrupulosse hsec sunt : 1. Pertinacia judicii, qua scni- 
 pulosus sapientium consiliis parere renuit." — Ibid. i. 11. 
 
 * " Qui proficere in via Dei cupiutit, submittant se confessario dodo, cui 
 OBEDiANT UT Deo. Qui ita operatur, fit securus a reddenda ratione 
 
 CUNCTARUM ACTIONUM SUARUM. DoMINUS CONFESSARIUM ERRARE NON 
 
 PERMiTTET." — Ibid. \. 11. They who desire to be perfect in the way of God, 
 must submit themselves to a learned confessor, whom they obey as God. He 
 who so acts is safe from rendering a reason for aU his actions. The Lord does 
 not permit a confessor to err.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 31 
 
 to anybody,* and then confess all on a Saturday, and have 
 the guilt or non-guilt of what he did settled and rated at so 
 many aves or paternosterSy according to its supposed where- 
 about in that great broad space upon the papal chart of morals 
 which separates black from white, and makes vice and virtue 
 mingle imperceptibly together. But there was nobody to mount 
 guard over him now : nobody to drive him to confession now. 
 And his deathbed was to be his " Saturda}^," and his penance 
 was to be done when he was in the grave, by charities munificent 
 and masses in perpetuum. In the meantime, as the living his- 
 torian of the Jesuits, M. Cretineau-Joly, says of Louis XIV., 
 he was " majestueux dans ses foiblesses," and kept two hetserse : 
 one a Bridget Owen, in a pretty lodge at Cranstey Park ; the 
 other married to his groom, and always near him. So Sir 
 Thomas had no instinctive confidence in anybody's trustwor- 
 thiness, and it was his turn now to mount guard over other 
 people ; and he was jealous of his pure wife, she v/as so frank and 
 so exceeding beautiful ; and he entered into his maiden sister's 
 plot ; and the very reverend priest entered into it most " Tib- 
 bishly;'' and Liguori furnished the authority of holy Mother 
 Church for all the arts which were to make cei'tain what they 
 suspected, and which they desired to make certain because they 
 suspected. And the example of Judith was held up to the 
 plotters in the sainted authority, and they were told that what a 
 woman did with herself a husband might do with his wife.f So 
 — to use Liguori's very words — occasions were lawfully 
 
 * The Abbate Bricconi was tutor to the son of an English Roman Catholic 
 gentleman of the old school. One day, in Rome, explaining the liberty of " simu- 
 lation," he said, " Suppose I am going to Naples, but do not wish it to be known 
 where I am going, and my interrogator has no right to question me ; I answer, I 
 am going to Genoa." '^ Ma, Signor Abbate," said the noble English boy, but 
 half a Papist, " mi pare, questo sarebbe una hugia .'" He was called an imper- 
 tinent e, and given a " good penance." 
 
 t " Cunsentit Divus Thomas, quandoque vir uxorem suspectam de adulterio 
 hahens, ei insidiatur, ut deprehendere possit earn mm testibus in crimine forni- 
 cationis." — Liguori, iii. 58. The divine Thomas agrees, when a husband has 
 a wife suspected of adultery, he should contrive that he may catch her, with 
 witnesses, in the crime of fornication. 
 
 " Probabile est non licere talia ultro ponere : Sa et Sanchez, qui docet non 
 licere marito dare uxori ansam adulterandi, vel adultero, ut tentet uxorem. 
 Interim prohabiliter contrarium docet Layman. Quod confirmari potest 
 exemplo Judith, qua vix aliter videtur fecisse, cum enim sciret jjermissionem 
 libidinis in Holoferne fore imjjeditivum malorum, posuit ei occasionem, nempe 
 ornatum auum, alioqui licitiim, et tamen comrnuniter censetur in hoc non peccasse. 
 Et hoc probabile jmtant etiam Viva cmn P. Navarro. Item, Elbel e^ Sporer cum 
 Diana et Tamburini. Contradicunt tamen Sanchez cum Sa, vocans hanc pro- 
 babiliorem quia (ut dicunt) hac videtur positiva inductio, sive ad peccatum co- 
 operatio, quae est intrinsice mala. Sed, hoc non obstante, satis probabilis 
 videtur prima sententia, quia cum maritus proibet ansam moechandi, non 
 vere inducit ad peccandvm, sed prabet occasionem, et permittit peccatum alterius 
 exjusta causa." — Ibid. iii. 58. It is, probably, not lawful to push such things
 
 32 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 BROUGHT ABOUT THAT MIGHT TEMPT HER TO SIN ; and the 
 
 beautiful young wife was arrayed, or disarrayed, under pre- 
 text of her vokiptuous husband's pleasure, not like a Judith 
 only, but a Delilah; and for this, too, the holy pander gave 
 holy sanction : " for by no natural law, divine or human, is it 
 forbidden a lovely woman to unveil her loveliness, or make her 
 beauty show more beautiful ! " * And yet this loose priest, 
 worthy of the days of Medici, Farnesi, Monte Popes, when the 
 great body of the herd of Roman clergy, as it were conven- 
 tionally, 
 
 " Segui Vener, le piume, et 1' ocio, e '1 vino, 
 Virtu fuggendo et quanto al senso spiace, 
 
 had just frightened two convent-cowed, co-heiress, orphan sisters 
 into a cloister, as the only safe harbour of refuge in this world 
 of sin ! 
 
 Our next scene lies in Scotland. George Aikin was valet, 
 companion, friend, to the eldest son of Vicary of Slopetown. 
 He was far cleverer than his master, and if not better read, at 
 least he better remembered whatever he had read. Neither of 
 them went to confession when they could escape it, though both 
 were sincerely, superstitiously, devoted to their religion. George, 
 however, who had not had the ad\antages of a Roman Catholic 
 College, and Dr. Crafty or Father Sly's weekly or monthly 
 brief lectures in the confessional, could not resist an occasional 
 presumptuous indulgence in a little practical theology, and 
 when William Vicary told him his plan of getting in by the 
 window to his sister's Swiss maid's bed-room — which was in a 
 wing of the house where no other person slept — how he meant, 
 after dark, when all had gone to dress for dinner, to fasten a 
 rope-ladder out of her window, and that he, George, was to 
 
 farther : Sa and Sanchez, who teach it is not lawful for a husband to give his 
 wife a handle for adultery, or to an adulterer that he may tempt his wife. In the 
 meantime Layman teaches the contrary, with probability. Which may be con- 
 firmed by the example of Judith, who scarcely seems to have done otherwise, when 
 she knew that the yielding to lust would be an impediment to evil in Holofernes, 
 placed before him an occasion, namely, her ornaments, otherwise lawful, and yet 
 she is commonly judged not to have sinned. And this Viva and Navarro think 
 probable .... Sanchez and Sa, however, think the contrary more probable; 
 because, as they say, this seems a positive induction, whether there is co-opera- 
 tion to sin, which is intrinsically evil. But, notwithstanding this, the first 
 opinion seeins sufficiently probable, because when a husband afl'ords a handle 
 for adultery, he does not truly induce to sin, but affords the occasion, and 
 permits the sin of another for a just cause. 
 
 * " Neque etiamfwnuna mortaliter peccant [a sin not mortal is a sin that 
 need not be confessed, and it needs no absolution], ostentantes pectora nuda quo 
 pulchriores videantur, absque alia mala intentione mortali ; quia nulla jure 
 naturali, divino aut humano, saltern ad mortale ohliyante, vetatur. Idem dicit 
 Cajetanus. Idetn docet Lessius, dicens, Potest esse peccatwn mortiferum, si 
 pudenda non satis teyerentur ; secus in midando pectore, ut Cajetanus, Fumus, 
 Navarrus, nam partem illam nee natura aut pudor jmstulat absolute iegi." —
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 38 
 
 hold it that night, while his master climbed into the room ; 
 George listened thoughtfully, and invented some good reason 
 for putting ofi" the project, for a day at least ; and no sooner was 
 he clear of young Vicary, than he slunk thief-like to the door 
 of the chaplain, who was living in the house. When his little 
 single tap was answered, and he entered the priest's room, he 
 remained where he stood, as he closed the door behind him, and 
 whispered " Confession, sir." A silent, melancholy - looking, 
 stately man was the venerable Abbe Maxwell, and no very easy 
 matter was it for George Aikin to screw his courage up to the 
 point which his half-mock confession aimed at. Once opened 
 to the good Abbe, the matter was soon disposed of. He was 
 one of a race of Roman priests henceforth impossible ; like an old 
 edition of the Vulgate, he was a thing prohibited for ever. He 
 had been educated when the Jesuits were supposed extinct, 
 before " blessed" Liguori had been discovered; when Ganganelli 
 was still counted as much a pope as Paul III., and when even 
 Rome had serious thoughts of patronising truth, piety, and 
 justice. He told George Aikin, in answer to something that 
 his master had let fall, how Innocent XI. had condemned a 
 proposition which maintained it lawful for servants to co-operate 
 in their master's villany of the sort in question, and threatened 
 him, not with penances, but with hell, if he consented to do so 
 for young Vicary. The next day, with the frankness of long 
 familiarity, George Aikin told his master " he would not go with 
 him, nor hold the ladder. He had thought it over, and he 
 would not do it ; d — n him if he would. Ma'mselle Nannette 
 was not a common girl — her father was a Geneva minister : the 
 whole thing was wrong." William Vicary's rage was far 
 greater than he expected. It did not break out violently at. 
 first, but began with, " Since when had he turned Molly V and 
 " may-be he was taking to sanctity :" but it ended with bitter 
 names and more bitter curses. George kept his secret and the 
 Abbe's, while William raved and argued, and raved and coaxed ; 
 but George was shaken, and again he begged to put it oiF a day 
 or two. There was no help for it, so William Vicary agreed. 
 It was the first serious quarrel there had ever been between the 
 two, and it weighed heavily on George Aikin. It was likely to 
 put an end to the pleasant old relation between them, and 
 
 Liguori, iii. 55. Nor do women siu mortally who show their naked breasts in 
 order to appear more beautiful, and without otlier mortal bad intention ; because 
 by no natural law, divine or human, it is forbid, at least that is obligatory. 
 Some say that there are parts of the body which, if not sufficiently covered, 
 it is a mortal sin ; but it is otherwise in making bare the breasts, for that part 
 neither nature nor modesty absolutely reciuires to be covered. 
 Silly little Venus de' Medici ! 
 
 D
 
 34 CASES OF conscience; or, 
 
 might — indeed no doubt in the end it would — lose him his good 
 place into the bargain. So he had resolved within himself to 
 go down that very day to Colton village, to see the tall, fat 
 priest, of some new order, that had lately come to "govern" in 
 that neighbourhood. Once more there was the quiet knock at 
 the priest's door, and the " Confession, sir ;" and George opened 
 the case to that tall, stout man, with sensual mouth and chin, 
 and peering, twinkling little eyes, and told him honestly that 
 he had already consulted the Abbe, and what the Abbe had 
 answered about Pope Innocent. 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense !" said the modest, befrocked, and 
 badged young father, — " Stuff and nonsense ! you are not to 
 lose your place to please an old rigorist, if not a Galilean ;'' 
 and he lays his hand upon the ever-ready and most i<nrigorous 
 Liguori. " Here it is ; and the proposition of Innocent XL has 
 no more to do with it than blackcock has with curry. The 
 servant that the Pope condemns is one that assists his master 
 in intention as well as in act, and in entering by force, and not 
 by stratagem :" * and he reads him all the whole passage, and 
 tells him what a great saint was Liguori, and that, next to the 
 Virgin and St. Joseph, he must take him for his patron, 
 and that he never can go wrong in following a wise director. 
 So George Aikin's scruples are at an end, and the quarrel with 
 his master is made up, and the night after poor Nannette is 
 ruined for ever. 
 
 * " Qiiceritur, Utrum liceat fanmlo meretrici aperire? Negat Croix, at 
 communius affirmant cum Salman ticensibus, Layman, Tamburini, ciim Sanchez, 
 Diana, &c. &c. &c. Nee qfficit propositio Innocent XI. dicens, Famulus qui, 
 submissis liumeris, scienter adjuvat herum suum ascendere per fenestras ad stu- 
 prandam virginem, et multoties eidem subsei-vit, deferendo scalam, aperiendo 
 januam, aut quid simile co-operando, non peccat mortaliter, si id faciat metu 
 notabilis detrinienti, puta, ne a domino male tractetur, ne torvis oculis aspiciatur, 
 ne domo expellatur ; nam, aperiendo januam ex ipso contextu intelligitur de 
 aperitione per vim confecta, ut rede dicunt Roncaglia, &c., modo (aiuni) ijjso 
 non aperiente, adsit alius qui aperiat." — Liguori, iii. 66. It is asked. Whether 
 it is lawful for a servant to open the door to a strumpet ? Croix denies, but 
 many others affirm. Nor is the proposition of Innocent XI. against this, saying. 
 The servant who knotvingly lets his m,asier get up iipon his shoulders in order 
 to violate a virgin, and does so often, holding a ladder, opening a door, or 
 assisting him in any similar ivay, does not mortally sin, if he does it through 
 fear of notable loss, such as beitig ill-used by his master, or looked at harshly, 
 or turned out of the house ,• for by opening the door is to be understood by the 
 context an opening effected by violence, as Roncaglia and others rightly say, 
 only he not opening, there may be found another who would. 
 
 " Quceritur, An ex metu mortis vet magni damni liceat f amnio subjicere 
 humeros, vet deferre scalam domino ascendenti ad fornicandum, vt aperire januam, 
 et similia ? Negant Viva et Melante et alii. Sed contradicunt Busembaum, 
 Sanchez, et Lessius, auoRUM sententia, spectata ratione mihi, probabilior 
 viDETUR. Ratio, quia, ut mox supra diximus, cum tu prcestas actionem per se 
 indifferentem, scilicet, qua potest esse bona et mala, non teneris, nisi ex chart-
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWER. 
 
