[175]. The Jesuits exemplified their own maxim in this case by the famous bankruptcy of their College of St. Hermenigilde at Seville. We have a full account of this in the memorial presented to the King of Spain by the luckless creditors. The simple pathos and sincere earnestness of this document preclude all suspicion of the accuracy of its statements. By the advice of their Father Provincial, the Jesuits, in March, 1645, stopped payments after having borrowed upwards of 450,000 ducats, mostly from poor widows and friendless girls. This shameful affair was exposed before the courts of justice, during a long litigation, in the course of which it was discovered that the Jesuit fathers had been carrying on extensive mercantile transactions, and that instead of spending the money left them for pious uses—such as ransoming captives, and alms-giving—they had devoted it to the purposes of what they termed “our poor little house of profession.” (Theatre Jesuitique, p. 200, &c.)
[176]. Molina, t. ii., tr. 2, disp. 338, n. 8; Lessius, liv. ii., ch. 20, dist. 19, n. 168.
[177]. Escobar, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23, tr. 5, ex. 5, n. 53.
[178]. Molina, l. tom. i.; De Just., tr. 2, disp. 94; Escobar, tr. 1, ex. 8, n. 59, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23.
[179]. Tr. 31, c. 9, n. 231.—“Occultæ fornicariæ debetur pretium in conscientia, et multo majore ratione, quam publicæ. Copia enim quam occulta facit mulier sui corporis, multo plus valet quam ea quam publica facit meretrix; nec ulla est lex positiva quæ reddit eam incapacem pretii. Idem dicendum de pretio promisso virgini, conjugatæ, moniali, et cuicumque alii. Est enim omnium eadem ratio.”
[180]. Quoted by Escobar, tr. 3, ex. 2, n. 138.
[181]. Molina, 94, 99; Reginald. l. 10, 184; Filiutius, tr. 31; Escobar, tr. 3; Lessius, l. 2, 14.
[182]. Cellot, liv. viii., de la Hierarch, c. 16, 2.
[183]. “Since all this, a new edition has been printed at Paris, by Piget, more correct than any of the rest. But the sentiments of Escobar may be still better ascertained from the great work on moral theology, printed at Lyons.” (Note in Nicole’s edition of the Letters.)
I may avail myself of this space to remark, that not one of the charges brought against the Jesuits in this letter has been met by Father Daniel in his celebrated reply. Indeed, after some vain efforts to contradict about a dozen passages in the letters, he leaves avowedly more than a hundred without daring to answer them. The pretext for thus failing to perform what he professed to do, and what he so loudly boasts, at the commencement, of his being able to do, is ingenious enough. “You will easily comprehend,” says one of his characters, “that this confronting of texts and quotations is not a great treat for a man of my taste. I could not stand this disagreeable labor much longer.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 277.) We reserve our remarks on the pretended falsifications charged against Pascal, till we come to his own masterly defence of himself in the subsequent letters.