[H. X. Ashby]

of the sins of the peoples and of the Jesuits.
The great have wished to be flattered. The Jesuits have wished to be loved
by the great. They have all been worthy to be abandoned to the spirit of
lying, the one party to deceive, the others to be deceived. They have been
avaricious, ambitious, voluptuous. Coacervabunt tibi magistros.228 Worthy
disciples of such masters, they have sought flatterers, and have found them.

920. If they do not renounce their doctrine of probability, their good
maxims are as little holy as the bad, for they are founded on human
authority; and thus, if they are more just, they will be more reasonable,
but not more holy. They take after the wild stem on which they are grafted.

If what I say does not serve to enlighten you, it will be of use to the
people.

If these are silent, the stones will speak.

Silence is the greatest persecution; the saints were never silent. It is
true that a call is necessary; but it is not from the decrees of the Council
that we must learn whether we are called, it is from the necessity of
speaking. Now, after Rome has spoken, and we think that she has condemned
the truth, and that they have written it, and after the books which have
said the contrary are censured; we must cry out so much the louder, the more
unjustly we are censured, and the more violently they would stifle speech,
until there come a Pope who hears both parties, and who consults antiquity
to do justice. So the good Popes will find the Church still in outcry.

The Inquisition and the Society are the two scourges of the truth.

Why do you not accuse them of Arianism? For, though they have said that
Jesus Christ is God, perhaps they mean by it not the natural interpretation,
but, as it is said, Dii estis.229

If my Letters are condemned at Rome, that which I condemn in them is
condemned in heaven. Ad tuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello.[230]

You yourselves are corruptible.

I feared that I had written ill, seeing myself condemned