 Fear has certainly its share in peophng not only the heavens 
 but the earth with gods ; and modern travellers give us a 
 singular proof of it in their revelations of religion in India. 
 There, death is not necessary to place the canonised upon the 
 altar. In Malabar and Balagad, and various other neighbouring 
 countries, terrible in intelligence, and terrible in courage and in 
 mischief, is the monkey " hoonyman." Let but the indignation 
 of the tribe be raised against a city or a house, and the deluging 
 rains of summer are not more certain than its utter ruin. Just 
 at the moment when the flood-gates of the sky are opening, the 
 tiles upon the roof, that should protect, are scattered by armies 
 of these saints, or devils, like feathers to the wind. So 
 Brahmin kings and cabinets have made their treaty with the 
 monkeys, and friar or priest is not more multiplied in Rome 
 than are hoonymans along the sacred coasts of Malabar. 
 Splendid and costly are the temples built in their honour; 
 gorgeous their worship ; vast the hospitals for their aged, infirm, 
 and wounded ; and innumerable and inestimable their legacies. 
 The highest honour that can befall a "faithful" is a visit of 
 simple plunder to his gardens from one of the grave, sacred 
 tribe ; and while, throughout the monkeydom, a man or woman 
 
 tate, db ilia abstinere, ne alter abutatur ad peccandum. Quando autem alias 
 grave damnum metuis, licife permiftere poles peccatum alterius ; nam ex una 
 parte cfiaritas te non obligat, ut cum gravi damno peccatum ejus avertas; et ex 
 altera, malitia alteiHus nequit mutare naturain tuce actionis, ita ut, de indiffer- 
 enti, evadat intrinsece mala. Nee potest did quod prcefata actiones sunt per se 
 malce, quia co-operantur ad peccatum stttpri ; idque prohari ex ipsa Propositione 
 damnata, ubi dicititr aut quid simile co-operarido. Nam respondetur quod eo 
 co-operando non intelUgitur de co-operatione formali, sed de materiali." — Lig. 
 iii. 66. Again, Whether from fear of death or of great loss it is lawful for a 
 servant to help on his shoulders, or by a ladder, his master getting up in order to 
 commit sin, to open the door by force, and other similar things ? Viva, 
 Melante, and others deny. But Busenbaum and others contradict them, and his 
 opinion appears to me more probable, looking at the reason of it. Because, as we 
 have just said, when you do an act in itself indifferent, namely, which may be 
 bad or good, you are not obliged, except from charity, to abstain from it, lest 
 another should abuse it to sin. But when you otherwise fear a great loss, you 
 can lawfully permit the sin of another : for, on the one side, charity does not 
 bind you that you should avert his sin vrith great loss to yourself; and on the 
 other, the wickedness of another does not change the nature of your action, so 
 that for an indifferent thing he should escape an intrinsic evil. Nor can it be 
 said that the previous acts are evil in themselves, because they co-operate in the sin 
 of whoredom ; and this is to be proved out of the very proposition condemned, 
 where it is said, or in any like thing co-operating. For it is to be replied, that this 
 co-operation is not to be understood of formal, but of material co-operation.
 
 36 CASES OF conscience; or, 
 
 may be murdered for a trifling fine, to offend a hoonyman is 
 death and damnation. 
 
 Strange power of miseliief, still stranger honour of mischief, 
 amongst these Indians ! is what we naturally exclaim ; and yet, 
 read priests instead of monkeys, and de nobis fabula narratur ! 
 Look at Italy, and Spain, and Portugal ! Look at Austria and 
 Bavaria ! Look at Ireland, and, proh "pudor ! look at Eng- 
 land, too ! Save us ! save us ! is the cry of the alarmed, the 
 enfeoffed, the educated 'par excellence of Europe. 
 
 " Male and female created He them," the Archduke Maxi- 
 milian, of Austria-Este, once said to the present writer, '^ and of 
 male and female, of master and slave, must society be consti- 
 tuted in order to exist. What made Venice " [and he might 
 have added. What makes the Popedom], *^last, but castes V 
 
 The Archduke Maximilian was a thoroughly honest, strong- 
 headed, frank-speaking pi'ince. He confessed that slavery was, in 
 his mind, the redeeming feature in the institutions of America. 
 This gave him hopes of that young country, and Europe might 
 take a lesson from it. To bring back precisely mediaeval serf- 
 dom and Venetian patricianship he must have felt impossible; 
 his trust was in a caste separated from the human family, a 
 hoonyman, mischief-mighty, cunning, courageous, united priest- 
 hood. Despotism threatened, called to render an account, must 
 combine with those who never can be made responsible. Not 
 that he said this, or even knew he felt it ; but he did feel it in 
 his heart's core. It was with a horror inconceivable that he 
 anticipated the fresh outbreak of insubordination on the part of 
 those whom God had created to be governed, and, as early as 
 1837, he showed in whose name he believed the help of Austria 
 Stood. In that year, with the consent of far-seeing Metternich, 
 he gave his noble castle of Linz to " the Military Company " of 
 the Jesuits ; and on the festival of their great saint, the last day 
 of July in that year, the Jesuits took possession of it. Then 
 the wedge was entered that has since cracked the Imperial 
 power in Austria, and the old cassocked valets of the court joined 
 the new-comers, who took in hand to keep down Europe for a 
 consideration. So Louis Napoleon bartered France to Pius for 
 a dum-bene-se-gesserit leave to king it. So was Queen Victoria 
 defrauded of her supremacy in Ireland, and her only Duke 
 toppled down from his high precedence to make room for a 
 cream-faced hoonyman who believes the Pope to be infallible, 
 and teaches that the earth stands still, but is mighty for 
 mischief. 
 
 And, so, it is thought to barter England, out of Hindoo fear. 
 Her leaders, like the Austrian Archduke, look to their great 
 inheritance, and tremble for the roofs in Downing Street. Well
 
 LESSONS IN MOllALS. 37 
 
 they may ! for the enemy is upon them, and in well-orclered 
 array. Be strong, ye hoonymans ! quit yourselves like 
 men ! and England, like Ireland, like Austria, like Spain, like 
 Italy, may be again enslaved, and governed by the rod of Index 
 Expurgatorius ! Happy he whom ye shall elect to sit upon the 
 Treasury- bench, or fill the highest post of honour in the gracious 
 presence of the Queen ! 
 
 In the meantime, money ! — money must be squeezed out of 
 the faithful ! Let " The Tmies " bark,— 
 
 " Havrem tesoro ; e chi baiar vuol, bai." 
 
 Small, comparatively, are the gains wrung from the living 
 rich ; and the all, even, of the generous poor is still inadequate. 
 Yet, " the silver is mine, and the gold is mine ;" and " the glory of 
 this latter house is to be greater than the glory of the former ! " 
 It is the dying, the dying and the dead, that, in this land of the 
 infidel, the Church must build her hopes upon ! It is the 
 legacies for " pious uses " that must raise mediaeval palaces for 
 the bodies of the living, and mediaeval churches for the bodies of 
 the dead adored ; mediaeval convents for charmed women, sweetly 
 vested (and divested too), that they may charm others by holi- 
 ness aesthetical.* It is the legacies that must make Canterbury 
 
 ■* " Ad pias causas legata dicuntur, quae intuitu pietatis relicta sunt, nimirum, 
 
 1. Loco, vel personse sacrse. 2. Hospitali. 3. Confraternitatibus. 4. Pupillis 
 et orphanis. 5. Quod causa alimentorum iis qui indigent [the higher clergy are 
 ex officio indigent. 
 
 " Ho sempre inteso e sempre chiaro fummi 
 Ch' argento che lor basti, non ban mai 
 Vescovi, Cardinali, e Pastor summi."] 
 
 6. Quod causa studii, saltern theologici. 7. Ad constructionem monument!. 
 8. Ad utihtatem publicam." — Liguori, iv. 937. Legacies are said to be for 
 pious causes which are left out of piety. 1. To a sacred place or person. 
 
 2. To an hospital. 3. To monasteries. 4. To children and orphans. 5. To 
 feed the indigent. 6. For learning, at least theological. 7. To build monuments. 
 8. For public utiUty. 
 
 ' ' Quceris, An testamentum sit validum cui desunt solemnitates a jure civili 
 requisite .'"' — You ask, Whether a will is valid which wants the forms required by 
 the ci\dl law ? 
 
 " Respondeo, Si testamentum factum sit ad causas pias, etiam in foro 
 externa eas non requiri : in foro autem conscientice, siipposita potestate dis- 
 ponentis, sufficere scriptvra?n, nutum, vel aliud signum testatoris absque 
 ULLO TESTE . . . Licet morte interveniente nonfuerit absolvtum, valet {testamentum) 
 quoad legata pia in eo jam expressa." — I reply. If the will is made to pious uses, 
 even in the public court they are not required ; and as to the court of conscience, 
 the power of the disposer being granted, any writing, nod, or other sign of the 
 testator, without any witness, is sufficient . . . Although, death intervening, that 
 will should not have been perfected, it is valid for the pious uses expressed in it. 
 
 " An autem tale testamentum, ad causas pias principaliter factum, si soleni' 
 nitates desint, valeat quoad legata prof ana, controveriitur. Sententia BonaciucE 
 {negans) est satis probabilis : quia respectu laicoricm Papa nihil disponit. Nee 
 semper valet regula, quod accessorium sequilur naturam principalis, nam ipsa 
 non currit, ubi diversa est ratio accessorii a principali, ut hie accidit ; et ideo,
 
 38 CASES OF conscience; or, 
 
 and Norfolk fall like Leinster; and England, like Ireland, 
 " adore," when a scarlet hoonyman vouchsafes to manifest his 
 glory most eminent nil eminentiiis to the world.* 
 
 Ah ! if it were only forum conscientia, the "tribunal" of the 
 confessional and canon law that ruled in England ! Or were 
 the gods of the " faithful " worshipped in the " Arches ! " But 
 the courts of the heretic ! — the courts of the accursed ! — courts, 
 that to acknowledge is to be anathema ! We fly to thee, 
 Liguori ! Life, hope, joy of bishops' hoonyman ! Fer opem, 
 maxime vatum ! Hgregie Doctor, instrue mores ! " The villany 
 thou teachest, we will execute ; and it shall go hard but we will 
 better the instruction." f 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TRUTHFULNESS TAUGHT TO THE LAITY. 
 
 The boundary-line between equivocation under oath and per- 
 jury, like that between spiritual and temporal external juris- 
 diction, may perhaps be imaginable, but certainly it is not 
 discoverable. He that claims and exercises a right to govern 
 the soul, can hardly wish to be thought sincere when he re- 
 
 non obstante quod testamentum principaliter sit projanum, debetur legatum in 
 eum relicium, etiam deficientibus solemititatibns juris civilis." — But it is disputed 
 if such a will, principally made for pious uses, is valid for profane legacies whei'e 
 the forms are wanting. The opinion of Bonacina denying, is sufficiently pro- 
 bable ; because the Pope disposes of nothing with respect to laymen. Nor is 
 the rule always valid that the accessory foUows the nature of the princij)al, 
 for it does not run where the reason of the accessory is diverse from that of the 
 principal, as here happens ; and so, notwithstanding the will is principally pro- 
 fane, the legacy left in it is to be paid, although the forms of the civil law are 
 wanting. 
 
 " Denique, testamentum ad causas pias, non solemne, revocat aliud solemne, 
 etsi hujus mentionem non faciat : idque etiamsi prius etiam fuerit ad causas 
 pias." — Ibid. iv. 922. Lastly, a will for pious uses, although informal, repeals 
 another formal will, although it does not mention it ; and this even if the first 
 also was for pious uses. 
 
 * " Adoration," in strictness, is properly paid only to a Pope, and he only 
 while living (in the religion of Rome) is placed upon the altar. To any other 
 living man " adoration" can probably only be offered as pars ipsius corporis, " a 
 piece of Pope." Even of this, it is doubtful if an instance on the Continent can 
 be cited. In England, however, it is certain that the usage now prevails (owing, 
 perhaps, to our intimate relationship with India) ; and adoration is habitually 
 paid by a large circle of the feminine " faithful," whenever a well-known, modest 
 " piece of Pope " enters upon the scene. 
 
 t The word " villany" is used in a Pickwickian sense only in the quotation, 
 as indeed it is, by Shylock himself, in the original.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 39 
 
 pudiates all empire over the body ; and he who holds it a duty, 
 or even lawful, to equivocate and to dissemble under oath (except 
 in danger of discovery), can hardly claim belief for anything on 
 the ground that he has sworn to it. 
 
 The beautiful, but over-ambitious Convent of St. Winifred, 
 is scarce more than half finished. Of one wing, the walls are 
 not yet built. The chapel-tower is spireless ; the chancel- 
 window is the only one filled in with stained glass ; the ambu- 
 latorium is laid with bricks instead of tiles ; the furniture even 
 of the parlours and the refectory is modern, and 3000/. of 
 borrowed money still remain unpaid. The placid -looking 
 mother-superior sits pensive at the little j^ortiera window, with 
 the graceful Moorish beads in hand, but not at prayer. She 
 has sent the sister-portress to do penance, for the outer door was 
 fastened with one bolt only, and she will herself let in the 
 visitor she waits for. It is " my lord^^ that pants up the avenue, 
 and now graciously extends his hand for her fair lips to kiss, as 
 she kneels behind the door, which seemed to open and shut 
 gently of itself. 
 
