Chapter XI — Certain objections are dissolved, and certain admonitions are assigned

I. In few words I have touched upon what I discussed at greater length concerning the theological loci in Tome I of the Apparatus. There will not be wanting, however, those who will carp even at these few things. What, they will say, have there been thrust even into this very Compendium of Theology things that pertain more to sermons than to moral theology? For moral theology consists of concise questions and answers: it exhibits the resolutions of the cases that occur, or can occur. For in this way confessors straightway find opportune resolutions for solving the difficulties by which they are wont to be tormented while they hear confessions. These men loathe an oratorical and preacherly style, sprinkled with witticisms. They wish to be instructed in few words, since they lack the time in which they might devote their labor to the Scriptures, to the Fathers, or to theological books themselves written out in continuous discourse. Add to this that neither the divine Scriptures nor the holy Fathers of the Church contain the decisions of cases which are found in the Casuists. These, more or less, are the petty objections which are wont to be obtruded by not a few. That I may dispel the objections recounted, and at the same time instruct my Reader, I shall give certain admonitions.

II. Admonition I. Those who, in the correction of morals and the refutation of depraved opinions, condemn a vehement style, seem to depart from the institute of the divine Scriptures. For the divine Writers, both of the old covenant and of the new, pursued depraved opinions with a strong, a forceful, and — as the time required — a sharp style. Thus God addresses Isaias in chapter 48: Cry, cease not: lift up thy voice like a trumpet. He urges Jeremias in chapter 2: Go, and cry in the ears of Jerusalem. The divine Seer laments, in the second chapter of the Lamentations, that false Doctors were softening the severity of the divine law by the favor of benignity: Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: and they have not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance. But they have seen for thee false burdens. A few of the things which St. Jerome writes upon this text I recall before your eyes. Hardly, he says, can anyone be free of this curse, since we both frequently flatter the wicked on account of their power, and despise the good on account of their poverty. More deeply still does God, through Ezechiel in chapter 3, rebuke the benign and smooth-spoken Doctors: Thy prophets, O Israel, were like foxes in the deserts. You have not gone up to face the enemy, nor have you set up a wall for the house of Israel. He threatens scourges to those Doctors who with soothing petty opinions foster the crimes of the people: And my hand shall be upon the prophets that see vain things, and that divine lies ... because they have deceived my people ... Woe to them that sew cushions under every elbow. With what force of speech, with what a sharp and vehement style, did not Christ the Lord inveigh against the hypocrite Pharisees, the adulterators of the Decalogue, in Matthew chapter 15? Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ... Woe to you, blind guides ... Ye fools and blind ... Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ... Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you make clean the outside of the cup ... Thou blind Pharisee, first make clean the inside of the cup ... You serpents, generation of vipers ... a wicked and adulterous generation ... you are of your father the devil. Christ the Lord embraced sinners with infinite meekness and clemency. Against the pseudo-prophets, against the fawning masters and flatterers of the peoples, he most frequently hurled the most tremendous maledictions. It is almost always against such men that God has thundered those terrible Woes — Woe, Woe, Woe — both in the old Testament and in the new. The holy Apostle Paul rebuked Elymas, who was perverting the Proconsul, with these words in Acts 13: O full of all guile and of all deceit, child of the devil, enemy of all justice, thou ceasest not to pervert the right ways of the Lord. And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun. Again the same Apostle cries out to the Galatians, chapter 3: O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth? Are you so foolish, that whereas you began in the Spirit, you would now be made perfect by the flesh?

III. This is to be weighed well: that God never reprehended the Prophets and Doctors for having interpreted his law with too great severity. Once he reproved the Pharisees, because, neglecting the divine Law, they burdened the people with their arbitrary ceremonies, petty devotions, and petty prayers. Those he always rebukes who flatter, who trim their sails, and who indulge the desires of the peoples. O my people, they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps: Isaias chapter 3. Hence the holy Fathers gather that no clearer sign occurs for distinguishing and knowing false Doctors and inept directors of consciences, than the blandishments of their discourses, and opinions that titillate the senses and the ears. It is a singular mark of the pseudo-prophets (says Chrysostom) if they be blessed by all men. For pseudo-prophets always promise sweet things. I pass over the testimonies of the other Fathers, which attest this same thing.

