“And accordingly,” he replied, “Escobar afterwards remarks: ‘I must confess that it is very rarely that a person falls into the sin of sloth.’ You see now how important it is to define things properly?”
“Yes, father, and this brings to my mind your other definitions about assassinations, ambuscades, and superfluities. But why have you not extended your method to all cases, and given definitions of all vices in your way; so that people may no longer sin in gratifying themselves?”
“It is not always essential,” he replied, “to accomplish that purpose by changing the definitions of things. I may illustrate this by referring to the subject of good cheer, which is accounted one of the greatest pleasures of life, and which Escobar thus sanctions in his ‘Practice according to our Society:’ ‘Is it allowable for a person to eat and drink to repletion, unnecessarily, and solely for pleasure? Certainly he may, according to Sanchez, provided he does not thereby injure his health; because the natural appetite may be permitted to enjoy its proper functions.’”[[194]]
“Well, father, that is certainly the most complete passage, and the most finished maxim in the whole of your moral system! What comfortable inferences may be drawn from it! Why, and is gluttony, then, not even a venial sin?”
“Not in the shape I have just referred to,” he replied; “but, according to the same author, it would be a venial sin ‘were a person to gorge himself, unnecessarily, with eating and drinking, to such a degree as to produce vomiting.’[[195]] So much for that point. I would now say a little about the facilities we have invented for avoiding sin in worldly conversations and intrigues. One of the most embarrassing of these cases is how to avoid telling lies, particularly when one is anxious to induce a belief in what is false. In such cases, our doctrine of equivocations has been found of admirable service, according to which, as Sanchez has it, ‘it is permitted to use ambiguous terms, leading people to understand them in another sense from that in which we understand them ourselves.’”[[196]]
“I know that already, father,” said I.
“We have published it so often,” continued he, “that at length, it seems, everybody knows of it. But do you know what is to be done when no equivocal words can be got?”
“No, father.”
“I thought as much,” said the Jesuit; “this is something new, sir: I mean the doctrine of mental reservations. ‘A man may swear,’ as Sanchez says in the same place, ‘that he never did such a thing (though he actually did it), meaning within himself that he did not do so on a certain day, or before he was born, or understanding any other such circumstance, while the words which he employs have no such sense as would discover his meaning. And this is very convenient in many cases, and quite innocent, when necessary or conducive to one’s health, honor, or advantage.’”
“Indeed, father! is that not a lie, and perjury to boot?”