 " What is it ? " " my lord " asks, when they are closeted 
 together in the second parlour; "what is it that 'my dear 
 daughter' has required me for?" 
 
 " The Abbe Flotteville was here again to-day, but I did not 
 see him.'^ 
 
 " You have not offended him, my daughter ? He is so fond 
 of you ! " 
 
 "Oh, no, my lord ! I sent him word that I was very ill. 
 He will be here to-morrow. But he grows very feeble, and he 
 will leave us nothing, if he knows that the 3000/. are not paid ; 
 and then all his cousin's fortune will go to those nasty, worldly 
 girls, his nieces. AVliat shall I do, my lord?" 
 
 " Tell him it is paid." 
 
 "Is it, my lord?" 
 
 " No, my daughter, not paid, as you mean it, to Miss Fitz- 
 farthing, but to the workmen. Abbe Flotteville has no right to 
 ask, or know the truth ; you, therefore, have a right to hide it. 
 And it is no lie to say that it is paid, in the sense I tell you of. 
 It is a just equivocation; or what is called in morals, amphi- 
 bology." 
 
 " What is amphibology, my lord ? " 
 
 " Amphibology is using words with double meaning ; as in 
 Latin, volo means ' I will ;' and also means, 'I fly ;' in English, / 
 say, means ' I utter,' as well as ' I declare ;' and if you are ques- 
 tioned about any one, whom it is convenient to conceal, if she 
 is in the convent, you may answer, / say that she is not ; mean-
 
 40 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 ing you utter these words, that she is not.* This is no lie, you 
 mean just what you say ; and, as well as I can remember, I 
 have given you St. Liguori^s very words. So you need have no 
 hesitation in dealing with the dear, good Abbe ; and you would 
 do well, too, if he should seem to doubt you, to call God 
 solemnly to witness that what you say is true. You might say, 
 ' Dear Abbe Flotteville, how we nmst bless God that the 3000/. 
 are paid \' for holy Liguori" — "his lordship^^ always closes his 
 small pig eyes in reverence, when he names "the Saint^' — "holy 
 Liguori says, 'to swear with equivocation or amphibology, when 
 there is a good reason, and equivocation without an oath is 
 lawful, is not wrong, is no harm, for where there is a right to 
 hide the truth, and it is done without a lie, no irreverence is 
 done the oath.^"t 
 
 " Is there a good reason here, my lord?" 
 
 " Any reason is a good one, provided there be a reason ; as, 
 for instance, to be delivered from importunity, or from an un- 
 authorised interrogation." J 
 
 * " Amphibologia triplici modo potest esse : J. quando verbum habet dupli- 
 cem setisum, prout volo significat velle et volare. II. Quando sermo dupUcem 
 sensum habet principaleni, e. g. Hie liber est Petri, significare potest qnod 
 Petrus sit libri dominus, aut sit libri aucfor. III. Quando verba habent dupli- 
 cem sensttm, unum literalem, alium spiritnalem. Sic qiiis interrogatus de aliquo, 
 quod expedit celare, potest respondere dico non, id est, dice verbum non. Car- 
 denas de hoc dubitat [the Puritan !], sed salvo meliori consilio, videtur immerito, 
 cum verbum dico vere duplicem seusum habeat ; significat enim proferre et 
 asseret^e, in nostro autem seiisu dico idem est ac protero." — Liguori, iv. 151. 
 Amphibology may be threefold. 1. When a word has a double meaning, as, volo 
 means I fig, as well as I will. 2. When the sentence has a double principal 
 meaning ; as, this book is Peter's, may mean, the book belongs to Peter, or 
 Peter wrote it. 3. When the words have a double sense, one literal, the other 
 spiritual. Thus, if any one is asked by another about something which he wishes 
 to conceal, he may answer, / say, no ; that is, / say the word no. Cardenas 
 doubts of this ; but, saving his better judgment, it seems worthless, for the word 
 / say truly has a double sense : for it signifies to assert as well as to utter, and 
 in my meaning / say means / utter. 
 
 t " Jurare cum cequivocatione, quando justa causa est, et ipsa cequivocatio 
 licet non est malum : quia ubi est jus occultandi veritaiem, et occultatur sine 
 mendacio, nulla irreverentia fit juramento. {Quod si sine justa CAUSA_^a^ non 
 erit quidem perjurium, cum saltern sectindum aliquem sensum verborum, vel 
 restrictionem mentalem, verum juret.)" — Ibid, \\.\b\. To swear with equivo- 
 cation when there is a good reason, and the equivocation itself is lawful, is not 
 ■wrong ; for where you have a right to hide the truth, and you do it without a lie, 
 no irreverence is done to the oath. Indeed, if it be done without any good reason 
 it is not perjury ; for, according to one meaning of the word, or limited mental 
 reservation, you sweaf to the truth. 
 
 X ^' Ad sic {cum amphibologia) jurandum {praeterquam in judiciis et con- 
 tractibus,) non requiritur cansa absolute gravis, sed svfiicit quavis rationabilis 
 causa, puta, ad se liberandum ab iynportuna et injusta interrogatione alteritis, ut 
 diciint Salmanticenses cu}n Valdez, Sanchez, Bona, Pallatio, Roncaglia, Elbel, 
 &c." — Ibid. iv. 151. To swear in this way with amphibology, except in legal 
 evidence or a contract, no reason absolutely grave is necessary. Any reasonable 
 reason is enough ; for instance, to get rid of a troublesome questioner who has 
 no right to question you.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 41 
 
 " How very kind of you, good lord bishop ! And is there no 
 need to pay Miss Fitzfar thing?" 
 
 " None in the world, my daughter. I will try hereafter to 
 have the interest paid her more regularly ; but she has at least 
 200/. a-year without it. What should she want with more?" 
 
 " And shall we have the spire at once, if Abbe Flotteville 
 die ? Dear old Abbe Flotteville, he is so fond of me ! And 
 Pugin says the spire will be so very, very beautiful, it will beat 
 St. Alkmund's. And shall we have all the darling chapel- 
 windows stained ? And what would one of those grand Spanish 
 copes cost, do you suppose, my lord ?" 
 
 " Abbe Flotteville is not dead, my daughter," says his smiling 
 "lordship." 
 
 " But when I have masses said for my own private intention," 
 runs on that dear, delightful, naughty little superior, " bishop, 
 may I offer them to God that he would take the Abbe to him- 
 self? May I, bishop ? He is so unhappy here, and I am sure 
 he is quite ripe for heaven." 
 
 " Unite your intentions with all that is for the glory of 
 God's holy Church, and wait with patience the doings of His 
 holy will." 
 
 This was in 1848; and I think the dear, melancholy Abbe, 
 must have died soon after, though his French nieces heard nothing 
 of his death. There was no will, and nulla bona returned from 
 England : so they only inherited the old chateau in which they 
 lived in the Ardennes. But the chapel was finished in 1850, 
 when I saw it, and was " so very, very beautiful," and the 
 service exquisite, with little cardinals for acolytes ; and, besides 
 a grand Spanish cope for " benediction," there was a delicious 
 organ, and the ambulatoiy — " what a pretty word !" the nuns said, 
 "that was " — was tiled so sweetly, and all the furniture throughout 
 the house was mediaeval ; and you would almost have thought 
 the sisters themselves had been preserved hermetically from the 
 blessed "days of faith" and farthingales, of Raphaelesque popes 
 with handsome Gonfalonier sons ; of Medicaean daughters-in-law 
 pontifical, lovely Magdalena Cibos, and of beautifully-coiffed 
 dames, who could call an emperor and two popes " father." 
 
 " This is the excellent foppery of the Church ! to make us 
 Adllains, by necessity ! fools, by heavenly compulsion ! liars, by 
 an enforced obedience ! and all that we are evil in, by a divine 
 thrusting on ! an admirable evasion ! " 
 
 Young Tightman, the apothecary, a week ago, gave arsenic 
 to ]\Iary Saunders, the calenderer in iVshwood Lane ; and to-day, 
 Mr. IMoultry, who had long had a notorious liaison with her, 
 and was supposed to have given her the money which bought 
 the cottage that she lived in, is declared to have died by poison.
 
 42 CASES OP CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 The liaison with beautiful Mary Saunders was not more no- 
 torious than the domestic unhappiness that had grown out of 
 itj and Mrs. Moultry was arrested, and all bail was refused. 
 It would be long to tell them, but there were many little things 
 that bore very hardly against poor Mrs. Moultry, and suspicion 
 never once alighted upon Mary Saunders. Young Tightman, 
 for just one kiss, had promised he would never tell that he had 
 given her arsenic, and to-morrow he would be called up as a 
 witness. What was he to do ? The round-faced whiskered man 
 that he applies to is Father Flower, a Liguorian or Redemptorist. 
 
 " Does any one know of the arsenic given to Mary Saun- 
 ders ?^^ 
 
 « Nobody.'* 
 
 " Then when you are called up you may swear, with mental 
 reservation."* 
 
 * It is certain, and commonly held by all divines, that with a 
 
 GOOD reason, it IS LAWFUL TO MAKE USE OF EaUIVOCATION IN THE WAYS 
 EXPLAINED (see note *, p. 40), and to confirm the EauiVOCATION WITH 
 AN oath. The reason is, that we are not deceiving our NEIGHBOURS, 
 BUT, FOR SOME GOOD REASON, LETTING THEM DECEIVE THEMSELVES ; and OH 
 
 the other hand, we are not bound to speak to the minds or meanings of other 
 people ! If tliere be a good reason, and any honest purpose, such as taking care 
 of our money, or our bodily or ghostly serviceables. There is, indeed, a question, 
 whether it be a grave sin thus to swear without a good reason. Viva says it 
 is, and so does Busembaum, as he asserts with Layman, Sanchez, and others, 
 commonly. But he is wrong in citing Sanchez, and calling his opinion common. 
 [The ivretcJied man!'] For Sanchez holds the contrary, and so do Lugo, 
 Cajetan, and the Salamanca doctors, with Soto, Valdez, &c. &c., and Busem- 
 baum himself thinks their opinion probable. And the reason of this more 
 PROBABLE opinion is, that in an oath of this sort, truth and justice are there. 
 All that is wanting is sense or discrimination ; and to be wanting in that is 
 nothing more than venial. As to what Viva says, that any one who thus sivears 
 practically, calls God to witness what is false ; for the truth is, that he calls God 
 to witness what is true, in the way he means it. 
 
 " Certum est, et commune apud omnes, quod ex justa causa licitum sit 
 uti (equivocal ione modis expositis (see note *, p. 40) et cum juramento firmare. Ita 
 Lessius, Cardenas, Salmanticenses, ex S. Hieronymo, qui dicit, Utilem simulatio- 
 nem, et in tempore assumendam ; quod explicans S. Thomas ait, S. Hieronymus 
 utitur large nomine simulationis pro quacunque fictione. Ratio, quia tunc, non 
 decipimus proximum, sed ex justa causa permittimus ut ipse decipiatur 
 [like the innocents of the H. of L. or Com. of the H. of C] et, ex alia parte, 
 non tenemur ad mentem aliorum loqui ! si justa causa suhsit. Justa autem causa 
 esse potest quicumque finis honestus ad servanda bona, spiritui vel corpori utilia. 
 Utrum autem jurare cum amphibologia, sive restrictione non pure mentali, ut 
 ivfra (see note, p. 43) sine justa causa sit peccatum mortale ? Affirmat Viva. 
 Idemque tenet Busembaum cum Layman, Sanchez, &c. communiter, ut asserit. 
 Sedimmerito citat Sanchez, et vocat suam sententiam communem ; dumoppositum 
 sequitur Sanchez, et eandem tenent Lugo, Cajetanus, Salmanticenses, cwm Soto, 
 Valdez, Prado, Hurtado, Candido, Leandro, item Lessius, et probabilem putat 
 Busembaum. Ratio hnjtts probabilioris sententice est, quia in hujusmodi jura- 
 mento jam adsunt Veritas et justitia : deficit tantum judicium sive dis- 
 CRETio, cujvs deficientia non est nisi venialis. [Lucky for the H. of L. and M. P.'s 
 in Com.] Nee obstat quod ait Viva, scilicet, quod taliter jurans exercite in- 
 vocet Deum ad testificandum falsum, nam reipsa invocat ad testificandum verum 
 juxta suum sensum." — Liguori, iv. 151.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 43 
 
 " I thought. Father Flower, that you told Squire Carew, 
 when he met you in my shop, that mental reservation was a 
 mortal sin, and that he ought to know it was ; for Dr. Denton 
 had sworn before the House of Lords that that was the universal 
 doctrine of the Church, and that some pope had solemnly con- 
 demned the contrary opinion ! " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! I had forgotten it ; but I said the truth, and 
 Dr. Denton swore the truth. Innocent XI. condemned the 
 doctrine of mental reservation, but the Church will tell you that 
 such condemnations must not be construed strictly ; and what 
 he condemned as sinful, is to be understood as reservation purely 
 mental. He did not condemn reservation non-purely mental. 
 It is impossible, moreover, that he should have done so ; ' for 
 if reservation not purely mental were forbidden, there would be 
 no way left of concealing a secret that it yet might be most 
 inconvenient or damnatory to have known, and this would be as 
 mischievous to human intercourse as lying.' The condemnation 
 of the pontiff, then, is rightly to be understood of reservation 
 purely and strictly mental. And that only can be truly called 
 mental reservation which is wholly in the mind, and so hidden 
 that by no possible means it could ever be made out from cir- 
 cumstances. Non-purely mental reservation is quite another 
 thing, for it may possibly be found out from circumstances. 
 And when you swear in the case of Mary Saunders that you 
 know nothing whatever about the arsenic, you mean that you 
 know not anything which you are at liberty to tell,* or do not 
 wish to keep secret." 
 