IV. Admonition II. Those who object that our method is preacherly rather than theological are not sufficiently touched by the corruptions that have been brought into Christian theology. The diction of orators and preachers is indeed broader and more polished; the style of theologians, the matter being considered absolutely, is more compact and more exact. But our censors must needs distinguish the dogmatic, polemical, and theoretical theologian, who only propounds and explains what is to be believed, from the moral theologian, who besides what is to be believed chiefly enjoins, and persuades to, what is to be done. It belongs to this latter theologian not only to teach, but also to reprehend, to rebuke, to move, to press — though more sparingly and more soberly than the orators. But, that those who are wont to say that the minds of men are not conquered by exclamations may not persist in opposing us, let them explain to us: to what end did Christ the Lord so frequently sprinkle his law with parables, rebukes, and persuasions? Why did he so frequently rebuke and adjure? Let them know that in moral theology it is not the mind only that must be subdued, but the senses also that must be vanquished, the appetites that must be restrained, the flesh that must be crucified with its concupiscences. This victory is by no means obtained by argumentations alone and metaphysical speculations; there is need of the study of that art which is most suited to this end. The execution of works, and of difficult works, wars as an enemy against the flesh and the appetite. Therefore the powers must be raised up, the spirit must be stirred and inflamed, that the obstacles may be removed. This method the Evangelists, the Apostles, and all the Fathers observed through ten centuries and more.

V. It is my pleasure to confirm all this by the authority of Fr. Michael Elizalde, a most learned Jesuit, who suffered many adversities because he endeavored to overthrow the corrupted Ethics, and to purge the evangelical doctrine of morals from the new manner of opining and from its pernicious benignity. "For neither" (says he, part 2, question 6, § 6, page 188) "in the time of the Apostles above all, did they deliver one set of things in their preaching, while there survived other theologians thereafter from whose sayings men were to live; nor did they announce one set of things as ministers of the discourses and of the word of God, and teach other things thereafter, as theologians, by their epistles or by word of mouth. Neither in the time of the Martyrs, nor in the age of the Doctors, was there that division of sacred Orators and Theologians, such that some indeed should be theologians, and others thereafter announcers of the word of God, and that each should teach different things; and that it should belong to the theologians to hand down doctrine, and to the Preachers I know not what else; and that these latter should discourse from the Scriptures, while the former should discourse from other sources and settle causes, and appeal should be made from these to those. For, to speak plainly, and that all, if they will, may understand: it was by no means so, that Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Gregory, and like men of God spoke indeed from on high and in the churches, while there survived thereafter certain others, as it were theologians, to whom appeal might be made, and by whose theology life should be regulated. Nowhere was there any such class of men. Nor again did those greatest men deliver their homilies and sermons and discourses as though they were one faculty, and then set down, as though it were an entirely different matter, the discipline of morals and the moral theology by which men should live: but sermons, homilies, discourses, and moral theology and the discipline of morals were one and the same thing — not one set of men, and then others altogether different, who should be called moral theologians; and even those works which are not sermons are such as could be delivered from the pulpit, being plainly of the same nature, of one single doctrine, compacted from the same books and filled with the same words of God. But now each of those two faculties differs and stands apart from the other so far, that scarcely any others disagree more. And the preachers seem to judge that they have no need of doctrine, and they do I know not what else; and when they play the theologian, they pass over all the rest — even, as though it were no concern of theirs, the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, which treat so copiously of vices and virtues in general and in particular. Which sheer thoughtlessness Augustine repels from chapter 16 of book 4 of On Christian Doctrine: and he who is not able to exhort in sound doctrine, and to reprove the gainsayers and convict them of false speech, falsely assumes in the Church of God the person of a Doctor, and undertakes the office without the necessary doctrine. Would therefore that we had such sermons as would avail also in the schools; would that we had such a theology as would edify also in the churches: that each of these two faculties, conspiring into one, might mutually aid the other, lest the one scatter what the other has planted and watered. Assuredly, to close this rather lengthy digression, I will say it without fear: the Christian life is nowhere to be learned, whether in the churches or in the tribunals, where the head of all is not Jesus Christ, and him crucified." Him the Apostle Paul, with the other Apostles and Doctors, continually preached.

VI. Admonition III. The last objection — that in the divine Scriptures there do not occur the decisions of cases which are found in the Casuists — is the most inept of all. Wherefore it is of the highest moment to admonish all pastors and directors of souls to beware of a most grave and most pernicious hallucination; otherwise they will destroy eternally both themselves and their flock. What is this hallucination? Give attentive ears. If volumes of cases were published and resolved every day, they would be most inept for the best and evangelical instruction of Pastors and Confessors. For, granted whatever multiplication of innumerable cases you please, they always vary by reason of circumstance — whether of persons, or of time, or of events, or of other accidents. Wherefore such ill-stitched patchworks of cases often beget nothing else than confusion of mind and neglect of the Laws.