 * " Restrictio atitem mentalis alia est pure mentalis qum nullo modo ah aliis 
 percipi potest ; alia non es/ pure mentalis, quse ex adjanctis circumstantiis in- 
 notescere potest." Of mental reservation, one sort is purely mental which cannot 
 by any means be detected by others ; the other non-purelij mental, which can 
 become known from some adjunct circumstances. 
 
 ^^ Restrictio pure mentalis nunqiiam est licita, nee juramenium super eadem, 
 ut patet tribus propositionibus damnatis ah Innoc. XI. in quibus, prima, n. 26, 
 dicebat, Si quis vel solus, vel coram aliis, sive interrogatus, sive propria sponte, 
 sive recreationis causa, sive quocunque alio fine juret, se non fecisse aliquid, 
 quod revera fecit ; intelligendo intra se aliquid aliud, quod non fecit, vel aliam 
 viam ab ea, in qua fuit, vel quodvis aliud additum varum, revera non mentitur 
 nee est perjurus. Secunda, n. 27 dicebat, Causa justa utendi his amphibologiis 
 est quoties id necessarium, aut utile est ad salutem corporis, honorem, res fami- 
 liares tuendas ; vel ad quemlibet virtutis actum ; ita ut veritatis occultatio cen- 
 seatur tunc expediens et studiosa. Tertia, n. 29, Qui, mediante commendatione 
 vel munere, ad magistratum, vel officium publicum promotus est, poterit cum 
 restrictione mentali prsestare juramentum quod de mandato regis exigi solet, non 
 habito respecto ad intentionem exigentis quia non tenetur fateri crimen occultum." 
 Restriction purely mental is never lawful, nor an oath upon it, as is clear 
 from three propositions condemned by Innocent XI. The first of them. No. 26, 
 said, If any one alone, or in company, upon being asked a question, or spon- 
 taneously, out of recreation or any other motive, swear that he did not do some- 
 thing which he really did, meaning inter7ially some other thing which he did not
 
 44 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 " Moreover, you are never bound, even though legitimately 
 and juridically interrogated under oath, to tell the truth, if 
 you have become acquainted with it, as in this case, under natu- 
 ral secrecy ; because a precept of natural law must take prece- 
 dence of the precept of a court/^* 
 
 "But what is to become of poor Mrs. IMoultry, Father 
 Flower ?" 
 
 " They will not be very likely to hang her upon circum- 
 stantial evidence : but that is no affair of yours. Mrs. Moultiy 
 could have no claim on you, nor even upon Mary Saunders, for 
 loss of character, or even loss of life, inasnmch as your evidence, 
 or Mary Saunders^ silence, is not the positive or influential 
 
 do, or in some other way from what it was, or any other added truth, he neither 
 lies nor is perjured. The second, No. 27, said. There is a good reason for using 
 amphibologies as often as they are needful or useful for health, honour, or 
 family property, or any act of virtue, so as to make the concealment of the truth 
 thought ea.pedient and desirable. The third. No. 28, says. He tvho, by means of 
 a recommendation or a bribe, is promoted to the magistracy or any public office, 
 may take the oath usually exacted, without any regard to the intention of the 
 exaction, for he is not bound to confess the hidden fault. 
 
 " jB contrario licitum est, justa causa uti restrictione non pure mentali, 
 etiam cwnjuramento, si ilia ex circumstantiis percipi potest. Hanc sententiam 
 communiter tenent Gonet, Manriquez, Layman, Paludanus, Adrianus, Soto, 
 Wigandt, Cardenas, La Croix, Holzman, Elbel, Sporer, Viva, et Salmanticenses, 
 qui dicunt hauc sententiam esse communem fere omnium doctorum. Idem sentit 
 continuator Tournely cum Vauroy et Boudart, dicens etiam strictiores theologos 
 has restrictiones late men tales (qtiod idem est ac non pure mentales) negare esse 
 iUicitas. [" Here is a great coil," O ! H.of L. and Com. ot'H. of C. " Be vigilant, 
 I beseech you ! " in the name of Dogberry. ] Ratio autem hnjus sententia est, quia 
 si non liceret uti restrictione non pure mentali, non existeret modus secretum 
 licite celandi si quis nequiret aperire sitie damno, vet incommodo ; quod utique 
 esset ceque perniciosum commercio humano, quam mendacium. Damnatio autem 
 peracta a Pontifice restrictionis mentalis, rede intelligenda est de restrictione 
 pure et stride sumjyta ; ilia enim tantum vera mentalis restridio did debet, guee 
 tantum in mente ft, et ita occulta remanet, et nullo modo ex circumstantiis 
 externis agnosci valet. Hinc dicunt Cardenas ac Felix Potesta qxiod quoties 
 tenetur quis occultare infamiam alterius, licite dicat nescio, scilicet, Non habeo 
 scientiam utilem ad respondendum, sive, Non scio tanquam manifestabile, ut 
 Cardenas cum Lugo." — Liguori, iv. 152. On the other hand, it is 
 
 LAWFUL TO USE RESERVATION UOn-pUrely MENTAL, EVEN WITH AN OATH, 
 
 provided there is a possibility of detecting by circumstances. This is the 
 common opinion of nearly all divines. And the reason of it is, that if it 
 were not lawful to use reservation non-purely mental, there would be no way 
 left of concealing a secret, though you could not reveal it without loss or 
 inconvenience, and this would be as mischievous to human intercourse as lying. 
 The Pontiff's condemnation of mental resei'vation is rightly to be understood 
 of reservation purely and strictly taken ; and that only can be called true 
 mental reservation which is made only in the mind, and remains so concealed, 
 that by no means can it possibly be discovered from outward circumstances. 
 And hence Cardenas and FelLx Potesta say, that as often as any one is required 
 to conceal another's disgrace, he may lawfully say, / knoiv nothing about it ; 
 namely, I know nothing aboid it proper to be told or fit to answer. 
 
 * " Etiam legitime et juridice interrogatus, non teneris testari, si accepisti 
 sub secreto natnrali. Etiam sub secreto tantum conimisso, ut S. Thomas et 
 communis cum Sylvio et Salmanticensibus, contra Sotum, quiapracepium naturale 
 pr<efe)-endum est prcecepto Judicis." — Ibid. v. 268.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 45 
 
 cause of her wrong, but only the negative one. Do you under- 
 stand me ?" 
 
 " Why, I fear, not perfectly." 
 
 " Well, then, what I mean is this, — nothing that you 
 say does any wrong to Mrs. Moultry; you do not bring for- 
 ward, nor put in the way any hindrance of her right. The 
 obstacle to her acquittal is already there, namely, the want of 
 proof to show her innocence. Now you are under no obligation 
 of justice to remove this obstacle.* You are under no obliga- 
 tion of obedience, because, as I have told you, you are to obey the 
 natural law of secrecy, not to tell, rather than the orders of the 
 court to tell the truth. You are under no obligation of reli- 
 gion, because where there is a right to conceal the truth, and it 
 is hidden without a lie, there is no irreverence if nor are you 
 under any obligation of charity, because, in appreciation, Mary 
 Saunders is nearer to you in the order of charity than Mrs. 
 Moultry. ''J 
 
 And yet the Abbe Flotteville was an unexceptionable priest, 
 and Mrs. Moultry was a *' Catholic !^^ They were members 
 one of another in the same body with " his lordship " and the 
 zealous "reverend mother," with Flower and Tightman. The 
 court, too, was unimpugned, before which Tightman was to be 
 forsworn. These are the morals by which the " faithful" 
 themselves are "joined together and compacted," These are the 
 morals of departed " saints," and of the most pious, the most 
 
 * " Dices ; tenetur damnum restituere testis qui dicendo se nescire, quod 
 vera scit, jam impedit, per tale mendacium proximum a eonsecutione sui juris. 
 At respondetur, hoc procedere quando mendacium est causa positiva, sive in- 
 fluxiva damni, secus si tantum negativa. Testis autem qui dicit se nescire verita- 
 tem quam scit est causa tantum negativa damni, cum nullum apponit impedimen- 
 tum positi\Tim, ne alter suum jus consequatur, sed solum non removet impedi- 
 mentum alteri obstans, scilicet defectum probationis : ad quod removendum po- 
 tent quidem testis ex obedientia et religione ut diximus, aut etiam aliquando ex 
 charitate esse obstrictus, sed non ex justitia." — Liguori, v. 270. You will 
 say that a witness, who sat/s he knows not what he really does know, is 
 bound to make restitution for the injury, because by his lie [but in the case 
 ia question, Father Flower denied that there would be any lie] he prevents 
 his neighbour from having his just right. But the answer is, thi^ is so, only 
 when the lie is the positive or influential cause of the ivrong, but not when it 
 is merely the negative cause. And the witness, who says he does not knoiv when 
 he does know, is only the negative cause. He puts no positive impediment in 
 the way of the other's right. He only does not remove an impediment 
 already in the way, namely, the want of proof . To remove that impediment 
 he MAY indeed be bound by religion or obedience, or even, sometimes, by 
 charity, but not by justice. 
 
 t See note f, p. 40. 
 
 X " Quoad proximos, inter se servandus est hie ordo (charitatis), appretiative, 
 et dilectione ea qua alteri optamus bonum nondum possessum, cum beneficentia 
 magis diligendi sunt ii qui nobis sunt conjimctiores quoad ea bona, quae sunt debita 
 tali conjunctioni, et in quibus hgec fundatur." — Ibid. iii. 27.
 
 46 CASES OF CONSCIENCE; OB, 
 
 devoted living denizens of Popedom. These are the morals of 
 whole Roman Catholic kingdoms, the morals of "the holy city^' 
 itself, and its scarce less holy neighbour, Naples. And if faith 
 in Popery and sincere devotion to the Virgin Mary and the 
 saints be holiness — if acts of generous self-devotedness, and 
 charity, and blind hope, be holiness — I know no cities in the 
 world that can rival Rome or Naples. It is false to say that 
 infidelity prevails among the people, high or low. It is the 
 opposite excess that is the general vice in all classes of the laity, 
 and even of the clergy. Who that witnessed the blank, sombre 
 misery of the Romans in 1848, when St. Andrew the Apostle^s 
 head was stolen from the Vatican ; the crowded tapers glitter- 
 ing around the wafer on the altars ; the sobbing masses of 
 equal men and women that knelt before them ; the knots of 
 gloomy whisperers in the public squares; the heaviness that 
 reached the palace and the ball-room ; who that witnessed the 
 spontaneous illumination which, two nights afterwards, an- 
 nounced electrically, from street to street, the recovery of the 
 relic ; who that witnessed the hundred thousand, of all ranks, 
 in their solemn joy following, bare-headed, the bare-headed 
 Pontiff, as he tottered along beneath the precious weight, and, 
 with tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, bore it back to its 
 threc-days'-desolate thrown-open sanctuary ; who that witnessed 
 the passionate gratitude and love with which that great multi- 
 tude shouted Te Deum, and prostrated themselves upon St. 
 Peter^s marble fields; who that witnessed these things, can 
 doubt the deep religiousness of that Roman people ? And who 
 can visit incognito their hospitals, and not reverence and love 
 the gentle piety, and patience, and self-forgetfulness, not indeed 
 of the hireling nurses, nor of the old professional " religious^' 
 guardians, but of noble women of high rank, or quiet nuns of 
 some one of the many Orders of INIercy, Providence, and Charity, 
 who seem truly to have chosen their lot of poverty and labour 
 as a bridegroom docs his bride ? I do indeed acknowledge that 
 a personal dislike of the reigning sovereign is, as it were, here- 
 ditary with the Romans ; and who can wonder ? when almost 
 every palace, from the oldest down to Braschi's, is a memento 
 of the vice and rapacity of that accursed dynasty, in which the 
 palm of infamy is in dispute between Virgin * Pontiffs, too base 
 to have descendants,t and those who first debauched, and then 
 
 * The Fathers often call meu virgines, and Ovid speaks of Medea as virgo 
 adult era. 
 
 t Julius III., who, as first Legate, had opened the Council of Trent, and 
 presided with such distinguished courtesy and craft. He made his monkey-keeper,
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 47 
 
 destioyed the children whom they had. But^ the infidelity or 
 irrelgion of the people I deny. No ! no ! 
 
 " Populo vile, codardo, insanguinato," 
 
 but not irreligious. Religion at Rome is a thing sincere and 
 deej ; and the religion of Rome everywhere is a reality ; 
 sucl as many an earnest Brahmin, or Dr. Cullen, or Lord 
 Aruidel and Surrey, may explain to us, hut such as many a 
 scaiiet prelate no more wots of than Sir James Graham or 
 Mr Milner Gibson. 
 
 But the Cardinal Secretary of State to Pius IX. tells the 
 Arstrian Government, in an official despatch written in his 
 mister^s name, " the population of Rome is in general radically 
 corrupt, or inapt and incapable of giving a shadow of support to 
 Government. ^^ And so they are " radically," one almost fears 
 iiTedeemably, " corrupt;" and it is their faith and their religion 
 fhat has made them so. And, how can a people supernaturalhj 
 governed ever become other than " iuapt and incapable " of 
 assisting in their government ? When was any Roman Catholic 
 kingdom ever governed without the rack, the Inquisition, or a 
 standing army ? When did civil supremacy ever rule quietly 
 beside the Church of Rome acknowledged, or any church ac- 
 knowledged outwardly supreme ? What is the history of the 
 Continent, from Constantine till now, but a history of treachery, 
 sedition, and revolt ? And in England, it was an attempt to 
 establish a Pontificate that brought about both the Rebellion and 
 the Revolution. Make any priesthood master, make any mortal 
 supernatural, and there is no need of hereditary training to make 
 a man dangerous to all the natural relations of society, hostile to 
 the rights of temporal government, and at loose from all the 
 obligations of the moral sense. 
 
 delicias domini, the beautiful son of the beautiful Arezzo beggar-girl, a cardinal 
 at the age of seventeen. 
 
 " Quand' io (S. Pietro) udi; se io mi trascoloro, 
 Kon ti maravigliar : clie, disceud' io, 
 Vedrai trascolar tutti costoro. 
 Quegli eh' usurpa in terra il luogo mio 
 II luogo mio, il luogo mio che vaca 
 Nella presenza del Figliuol di Dio, 
 Del sangue e della puzza onde il perverse 
 Che cadde di quassu, laggiu si placa."
 
 48 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BLIND OBEDIENCE. 
 
 Lacy de Lacy is a peer's son, his mother a peer's daugbter. 
 He is a Church-of-England clergyman ; amiable, accompliihed, 
 learned, pious, and, if not philosophic, quick and penetraing. 
 He is converted at forty, and believes infallibility as he belEves 
 the One, Holy, Cathohc, and Apostolic Church ; and accepts as 
 heartily Ignatius Loyola's legitimate developement of it, bind 
 obedience. Read what that developement is, in Loyola's ovn 
 words, — "Obedience is to be rendered to a superior, not on 
 account of his wisdom, goodness, or any other such-like quali.y 
 with which he may be divinely gifted ; but solely because h3 
 holds God's place, and wields the authority of Him who saith, 
 ' He that heareth you, heareth me ; and he that despiseth you, 
 despiseth meJ Nor, on the other hand, is anything to be 
 abated from this obedience, on the ground that the superior may 
 be wanting in prudence or discretion ; for he claims it as superior, 
 and as i*epresenting Him whose wisdom can never be deceived, 
 and who will Himself make up whatever is wanting in His 
 minister of the grace of probity or any other. Even as Christ 
 our Lord taught clearly, for when He had said, ' The scribes and 
 Pharisees sit in Moses' chair,' He instantly added, 'All things, 
 therefore, whatsoever they shall bid you, that observe and do.' 
 And my vehement desire is, that this should be clearly certain to 
 you, and deeply rooted in your inmost hearts, that it is the very 
 lowest and a most imperfect sort of obedience which merely 
 executes an order. That man's obedience is not worthy to be 
 called by the name of virtue, who does not make the will of 
 THE superior HIS OWN, and so agree with it, that what one 
 wills both will, and what one does not will neither does the 
 other. Down, 'then, with your whole will wholly. Freely 
 give up and dedicate to your Creator, in the person of His 
 minister, that freedom with which He has endowed you. But, 
 if you would immolate your whole self wholly unto God, you 
 must offer to Him not the bare will merely, but the under- 
 standing also ; to think just what the superior thinks, and 
 TAKE HIS JUDGMENT FOR YOUR OWN, SO far as it is possible for 
 a devoted will to bend the understanding. It is impossible to 
 deny that obedience includes not only the doing of what is 
 commanded and the willing of what is done, but the submission 
 of the judgment also, that whatever is commanded should be 
 thought right and true; for obedience is a holocaust wherein
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 49 
 
 THE WHOLE MAN, witliout any part reserved whatever, is immo- 
 lated to his Creator and his Lord by the hands of his ministers. 
 The noble simphcity of blind obedience is gone, if in our 
 secret breast we call in question whether that which is com- 
 manded be RIGHT or WRONG. This is what makes it perfect 
 and acceptable to the Lord, that the most excellent and most 
 precious part of man is consecrated to Him, and nothing what- 
 soever of him kept back for himself.^^ * 
 
 " And let every man be well persuaded that he who lives 
 under obedience ougiit, under the providence of God, sineerely 
 to be governed and behave exactly as if he were a corpse, which 
 suffers itself to be turned in all directions and dragged every- 
 where ; or as if he were an old man^s staff, to be used where- 
 soever and in whatsoever he wishes who holds it in his hand."t 
 
 * " Siquideni Superiori nee si prudentia, bonitate, cseterisve quibuslibet 
 Di\inis donis ornatus, instnictusque sit propterea obtemperandum est ; sed ob id 
 solum quod vices gerat Dei ejus denique auctoritate fungatur qui dicit, ' Qui vos 
 audit, me audit ; et qui vos speruit, me spernit,' nee eontra, sive consilio aut 
 prudentia minus valeat, quidquam ideirco de Obediextia remittendum, quatenus 
 ille Superior est ; quando illius personam refert, cujus sapientia falli non potest. 
 Supplebitque ipse quidquid ministro defuerit, sive probitate, aliisve ornamentis 
 careat. Siquidem disertis verbis Christus Domiuus, cum dixisset : ' Super 
 Cathedram Moysi sedenint Scribse et Pharissei,' protinus addidit, 'Omnia ergo 
 quseeumque dixerint vobis, servate et facite.' Jam vero illud etiam vobis clare 
 compertum esse, ac in animis vestris penitus insidere vehementer cupio, infimam 
 et valde imperfectam esse illam Obedienti^ formam, quae mandata duntaxat 
 opere exsequitur, nee virtutis nomine dignam, nisi ad alterum gradum ascendat, 
 qui voluntatem Superioris suam eflicit, et cum ea ita concordet, ut non solum in 
 effeetu executio appareat, verum etiam in afFectu consentio ; sicque idem velit 
 uterque, idem nolit. Quocirca voluntates vestras omnino deponite: libertatem, 
 que Conditori vestro quam vobis ipsemet largitus est, in ejus ministris libera 
 
 tradite ae dicate Quivero se totum penitus immolare vult Deo, praeter 
 
 voluntatem, intelugentiam quoque offerat necesse est, ut non solum idem 
 velit, sed etiam ut idem sentiat quod Superior, ejusque judicio subjiciat suum quoad 
 potest devota voluntas intelligentiam inflectere. Etenim cum Obedientia sit 
 quoddam holocaustum, quo totus homo, sine ulla prorsus immunitione, 
 Conditori suo ae Domino per manus ministrorum in caritatis igne immolatur : 
 cumque sit eadem renunciatio qusedam integra, per quam omni suo jure sponte 
 decedit religiosus " [or any one who makes a vow of obedience] " ut Divinse 
 Providentise Superioris ducto gubernandum ae possidendum ultro sese addicat ac 
 maneipet ; negeiri non potest quin Obedientia comprehendat non solum exeeu- 
 tionem, ut imperatur quis faciat, et voluntatem ut libenter facial, sed etiam judi- 
 cium, ut quBeeumque Superior mandat ac sentit, eadem inferiori et recta et vera 
 esse videantur, quatenus, ut dixi, vi sua, potest voluntas intelligentiam flectere 
 . . . Perit Celebris ilia Obedientia cmcm simplicitas, cum apud nos ipsos in 
 quaestionem vocamus, recte ne prsecipiatur an secus .... Quam vero sit 
 eadem ipsa perfecta grataque Domino, inde primum ostenditur quod per earn 
 prsestantissima pars hominis ae pretiosissima Domino consecratur. Deinde quod 
 Obediens" [Pope or pervert ! Dr. Wiseman's proposition, page 7, must not 
 be forgotten] " ita fit holocaustum vivum, gratumque Majestati Divinse, cum 
 nihil suimet omnino retineat." — Epistola S. Ignatii de Vtrtute Obedientia. 1553. 
 
 t " Et quisque sibi persuadeat, quod aui sub Obedientia vivunt, se ferri 
 ac regi Di\ana Providentia per Superiores sues sincere debent, perinde ac si 
 cadaver essent, quod quoquoversus ferri, et quaeumque ratione tractari se sinit : 
 vel similiter atque senis baculus, qui ubicumque et quaeumque in re velit eo 
 uti, qui eum manu tenet, ei insemt." — Comtitutiones Soc. Jesus, p. vi. c. 1. 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 This was the developement of human infallibility which 
 Lacy de Lacy accepted when he accepted infallibility, and in the 
 fervour of his new love for the Church of his adoption, and in 
 the spirit of self-sacrifice which is the characteristic of all true 
 love, his abjuration made, he makes a vow also of obedience to 
 an unknown priest : for his confessor is a Jesuit, and a Jesuit is 
 forbidden to receive vow of obedience from his own " penitent ;" 
 it must be made to some other, any other priest, '' directed " 
 probably by the same confessor ; and thus is begun the process 
 of his moral suicide. It is at Rome that his abjuration has been 
 made ; in that one of the many recesses of the great " Gesu" 
 in which it is said Loyola once lived, in which it is said he died ; 
 and though strictly secret, and before the dawn of day, it is a 
 Cardinal who receives it. And the dreary vow which follows ! 
 "?hat, too, is made in secret, and it is only after it is made that 
 he learns the name of him that is now his keeper, his conscience- 
 keeper, in whose hands he is but as a corpse, or any old man's 
 STAFF. He knows it is written on the cell-door of the Jesuit, and 
 when he has risen from his knees and dried his moistened eyes, 
 and had his blessing and vade in pace, he stops a moment at the 
 closed door, in that long, dim corridor, and by the still glim- 
 mering distant taper spells P. Z-o-l-l-a, Padre Zolla ! Burn it 
 on thy heart, Lacy de Lacy ! Burn it on thy forehead ! To 
 console thee in thy degradation, and that all, who see thee fallen, 
 may know thee irresponsible ! And this Padre Zolla ! Has he 
 no bowels of compassion ? Has he no feeling of honour or of 
 manhood ? Has he no feeling of a woman's love, and trusti- 
 ness, and loyalty, that his first injunction is treachery and " a 
 lie, an odious, damned lie?" A lie, begun indeed unwittingly, 
 but now to be repeated heedfully, day by day, to all the world, 
 and, first of all, to the wife that lays her head upon his bosom, 
 and the daughter that twines her arms around his neck. 
 
 An altered man is Lacy de Lacy returned to England, his 
 secret faith no secret now. He is an open Papist ; and so is 
 Lady Julia too. His treachery had worked well with her at 
 least, and husband and wife seemed to have embraced together 
 their new religion. But why was young x\dela de Lacy absent 
 from the chapel ? O instinct of holy childhood ! O innocence ! 
 " that passeth the understanding of the aged, and maketh 
 judges fools," more penetrating than any acquired wisdom ! 
 She had felt her father's double-dealing, and she hated the 
 faith that made him cheat her darling mother, just in pro- 
 portion as she loved himself and her. She felt as if father and 
 mother had both been stolen from her. And so they have been, 
 truthful, graceful Adela de Lacy ! Their souls have been rent 
 from you, and from themselves too ; carried away, murdered.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 51 
 
 and buried by Padre Zolla and his fellow Jesuits : and those, who 
 still seem your father and your mother, are only living corpses, 
 breathed in by the souls of other men, that bear little love to 
 you, feared, mistrusted, displaced daughter ! 
 
 But will Lacy de Lacy witness a forged will ? " Ware, 
 Father Goodrig, ware ! On the top of the water, aye ! but 
 give him play ! give him play \" Fear not, over-eager looker- 
 on. An experienced fisher of money and of men is that pale, 
 passionless, bloodless Father Goodrig. He knows how the 
 moral sense dies with the power to use it. He knows how 
 wholly his, in act, and will, and intellect, is Father Zolla's 
 transferred mancipium. And if a sudden t\\dnge may sometimes 
 blanch De Lacy's cheek, at least no coward conscience troubles 
 Father Goodrig. 
 
 Well born, well mannered, but most basely bred, Fatheil 
 Goodrig was one of the old school of Roman priests only in his 
 undistinctive dress; for no Jesuit was ever of any school but 
 Loyola's. He hated his misbelieving country hereditarily. 
 He felt as if he were an Achsean helot under the usurping 
 Dorian dynasty of Guelphs, and though they knew it not, the 
 De Lacys drew no small portion of their wealth from abbey 
 lands of ancient Goodrig gift. But as to the work in hand, 
 even De Lacy must see no wrong is done to any person by the 
 substituted will. It is the prejudices of Protestantism alone 
 that are against the change, while the conditions of the original 
 are base and impious. 
 
 Lady Adela Strange, Lacy de Lacy's maternal avmt, had left 
 her godchild all her property. The will was brief as possible ; 
 besides certain sealed packets, keepsakes to certain dear ones, 
 Adela de Lacy was to have all, some 30,000/., on the sole con- 
 dition that she never became a nun. Lacy de Lacy had wit- 
 nessed the will, and he only knew of the condition added ; and 
 the will was in his keeping until his cousin, the executor, 
 retm'ued from Canada. 
 
 Father Goodrig, in all his intercourse with De Lacy, never 
 once alluded to his vow of obedience, and never gave an order. 
 On the contrary, he encouraged his \ictim in opening difficulties, 
 and often let his chained bird play unhooded, condescending to 
 explain the reasons and authority of his direction. But the 
 Father was always the last speaker in these conferences, and he had 
 a gracious, right royal way of sending off a " penitent." In the 
 present instance, he simply instructed De Lacy how, by a 
 decree of Trent, the power of changing wills, for any just cause, 
 lay with the bishop generally :* but in a will like this there 
 
 * "In alterations of last wills — which alterations ought not to be made 
 except for a just and necessary cause — the bishops, as delegates of the
 
 52 CASES OF conscience; or^ 
 
 was no need even of recurring to the bishop ; his consent was a 
 duty, and therefore might be presumed with safety, for the 
 condition was one expressly denounced as infamous and invalid,* 
 though in the unacknowledged, heretical courts of England, it 
 would but too probably be maintained ; not, he added, that it 
 was likely Miss de Lacy would ever have the desire to become a 
 nun, but it was an unholy, nay, a sacrilegious thing, to make a 
 possible dedication of herself to God a plea for spoliation. So 
 De Lacy took the will to Goodrig. The father, without rising 
 from his seat, beckoned to him to lay it on the table, and with a 
 gracious bow dismissed him. Not one word had passed between 
 them. On De Lacy's next visit a will was handed to him, 
 which he would himself have unhesitatingly sworn to be the 
 same, but that the blank of his own name was not yet filled up. 
 There was Lady Adela^s own seal galvano-plastically repeated. 
 