VII. The professors of any arts whatsoever, that they may be able rightly to exercise the works of their art, must be thoroughly versed in the principles and fixed rules of that same art. It is required, besides, that the artificers so excel in talent and prudence, that they know how to apply the rules according to the diversity of the works. The rules of consciences and of morals are the divine Scriptures; they are the precepts which God prescribes to be kept. If the directors of souls have these clearly in view, they are forthwith apt for the performance of their ministry. This is the key of the heavenly gate; this is the norm of consciences. Again, therefore, I recall to memory, I inculcate, and I press what I have already indicated above, and what must be repeated again and again, though it can never be repeated enough: namely, that the pastors and directors of souls must first of all know what is the spirit of the Christian life, what is its end, and what means are suited to the attainment of such an end. The end of the Christian life is this: Be you perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect; it is the conformation of our life to the life of Christ Jesus. Whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son. The way that leads thither is strait and narrow, and suffers violence. The means are humility, as the basis of the whole edifice, and charity, as the vivifying form. They are fasts, the buffetings of the flesh, the government of the senses, chastity, equity, justice, candor of soul, sincerity of tongue, and the contempt and renunciation of pomps, of luxury, of haughtiness, of ambition. I set the matter forth more clearly. There are, as it were, three ways which lead men to perdition: the concupiscence of the flesh, the cupidity of riches, the pride of life. Carnal love extinguishes the heavenly love of charity. The cupidity of riches opens the way to the violation of justice, glues the human heart to this world, and separates it from God. The pride of life makes war upon God, and destroys the foundation of the first Christian profession.

VIII. Give me a Christian who is humble, chaste, just, and endowed with divine charity; and I pledge myself that he shall be a possessor of Paradise. You too assent, do you not? Now I question you. Who expounds the rules of keeping charity more wisely, who more distinctly, than St. Paul, saying: Charity is patient, is kind, seeketh not her own, and so forth? Who more learnedly than Christ Jesus himself, in his Gospels, prescribes the precepts both for stirring up humility and for guarding chastity? Who teaches more efficaciously, by word and by example, the contempt of riches, of luxury, of pomps, of pleasures? Tell me: do all the Casuists together teach more clearly, more efficaciously, more eloquently the cultivation and exercise of the said virtues, in which the spirit of the Christian life is placed? You would be ashamed even to suspect it. Why then do you neglect the reading of the holy Gospels, in which, as you yourself confess, these things are more wisely taught, and wear away all your time, and torture your mind, in the continual reading of the Casuists?

IX. Open to me that secret. You cannot? Then I shall open it. The spirit of Christian sanctity is depicted in the Gospel in vivid colors. The precepts of the virtues are clear, perspicuous, luminous, simple; the rules for declining from vices, and for cultivating and guarding the virtues, are most evident, and lie open to no tergiversation or escape. But that discourse, so clear and so manifest, is hard to you. What then? You betake yourself to the volumes of the Casuists, that you may find there the liniments and blandishments with which to soothe and temper the rigor of the most evident divine Law. And in very deed, in not a few of them you find granted to you the faculty of tasting the cup of half-unchaste pleasure, and of keeping chastity; you find the power of celebrating funereal contracts, and of observing justice; of lying, and of speaking the truth; of calumniating, and of loving your Neighbor; of serving God and the World, and of composing darkness with light. In fine, by the reading of these books you become, not an observer of the Law, but a caviler at it and a judge over it. Hear the prudent judgment which the most learned and most upright Jesuit, Fr. Michael Elizalde, pronounced upon books of this kind, part 3, book 8, question 7, § 2, page 137, where he writes as follows: Lately I ran through a moral Summa of many volumes ... I sought Christ, and he was not there. I sought the sum of the Prophets and of the Law, namely charity, the love of God and of the Neighbor, and it was not there. I sought the Gospel, and it was not there. I sought humility, without which no man is saved, and it was not there. And yet, if you run through Paul, or another Apostle, or a Saint, you will find the complete contrary — everything crammed full of Christ, of charity, of humility, and of sanctity. Therefore these doctrines seem to have between themselves no degree of succession, none of consanguinity or of affinity ... The Gospel, then, is simple, and abhors all duplicity, and has its "It is, it is; it is not, it is not." The modern Moralism, on the contrary, is double, and makes use of that two-tongued probability, and has its "It is," and at the same time its "It is not"; since its rule is the probability of contrary and of contradictory propositions.