 Apostolic See, shall, before the alterations aforesaid are carried into execution, 
 ascertain that nothing has been stated in the prayer of the petition which sup- 
 presses what is true, or suggests what is false." — Council of Trent, sess. xxii. 
 de Refor. cap. vi. Watenvorth' s Translation. Dolman, 18 18. 
 
 " Communis sententia tenet, apud Episcopos esse hujumodi facultatem ordi- 
 NARIAM commutandi ; quia talis coiiu/iutaiio est qua'dam dispensatio in lege 
 prasscribente exactam impletionem ultimarum volunfatum, unde quando dicitur 
 fieri posse dispensationes, et non eaprindlur a quo in Tridentino, satis intelligitur 
 fieri posse ab Episcopis ; tdi cum pluribus decent Suarez e^ Sanchez. 2°. Licet 
 Episcopus nequiret hoc facere ex potestate ordinaria, potest tamen, ut Sedis 
 ApostoliC/E delegatus, worfo adsit justa causa judicio Episcopi; idque 
 probant ex Triden. loc. cit. %ibi dicitur. In commutationibus ultimarum volun- 
 tatum, quae non nisi ex justa et necessaria causa fieri debent, Episcopi tanquam 
 DELEGATi Sedis Apostolic^, summarie et extrajudicialiter cognoscant, nisi in 
 precibus tacita veritate, vel suggesta falsitate fuisse narratum, priusquani com- 
 mutationes prsedictse execution! demandentur. Ita Barbosa, cum Sylvio, Men- 
 chata, Beja, Graffiis, Mendoza. Et ita etiam Salmanticenses." — Liguori, iv. 
 931 . 1st. The commonly held opinion is that bishops have this faculty of commu- 
 tation as ordinaries, for such commutation is a dispensation in the law prescribing 
 the exact fulfilment of last wills ; so that when it is said by the Council of Trent 
 that such dispensations can be made and is not expressed by whom, it is under- 
 stood that it can be done by the bishops, as Suarez and Sanchez teach with most. 
 2dly. Though the bishop could not do it of his authority as ordinary, still he can 
 do it as DELEGATE OF THE AposTOLic See, provided there is a just cause for his 
 sentence. And it is proved by the Council of Trent (place just cited, in Water- 
 worth's translation). 
 
 * In Auth. de Sanctiss. assignatur ratio, cur legatum relictum certce per- 
 sona ad nubendum, si debeatur si fiat religiosa, Quod vitam profitentur religiosam, 
 
 scilicet ne puella relinquat statum religiosum ut legatum consequatur 
 
 Neque, ait Lessius, pr(e/ata lex Justiniani innititur prcestimptee ruenti testatoris, 
 sed absolute vult favere pietati, etiam contra expressam testatoris 
 voluntatem ; ita ut si testator expresserit excludendas esse puellas religionem 
 ingredientes talis dispositio rejicitur tanquam turpis." — Ibid. iv. 930. 
 The reason assigned by the law of Justinian why a legacy left to a parti- 
 cular girl in order to marry should be given to her if she becomes a nun, is lest 
 she may give up her nunship to get the money. And Lessius says this law does 
 not rest on the supposed will of the testator, but absolutely means to favour piety 
 (a pious use), even contrary to the express will of the testator. So that if the 
 testator had said expressly that girls going into religion were to be excluded, 
 
 SUCH A disposition IS REJECTED AS SHAMEFUL.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 53 
 
 with even the old dint in the setting. Now, as before, no word 
 was spoken : the pen was put into his hand ; his name was 
 written ; the old envelope received its new enclosure, and a 
 mysterious, leaden-looking, little lump, stamped on it afresh the 
 dead testator^s own undoubted seal. The atmosphere of that 
 little chamber felt strangely oppressive. The silence, too ! it 
 seemed to awe him, and Lacy de Lacy fled rather than withdi'cw 
 when Father Goodrig gave him the sealed packet, and gravely 
 smiled " Good-bye. ^^ 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 COMFORT ON DEATH-BEDS. 
 
 The will case of Scroope v. Redman was one of considerable 
 interest to the Roman Catholics. Many of them thought it had 
 been better to have given up the money than to have brought 
 it before the courts : but Priest Huggins, who was the real 
 defendant, thought differently ; and, papistically speaking. Hug- 
 gins was right, as will be seen. The sum was not a large one 
 — less than 6000/. — but it was sorely needed. Huggins was a 
 man of extraordinary, enterprising activity, and preached well. 
 The rest of the parochial duty a junior priest quite relieved him 
 from, while he rode, and at a swinging pace, his favourite hobby. 
 He had the mania of building. Where the money had come 
 from was unimaginable ; but he had already built, and paid for, 
 a church and spire, — a '' Presbytery," as he called it, or par- 
 sonage, quite perfect in their way, and had walled in a good 
 large cemetery and garden. He then began the great school 
 and convent which he is now engaged upon. True, he had but 
 one nun, and as far as he knew, of his own congregation, no 
 scholars : but he had no congregation when he built his church ; 
 that was the way to get a congregation, nuns, scholars, and 
 everything. At any rate, build Huggins would, and build 
 Huggins did, substantially and beautifully. But in one thing 
 he had overshot, and felt himself, as he felt himself seldom, a 
 transgressor. He had borrowed from his sister the whole of 
 her fortune, between 4000/. and 5000/., upon his Bishop's en- 
 gagement to pay six per cent interest for the money. The 
 Bishop, who, Huggins declared, would have been transported for 
 felony if he had been tried by an English jury, died 70,000/. in
 
 54 CASES OF CONSCIENCE j OR, 
 
 debt, leaving, of private property, a library worth about 200/. ; 
 but no body, corporate or individual, legally responsible beyond 
 that very inadequate sum. The good Bishop's worthy successor 
 occasionally smuggled a ten -pound bank-note into poor Miss 
 Muggins's hand, when she came to pay an inquiring visit at the 
 " Palace ;" but he never committed himself, to do him justice, 
 even in private. And Priest Muggins trusted to the Scroope legacy 
 to pay his sister her just debt. The case, as it stood just now, did 
 certainly look a little ugly ; and it was what no one could have 
 fancied, that old Scroope's West India relations should have 
 been put up to this lawsuit, and they " Catholics ! " Still 
 Muggins had no misgivings as to the means or the end. The 
 enemy had only one witness — Scroope's servant; and the " cir- 
 cumstances," before a judge, would not weigh a feather. What 
 would Lord Longhead care whether Scroope had ever been at 
 mass in his life or not ; or whether he hated women and child- 
 ren or not ? Besides, suppose he did, that might be just the 
 very reason why the old reprobate had left his money to Mug- 
 gins's Convent. Death's approach had frightened him into 
 repentance, and out of his prejudices ! Moreover, Muggins had 
 three witnesses, all zealous ; one of them his sister, whose in- 
 terest in the matter no one but the bishop dreamt of; the 
 second, " his nun," a fantastical convert, well to do in this 
 world's gear. These had witnessed the will. The third, also 
 a convert, was a poor little frightened attorney, who had 
 been universally looked on as the most learned and scrupu- 
 lous, the best meaning and incapable, of all possible attor- 
 neys. The last two would require some little instruction before 
 the trial. As for Miss Muggins, she was what is called a 
 masculine woman, and was nearly as good a theologian as her 
 brother ; indeed she often said she should like uncommonly to 
 hear some people's confessions herself, and thought she would 
 do it well too. What witness number two's "name in the 
 world" was we never heard. She considered herself as having 
 renounced the world and her name together, and had gone 
 through what they called a " kind of novitiate," and was now 
 on a visit to Miss Muggins, at the " Presbytery." Mer name 
 in " religion," that is, in the " Presbytery," was " Joseph of 
 Arimathea," sister Joseph of Arimathea. (The calling of nuns 
 by he-saints' names was a new " developement," "revealed" to 
 an " illustrious" convert at Birmingham.) Leaving Miss Mug- 
 gins, then, to resolve her own conscience, which she did by the 
 aid of a Guide des Confesseurs by a certain Archbishop Goosee, 
 we will gather up only the responsible instructions of the pro- 
 fessional adviser. These were always given under pretence of 
 confession — a more comprehensive category that " confession,'^
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 55 
 
 by the way, than any one of Aristotle's — and they were given 
 ex cathedra, with "the Saint" in hand. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, then, in the first place, was to swear 
 clear and explicitly that she was no nun, novice, postulant, 
 or anything of the sort ; in fact, she was not, strictly speaking : 
 but suppose she were, that made no difference, for, as " the 
 Saint" says, ichere it is not a question of denying the faith itself, 
 it is not only laicful, but often more for the ylory of God and the 
 good of our neighbour, to hide even your religion itself than to 
 confess it : if, for instance, you can do more good by keeping your 
 religion hid from heretics ivhilst you live among them.* If this 
 is true of confessing the faith, the true religion itself, how much 
 more true is it of any accessory, such as being a nun, or monk, 
 or priest ? And, if prevarication itself in any case is lawful, 
 then, if there be a good reason, it is lauful also to confirm the 
 prevarication with an oath ; there is nothing wrong in doing so. 
 You have a right to hide the truth. You do so without a lie, and 
 there is no irreverence done to the oath.-\ 
 
 In the second place, Joseph of Ai'imathea was to swear that 
 she had always heard him, Huggins, speak of Scroope as his 
 old friend, and he never did speak of him but as '' my old 
 friend." Had heard him, Huggins, say, he was glad his old 
 friend was getting over his queer French notions and turning 
 to God. She heard him say so now ; and that she, Joseph of 
 Arimathea, had lately often seen him, Scroope, at mass ; and she 
 was to write these words, " him, Scroope," in the Prayer-book, 
 and . look at them always when she went to mass ; as " the 
 Saint" says, it is quite allowable to use equivocation, 7iot purely 
 mental, even upon oath, provided it be done in a way that a 
 sharp, well-informed man, might possibly make it out, if he 
 looked carefully at all the circumstances. ;|: Lastly, she was to 
 swear that she had never spoken with him, Huggins, about the 
 matter; meaning criminally, which, as "the Saint" says, every 
 person has a right to do, when asked by the judge if he had 
 been in communication with the defendant. § The relish with 
 
 * " Cum non rogaris defide, non solum licet, sed sape melius est ad Dei 
 honorem, et v.tilitatem -proxim'i, tegere fidem quam fateri ; ut si latens inter 
 h(Ereticos plus bonifacis." — Liguori, iii. 14. 
 
 t " Jurare cum (equivocatione, guando justa causa est, et ipsa cequivocatio 
 licet, non est malum : quia ubi est jus occultandi veritatem, et occultatur sine 
 mendacio, xclla irreverentia. fit juramenio." — Ibid. iv. L51. 
 
 X " Licitum est just a causa uti restrict i07ie non pure mentali etiam cumjura- 
 mento, si ilia ex circvmstantiis percipi potest . . . Con.sentif rigidissimus conten- 
 sonius ; nam explicando illud io. 7, dicit Christum verba subobscura adhibuisse 
 in quibus poterat vir prudens verborum sensum facile interpretamento aperire." 
 —Ibid. iv. 152. 
 
 § " Rogatus a judice, an sit locutus cum reo, potest negare, intelligens, se 
 non locutum fuisse ad co-operandum crimini." — Ibid. iv. 160.
 
 56 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 which Sister Joseph drank in this mellow Liguorian showed 
 that to her it was not only Falernian, but Faustian of the tenth 
 year ; cor sapit, sapit et palatum : in spirit, she was already 
 before the judge, sweetly, smilingly swearing him "out of all 
 face." But it was very wrong in old Aristotle to say that all 
 she's are more mischievous than the male ; and that deep rogue 
 Terence ! — 
 
 " Omnes mihi videntur ludo doctce ad malitiam." 
 
 That was very wrong, indeed ! But, revenons a nos moutons. 
 Huggins did not find it quite so easy to deal with the little 
 lawyer. He had not much to swear, but what he had to swear 
 was important. He had received his instructions, not from 
 Scroope himself, though it was in his bedroom, but from Hug- 
 gins. When he had drawn up the will, he had gone with 
 Huggins to read it to Scroope ; but it was not he that read it 
 but Huggins, while he was looking out of the window trying to 
 count pigeons. He never doubted that the will was all right, 
 and he had heard Huggins the day Scroope signed the will 
 commend him for his generosity, and propose having his body 
 placed in the chapel before the altar, where a mass was to be 
 said for him once a-week for ever. But the truth was, Huggins 
 had made very considerable transpositions in the will. The 
 500/. which was to have gone to the Bishop for the convent 
 and his soul, Huggins transferred to the West India cousin; 
 and the 5000/. which was to have gone to the West India 
 cousin, Huggins transferred to the Bishop. But the 5000/. was 
 subject to 20/. a-year for life to Scroope's servant. This Hug- 
 gins transmuted into a simple legacy of the same amount, and 
 that was what did the mischief. The old man had told the 
 servant that his cousin, Pendleton Scroope, would pay him bis 
 annuity, and the servant had written to "Cousin Pendleton" 
 about it. Now the little lawyer was to swear that Scroope had 
 given him his instructions (so he had, by proxy), and that he 
 had read the will to him before it was signed ; and so he had 
 again by proxy ; and " what a man does by proxy, he does by 
 himself," quod facit per alium facit per se. 
 
 The scrupulous little man had no objection to saying 
 generally, or even swearing generally, that he had di'awn up the 
 will according to the instructions of Scroope, and that the will had 
 been read to the testator before it was signed ; but, if he were 
 to be examined in detail, he did not like to swear what, he 
 thought, with submission, it seemed to him would be a sort of 
 lie. The holy man explained to him the doctrine of the "faith- 
 ful " about the right of concealment, of prevarication, &c., and 
 then told him, moreover, that even a real, deliberate lie, under
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 57 
 
 the most solemn circumstances, might be the merest venial 
 offence, if there were no malice in the telling. The little man 
 listened in silence ; Huggins would have liked a question or 
 two. However, he went on, " In confession, for instance, and 
 confession is a sacrament, and swearing before the judge is no 
 sacrament — in confession, for instance,^^ (and he opened "the 
 Saint^'), "suppose you tell a long story, which you have invented 
 merely to throw dust in the eyes of the priest, or deny certain 
 venial or mortal sins which you are not bound to confess ; there 
 is no grievous sin in that: for Lugo, Tamburini, Palatius, and 
 Sporer, say that it is sufficient if you grieve for the multitude or 
 frequency of venial faults in the lump, although you do not 
 grieve for each one in particular.* Nothing that you have any 
 need to confess, or even to have any compunction or sorrow 
 about."-f 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the lawyer. 
 
 " Certainly not," and he opened Liguori and read him the 
 Latin. 
 
 " But," the little man modestly ventured to suggest, that 
 " in confession you did not swear to tell the whole truth." 
 
 " Your oath binds you to nothing in this case, for wills fall 
 under episcopal jurisdiction,^ and it is certain and undoubted 
 that a witness, under oath even, is not bound to tell the truth 
 to a judge illegitimately interrogating him. So says 'the 
 Saint. ^"§ 
 
 Still the persevering man, rebellious to great Loyola's doc- 
 
 * '' Non est mortale nee irritat sacr amentum, si in confessione mentiaris 
 leviter circa res non pertinentes aut non necessarias ad sacramentum ; verbi 
 gratia, si historiam falsam narres, vel si neges veniale vet mortale quod non 
 teneris confiteri. 
 
 "An peccet graviter, qui negat confessario peccatum aliquod veniale com- 
 missvm, aut mortale alias confessum ? Affirmant Cajetanus et Armilla. Quia 
 (ut dicunt) hie videtur gravem irreverentiam sacramento irrogare : et P. Concina 
 non excusat a mortali, qui hoc advertent er faceret, eo quod se exponeret periculo 
 gravis culpa. Sed omnino tenendum oppositum cum sententia communi 
 quam tenent Busembaum et Lugo, Layman, Antoine, Anacletus, Holzman, 
 Roncaglia, Ronzi, et Bonacina, cum Suarez, Sanchez, ReginaJdo, et aliis passim ; 
 ratio, quia cum ilia non sit materia necessaria sacramenti, tunc minime deci- 
 pitur confessarius in re gravi." — Liguori, vi. 496. 
 
 t ^''Dicunt Lugo, Tamburini, et Palatius ac Sporer, sufficere etiam si quis 
 doleat de multitudine, aut frequentia venialium {peccatorum), eisi non doleat de 
 singulis in particulari." — Ibid. vi. 449. 
 
 J Vide supra. 
 
 § " Notandum est certum esse, quod judici non legitime interroganti testis 
 non tenetur fateri veritatem ; tunc enim poterit licite respondere, etiam cum 
 JURAMENTO, Crimen nescire, ita ut teneatur illud ei manifestare." — Ibid. 
 V. 265. It is to be noted as certain, that a witness is not bound to tell the truth 
 to a judge not lawfully questioning him ; for then he may lawfully answer, even 
 with ax oath, that he is ignorant of the crime in such a way as that he should 
 be obliged to declare it to him.
 
 58 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, 
 
 trine and the priest's advice, " that iuttsmuch as this was a 
 question of fact and of evidence only, and where no right of the 
 bishop was called in question, the judge had a right on the part 
 of the civil power to examine him." 
 
 " I deny it altogether," said Hiiggins. " But I will suppose, 
 for a moment, that it is true ; that the judge has, legitimately 
 and juridically, a right to interrogate you; you are not, there- 
 fore, bound to give your evidence, unless you mean to throw 
 overboard all authority and deny the infallibility of the Church 
 in matters of morality, and so turn heretic. ' The Saint' is 
 adopted by the Church as her authorised exponent of all that is 
 right and wrong in the actions of men ; she gives half-a-dozen 
 reasons which exempt from all obligation of telling the truth 
 before the most regularly constituted earthly tribunal ; and one 
 of these reasons, the third in the order which he adopts, is when 
 from your evidence any serious loss threatens yourself or your 
 friends.* And is not the Church of God the nearest and dearest 
 of friends ? And is not 5000/. a serious loss to run the risk of, 
 for a scruple that has its origin in pride and self-will ? I do not 
 mean to wound," added Mr. Huggins, moderating his voice and 
 manner ; " but really, my dear sir, it is sometimes necessary to 
 speak plainly." 
 
 This onslaught completely discomfited the small attorney. 
 The tears were ready to burst from his eyes ; he felt, though he 
 hardly knew why, like a culprit convicted by overwhelming 
 evidence, and supplicating the holy man's pardon, and his 
 blessing and his prayers, he took his leave. Huggins, who had 
 been not a little alarmed at the man's obstinacy, was somewhat 
 reassured, but still by no means felt quite certain of the evidence 
 that his penitent would give; and T)i*- Cullen himself never 
 went to bed more fully persuaded than Huggins that night of 
 the truth of Jean Jaques' maxim, — Uhomme qui pense est un 
 animal deprave. But Huggins gained his cause, and Miss 
 Huggins was paid her just debt, and the convent was finished, 
 and Sister Joseph of Arimathea lived in it, with two other single 
 ladies, one of whom she called Wilfred-of-the-will-of-God ; the 
 other, a lay-sister, Anne-of-the-]\Iaccabees, in honour of prayers 
 for the dead ; and she changed her own name to Nicodemus, 
 and the congregation was devoted especially to the enlighten- 
 ment of secret inquirers after truth. 
 
 Miss Foody was the only child of Sir Filwell Foody. She 
 
 * " Etiam legitime et juridice interrogatur non teneris testari sequentibus 
 casibus. I. Si scias rem ex confessione. 11. Si accepisti sub secreto naturali. 
 III. Si ex testimonio, tibi vel tuis imminet notabilc damnum," &c. &c. — 
 LiGUORi, V. 268.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 59 
 
 was, she said, of the same age as other people. The Bishop of 
 El ysichthonopoUs* was her " director/' and he had given his 
 "daughter in St. Eiloniene" (which, after the example of an 
 eminent Oxford convert, she always signed herself) a very 
 startling permission on the subject of wills; which, perhaps, had 
 better not be mentioned. It was, however, held probable by a 
 certain Spanish doctor of good repute, and a name that, to Miss 
 Foody, sounded infallible. And Miss Foody determined unhe- 
 sitatingly to act upon it. Erysichthonopolis — Miss Foody shed 
 tears when the name was changed to Slumley, — Erysichthono- 
 polis was not the lady's confessor. She would not have con- 
 fessed to his " lordship " for the world. She had a perfunctory 
 little priest — a Frenchman, she thought he was — that " kept his 
 shop " in a dirty chapel somewhere near the Tower, and there 
 Miss Foody drove in her " brougham" regularly every fortnight 
 to have her spirituals and morals squared. In the lively gossip 
 of the confessional she told her French priest, amongst less 
 important matters, her positive intention to use the " probable " 
 opinion. Now, in the first place, the Frenchman suspected that 
 the Bishop of Erysichthonopolis was Miss Foody's spiritual " di- 
 rector," and he hated Erysichthonopolis cordially. In the 
 second place, he was somewhat of a rigorist, or, to use a harsh 
 term, somewhat of a Gallicau. He said the proposition was 
 monstrous ; he thought he could guess the doctor that held it. 
 He thought authority could be found for anything bad in those 
 Spaniards ! He could not venture to give absolution in such a 
 case. 
 
 " But her director had told her this was a probable opinion, 
 and that a probable opinion might be safely followed." 
 
 " It might perhaps be, what they called, a probable opinion ; 
 he knew nothing about that : but it was very, very dangerous in 
 practice, and he was — he supposed he must not say certain, but 
 — very nearly certain, that it was sinful and wicked. For his 
 part, he followed Croix, who held that a perdtent must conform 
 to the opinion of her confessor, who is the judge, or else she is not 
 in a proper state of mind to be absolved." f 
 
 * Erysichthonopolis, so named from the son of Triopas whom Ceres in her 
 anger punished with an insatiable appetite, is a city of Greater Asia, now inha- 
 bited only by infidels. This leaves its bishop at liberty to take care of himself 
 amongst the faithful elsewhere. 
 
 t " Qucsritur, An possit absolvi pcenitens, qui wit sequi opinionem contra- 
 riam illi quam tenet confessarius ? Negat Croix Ratio, quia poenitens tenetur 
 stare judicio confessarii, qui est judex, alias erit indispositus ad absolutionem." 
 — vi. 604. Can a penitent be absolved who is determined to follow an opinion 
 contrary to that of his confessor .' He cannot. The reason is that the penitent 
 is bound to abide by the judgment of the confessor, who is the judge, otherwise 
 he will not be in a proper state of mind to be absolved.
 
 60 CASES OF conscience; or. 
 
 The confession ended very abruptly, and Miss Foody left it 
 in tears, not of penitence. She drove straight to the dear 
 bishop. 
 
 " Could not his lordship suspend him, withdraw his faculties, 
 make him leave the kingdom ? " 
 
 " There is no making him leave the kingdom but by starva- 
 tion, and to withdraw his faculties just now might make a 
 hubbub. But he was clearly unfit for his duties — indeed his 
 refusing absolution, under the circumstances, was a mortal 
 sin."* 
 
 This last fact quite consoled Miss Foody, and she transferred 
 the periodical salving of her conscience to another and a more 
 orthodox professional absolver. 
 
 * '* Vero sententia communis et sequenda docet non solum posse, sed etiam 
 TENERi SUB GRAvi confessurium absolcere poenitentem, qui vult sequi opinionem 
 probabilem, licet opposita videatiir probabilior confessario. Ila Suarez, Soto, 
 Azorius, Holzman, Salmanticenses, Roncaglia, &c. &c. &c. cum Viva, Lay- 
 man, Sanchez, &c. &c. &c. Idem confirmat clarius S. Antoninus, dicens, Si 
 credat (confessarius) quod sit peccatum, debet ei conscientiam facere quod 
 confitens diligenter se informet de illo facto, utrum sit peccatum. Sed, dato quod 
 ille non vellet cognoscere illud esse peccatum nihilominus tenetur ilium absolvere, 
 nee reputare eum inhabilem ad absolutionem, quia ex ratione et non protervia 
 hsec opinio est. Ratio aiitem," adds Liguori, " valde urgens hujus sententiae est, 
 quia poenitens, facta confessione, cum sit dispositus, habet strictum jus ad abso- 
 lutionem, .... nee valet dicere quod poenitens non est dispositus, cum sequi non 
 vult judicium confessarii. Nam respondetur non est judex opinionum, quas 
 poenitens sequi teneatur (that is Erysichthonopolis, the director's, business) sed 
 tantum dispositionis sui poenitentis, ut paret ex Tridentino." — Liguori, vi. 604. 
 But the common opinion, and the one which Liguori sai/s ought to be 
 followed, teaches, that not only the confessor may, but that he is bound, 
 UNDER PENALTY OF MORTAL SIN, to absolve the penitent. And, among many 
 authorities, he quotes " Saint" Antonine, who says, " Suppose the confessor do 
 believe the act to be a sin, he should put it to the penitent's conscience to inform 
 himself diligently in the matter. But, suppose the penitent will not recognise 
 that there is any sin, the confessor is bound notwithstanding to absolve him, and 
 not to consider him unfit for absolution, for his opinion is founded on a reason, 
 and there is no impertinence in it." And Liguori adds, " The reason for not 
 denying absolution is a very urgent one, namely, that the penitent who has made 
 his confession in a proper state of mind has a strict right to absolution . . . and it 
 is no answer to say that the penitent is not in a proper state of mind, inasmuch 
 as he refuses to follow the opinion of the confessor. For the answer to that is, 
 that the confessor is not the judge of the opinions which the penitent is to follow, 
 but only of the disposition of his penitent. . . . and the proper disposition of the 
 penitent consists in a true sorrow for sins confessed, and a firm intention not 
 to sin in future.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 61 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ROME, THE GREAT INCORPORATED ENEMY OF MAN. 
 
 In Polybius's time, the greatest distinction between Greek and 
 Roman was their respective reverence for an oath. " Ten ad- 
 jurations, ten bonds, and ten witnesses to prove them, would 
 not make a Greek keep faith ; " which, if a Roman swore in 
 secret, or openly, in his private or public capacity, you might 
 rest in peace. 
 
 But festhetic Greece spread fast, and far and wide, the at- 
 mosphere of her corruption ; and we know from Cicero that, in 
 his time, Rome rivalled Athens. So, in our own day, and 
 country, and religion, the contagious ruin makes its beginning 
 at the core ; and many a noble tree is rotten long before the 
 brightness of its leaf is faded. He who justifies a non-natural 
 use of oaths, or even words, is already a votary of that Liguori 
 whom Epicurus would have spued out of his throat. 
 
 I have no wish to join iu the general bitterness against 
 Tractarians. To be earnest in any religion merits a certain 
 regard; and, perhaps, as large a share of blame lies on the 
 heads of those who led them, as their predecessors drove the 
 Wesleyans to seek abroad what was mocked in palaces episco- 
 pal at home, — sympathy in enthusiastic though ostensive piety, 
 in love of the poor, and in self-sacrifice. But the sensuous 
 admirers of lovely forms of charity, and of mediaeval develope- 
 ments of high imaginative devotion, would do well to look 
 thoughtfully at what lies beneath, and remember that in the 
 Church where they are tempted to seek them, in the Church 
 which flings anathema on all who deny it to be the only 
 ONE, truth, the link which binds man to his fellow man, is 
 repudiated, ratio scandali ; some worldly reason is the only ulti- 
 mate reason why any mere Papist should not lie and swear 
 false oaths in England, as devoutlj- as rob or murder in the 
 Abruzzi. 
 
 True faith looks beyond this earth for its rule of thought 
 and action, and bids every individual soul wait till the great day 
 for its final reckoning. Its false sister makes man the legislator* 
 
 * '■' Coiumuiiis sententia, cui nos subscribiinus, est, quod licet Romanus Pon- 
 tifex, quatenus particularis persona, sive doctor privatus, possit errare (sicut 
 etiam est fallibilis in questionibus nieri facti, qiise ex hominum testixoniis prse- 
 cipue pendent) ; cum tamen Papa loquitur tanquam doctor universalis 
 definiens ex cathedra, nempe ex potestati suprenia, tradita Petro, docendi Eccle- 
 siam, tunc dicimus ipsum in controversiis fidei et morum decernendis, omnixo 
 INFALLIBILEM esse. Hanc sententiam, Divus Thomas (Aquinas), Cardinal 
 Turrecremata, Sotus, Cajetanus, Ales, de Hales, S. Bonaventura, Blessed Augustus 
 triiimphus, Nic. de Lyra, S. Frances, Salesius, Spondanus, Thomassinus, Ludo-
 
 62 CASES OF conscience; or, 
 
 and the judge* in foro conscientm, and throws off all per- 
 sonal responsibility^, all giving of account each one of himself 
 to Him that is to judge the quick and dead.f It lives in the 
 corrupt breath of man's mouth, and is as worthless and as false 
 as any so-called laws of chivalry or honour. 
 
 Read Busembaum, canonized as a theologian with Liguori, 
 who teaches, that an oath solemnly uttered by the lips, but 
 without the inward intention of swearing, creates no obligation. J 
 Read the " uever-to-be-censured,^' the "safe" and infallible 
 Liguori, who brings a score of great divines to prove that pro- 
 hahility is all that is required for what you swear is true, in 
 oaths declaratory or promissory ; § that a witness interrogated 
 upon oath by incompetent authority (the Arches Court, || for 
 instance), may swear just what he pleases;^ that, no matter 
 
 vicus, Bail, Duvallius, aliique innumeri, et communiter reliqui theologi 
 OMNES." — Liguori, i. 110. The common opinion which we subscribe to is, 
 that though the Roman Pontiff, as an indi\ddual person or private doctor, may 
 err (as also in matters of mere fact), nevertheless, when he speaks as Pope, 
 then he is wholly infallible in faith and morals. 
 
 * If any one saith that the sacramental absolution of the priest is not a 
 judicial act, but a bare ministry of pronouncing and declaring sins to be forgiven 
 to him who confesses ; provided only he believes himself to be absolved, or even 
 though the priest absolve not in earnest but in joke ; or saith that the confession 
 of the penitent is not required, in order that the priest may be able to absolve 
 him; let him be anathema. — Con. Tr'id. xiv. can. ix. 
 
 f " Qui perficere in via Dei cupiunt, submittant se confessario docto, cui 
 OBEDiANT UT Deo. Qui ita operatur, fit securus a reddenda ratione cunc- 
 tarum actionum suarum. Dicebat item (S. Philippus Nerius) fidem praestandam 
 esse confessario, quia Dominus eum errare non permittet." " Saint" 
 Philip Neri, quoted by Liguori as egreg'ia sapientis aiutorifas. — Liguori, i. 12. 
 Let those who desire to make progression the way of God, give themselves 
 up to a learned confessor and obev him, as they would do God. He that 
 
 DOES THIS IS SAFE FROM RENDERING THE ACCOUNT OF ALL HIS ACTIONS. 
 
 Let there be faith in the confessor, for the Lord will not allow him to go 
 
 WRONG. 
 
 X " Qui exterius tanfum juravit, sine animo jurandi, non obligatnr, nisi, 
 ■^orte, RATIONE scandali, cum non juraverit , sed luserit." — Medulla Theol. 
 MoR. Her. Busembaum, ju.vta editionetn uUimam SiAcrm Congrega- 
 TioNis DE Propaganda fide. Tornaci, 1848. 
 
 § Sanchez, with Valdez and Saurez, and the Spanish Carmelite doctors, and 
 Paladius, Lessius, Bona, Azorius, and divines commonly, expressly say, that in 
 an oath, either declaratory or promiss'iry, that the probability of the truth of 
 what is asserted, or of the fulfilment of what is promised, is sufficient. " Sanchez, 
 &c. &c., ed'pressius aiuni, svfficere in juramento, sive asseriorio, sive promissorio, 
 probabiUtatem veritatis assertce, vel impletionis eu^eguendce rei promissa, modo, 
 intelligendum, non habeatur ratio probabilis in oppositvm." — Liguori, iv. 
 148. 
 
 II "If any one saith that matrimonial cases do not belong to ecclesiastical 
 (Roman) judges, let him be anathema." — Con. Trident. Sess. xxiv. can. xii. 
 
 ^ A defendant or a witness, not legitimately interrogated by a judge, may 
 swear that he knows nothing of the accusation, though in truth he does know, 
 meaning underneath, that he knows nothing of it in a way the judge has a right 
 to ask him. " Reus aut testis, ajudice non legitime intei~rogattts, potest jurare, 
 se nescire crimen, quod revera scit. subintelligendo, nescire crimen, de quo legi- 
 time possit inquiri, vel nescire ad deponendum. Ita Cajetanus, Sporer, Azorius, 
 Roncaglia, Sanchez, cum Navarro, Toleto, Valdez," &c. — Liguori, iv. 154.
 
 LESSONS IN MORALS. 63 
 
 how competent the Court may be, if a crime be secret, the wit- 
 ness may swear it false though he knows it true :* that a man 
 who has paid back borrowed money may swear he never had 
 received it;t that an adulteress who has confessed her sin may 
 SOLEMNLY CALL GoD TO WITNESS slie is iimocent ;± that traders 
 may swear they have paid a higher price than they have done 
 for what they offer you for sale;§ that any man may swear 
 anything, provided in a whisper he secretly subjoin some true 
 circumstance ; J and finally, that every oath made is made with 
 
 * If the fault charged be secret, then the witness may, nay he is bound, to 
 swear that the accused is innocent. " /S'i crimen fuerit omnino occultum ; tunc 
 enim potest, into tenetur testis, dicere {cum juramento) reum non comrnisisse." — 
 LiGUORi, iv. 154. 
 
 t One who has borrowed, but afterwards paid, may deny that he borrowed, 
 meaning underneath, so as to be obliged to pay. So one whose espousals are 
 void. " Qui mutuum accepit, sed postea satisfecit, potest negare se accepisse 
 mutuum, subintelligens ita ut debeat solvere. Pariter, qui inita sponsalia in- 
 ivit." He who has promised marriage, if he is not bound to keep his promise, 
 may deny it. "Pariter, qui matrimonium promisit, sed inde non teneatur ad 
 illud, j)otest negare promissionem, scilicet, ut ex ilia teneatur." And for this are 
 cited the Salmanticenses, Sporer, Suarez, Layman, Sanchez, Covarruvias, Na- 
 varre, Azoriu=, and others. — Ibid. iv. 159. 
 
 X " Adultera, si adulterium sacramentaliter confessa sit, potest respondere, 
 Innocens sum ab hoc crimine, quia per confessionem est jam ablatum. Ita 
 Cardenas, qui tamen hie advertit, quod nequeat id affirmare cum juramento, 
 quia ad asserendum aliquid, svfficit probabilitas facti, sed ad jurandum requi- 
 ritur certitude. Sed, respondetur, quod ad jurandum svfficiat certitudo mo- 
 ralis. Imo si crimen est vere occultum, probabiliter cum Bus. et aliis potest 
 niulier negare cum juramento, et dicere, Non commisi ; eodem modo quo reus 
 potest dicere judici, non legitime interroganti. Crimen non commisi, intelligendo 
 se non comrnisisse ita ut teneatiir ei nianifestare." — Ibid. iv. 162. A woman who 
 has confessed her adultery to a priest may answer, / am innocent of the crime, 
 because it has been taken away by the sacrament. Cardenas says, that she 
 cannot affirm it with an oath, because certainty is required ; but we answer that 
 moral certainty is sufficient: and Busembaum, Lessius, Soto, Sanchez, Sayr, and 
 Arago, say, that she may deny it altogether with an oath, saying, / have not 
 done it, meaning so as to be bound to tell it. 
 
 § " Queer. An mercatores possint jurare mercem carina ipsis constare, intel- 
 ligendo cum alia mercede ? Affirmant aliqui, sed merito negant Salmanticenses. 
 Probabiliter tamen posse ait Croix cum Gobato. Quando tales non intelligunt 
 de mero pretio rei, sed coynputant in eo expensas pro vectura, pro apotheca," 
 &c. — Ibid. iv. 164. It is asked. If traders may swear that their wares cost them 
 dearer .' Meaning along with some other wares. Some affirm they may ; but 
 the Spanish Cannelites justly deny it. Still Croix says they probably may. 
 
 II " Queer. An liceat jurare aliquid fulsum, addendo, tamen, submissa voce 
 circumstantiam veram ? Affirmant Hurtado et Prado, qui dicunt ut locutio 
 sit vera, sufficiat, ut exterius concordet conceptui mentis, sive nutibus, sive 
 voce submissa explicetur, et per accident sit, ut alter non audiat. At melius 
 Salmanticenses, id admittunt si tamen aliquo modo possit ab altero percipi ilia 
 submissa prolatio, licet ejus sensus non percipiatur. Secus si omnino alterum 
 latent." — Ibid. iv. 168. It is asked, Is it lawful to swear anything false, adding 
 in a low voice a true circumstance ? Hurtado and Prado say that it is, for, in 
 order that what is said be true, it is enough that it outwardly agree with the 
 conceit in the mind, whether it be expressed by nods or whispers, and it he per 
 accidens that the other does not hear it. The Salmanticenses explain it b etter, 
 admitting it provided in any way the whisper could be heard by the other, 
 though the meaning of it be not detected.
 
 64 CASES OF CONSCIENCE ; OR, LESSONS IN MORALS. 
 
 mental reservation in favour of every prelatical or papal preten- 
 sion, SALVO JURE suPERiORUM.* Read these lessons, wliich no 
 man in the Church of Rome dares call in question, or refuse 
 absolution for the practising, and then think what any zealous 
 *' faithful," what any priest, what any bishop, archbishop, or 
 cardinal, can mean by swearing before the highest or the 
 lowest court in England ? What but to persuade belief of just 
 that which it is expedient for them shou.ld be believed ? 
 
 Who, amongst other " mounts and marvels," swore before 
 the House of Lords that the spiritual politics of Hildebrand 
 were mocked at or forgotten in the Church of Rome ? Who 
 but a papal bishop, that on his knees, at each returning anni- 
 versary of that " St. Gregory's" death, recited his belief that 
 God had wrought a miracle expressly to show men that " the 
 Saint's" system of papal government was inspired by the 
 Holy Ghost ! f AVho in the public streets of Rome, upon the 
 first news of the last French Revolution, 1848, protested before 
 God his trust that England's hour was struck, that by France 
 and Ireland united she would now be crushed? Who but a 
 papal archbishop, that now signs fei'vent addresses of mock 
 loyalty and devotion to his too gracious ]\Iistress! 
 
 AVhen the foul religion of old Rome had corrupted utterly her 
 personal and social morals, it still cherished love of kindred, and 
 love of country. But Papal Rome attacks every human rela- 
 tionship. It makes war, without quarter, against every natural 
 authority, civil and domestic, and is as anti-national as anti- 
 social. Her great " tribunal," the Confessional, is a shambles 
 w^here men's souls are sold, as well as slaughtered. 
 
 * " In omni autem jnramento promismrio fictione juris, faeite suhintelliguntur 
 seqnentes conditiones, II. Salvo jure superiorum." — Liguori, iv. 180. In 
 every promissory oath, by a firtion of law, there is tacitly understood the con- 
 dition, saving the righfs of my superiors. 
 
 f " Dum missamm solemnia perageret, visa est viris piis columha e ccelo de- 
 lapsa, humero ejus dextero insidens, a/is eictensis caput ejus velare. Quo signi- 
 fcatitm est, Spiritus Sancti afflatu, non huruance pi-udentia, rationibus, 
 ipsnm dnci in Ecclesi(P regimiue." — Breviarium Romanum, Romee, 1843. 
 Wliilst he (Hildebrand) was celebrating mass, a dove was seen by pious men 
 to descend from heaven, and, by taking its scat upon his right shoulder, veil 
 his head with her spread wings ; which was to show us, that in his government of 
 Christendom (the Church — the baptized) he was directed, not by reasons of 
 human wisdom, but, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. May 25, Feast 
 of St. Gregory VII. 
 
 London : — Printed by G. Bapxlat, Castle St. Leicester Sq.