X. Again you insist that rules are contained in the Gospels — general rules of the virtues, but not particular and practical ones, as in the Casuists. Confessors and Pastors, moreover, commonly do not know how to apply the universal evangelical rules to practical and particular cases. This the Casuists supply; therefore the reading of them is the more necessary. Excellently argued! Ineptly, then, did Christ Jesus teach his disciples; ignorantly did the Evangelists — Peter, Paul, James, and the rest of the divine Writers — inform Christians. Are the Gospels superfluous, as containing only rules that are abstract, universal, and too far removed from execution? O wretched Christians of eight centuries and more, who went without casuistic books! Unhappy and ignorant holy Fathers of the Church, who bent their endeavors and their studies to this alone: to persuade, to inculcate, to press the execution and observance of the evangelical Law — rejecting the disputations, the controversies, the petty distinctions, and the patchworks of cases and opinions which the Casuists of this latest age have devised! For the rest, I freely concede that very many Confessors and Pastors do not know how to apply the evangelical rules to practical cases and to the reformation of morals. But why is this? Because, answer the Venerable Master Avila and St. Francis de Sales, scarcely ten out of a thousand are found equal to the discharge of so great an office: since few take up so great a burden at God's call, but rather at the impulse of ambition or of cupidity. But such men abuse alike the Gospel, the Fathers, and the Casuists.

XI. What then, you will say, is to be done with so great a multitude of moral volumes? If I were to disclose to you what I myself think, I should bring upon myself an immense odium. So inveterate have prejudged opinions become, that we cannot make the truth manifest without stirring up against ourselves the wrath and indignation of those who fight and wage war for the new manner of opining as though for their altars and their hearths. But by divine providence it has been brought about and disposed that the most wise Jesuit, Fr. Michael Elizalde, furnished the answer now almost a century ago, part 3, book 8, question 8, § 8, page 150, in these words: "Let this be our briefest, and surely most equitable, answer: namely, that with these books that should be done which, through them and through their authors, has been done with the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church; which likewise has been done with the Prophets, with the Gospel, with the Apostles: and as all these have been well-nigh forsaken, let those books be forsaken for just so long, and let sacred doctrine, and that of the Saints, be restored to use and practice; and thus we repay them their turn most justly. Doubtless in this place many can be offended and stirred up, whether rightly or wrongly — rightly they cannot. Augustine has long lain idle in the forum where consciences are ruled. Who, I ask, is so far removed from Christian principles as not to judge it the wiser course, that Diana at least should lie idle just as long, and that Augustine should return to the forum in his place? If either Ambrose or Caramuel must live, who would not prefer Ambrose? If the peoples are to be ruled either out of Chrysostom and Gregory, or out of Tamburini and Escobar; if the life of the Faithful is to be formed upon the one or upon the other: who would not prefer those whom the holy Church, our mother and our mistress, has held out to us as the Doctors of our life? These things are clear; we do injury to no man; and if we shall suffer persecution for justice' sake, we shall be counted blessed by the Lord. But you say that both can live and reign together. I answer. First: by the pontifical oracle (of Alexander VII) so often recalled, it is established for us — for us, that is (mark it well), for whom the Apostolic See stands in its proper place — that a manner of opining about matters of conscience has crept in which is wholly alien to evangelical simplicity and to the doctrine of the holy Fathers. Now this manner, and these opinions, assuredly exist somewhere; and they exist in certain books. These books, therefore, cannot live and reign together with the Gospel and the doctrine of the Saints. And if there shall be any who make the most of the pontifical oracles issued in their favor, but count as nothing (mark it well) those issued against them, this surely is not good. Secondly: from what has been established in this work ... it is clear that sacred doctrine, and that of the Saints, cannot be reconciled with the opinions of many — not only in certain particulars and quasi-conclusions, but in the very universal principles of their philosophizing. Both, therefore, cannot live and reign together. Thirdly: from the opening of many books of the Moralists it is notoriously evident that there is in them almost no use of sacred doctrine and of the Saints. Let just so much, then, be done with them for a while. Fourthly: these books are full of contrariety and contradiction; whence at least half of them must be false: but no falsity can be reconciled with sacred doctrine, and rarely any, or none, with the doctrine of the holy Fathers on faith and morals. These books, therefore — at least until all these falsities be expunged — cannot live together with the doctrine of the Scriptures and of the Saints. You will say again that in the book of God, and in the doctrine of the Saints, there is wanting the doctrine necessary to salvation for the ruling of peoples and the directing of consciences. But it has been shown that this doctrine was never wanting in the Church, any more than faith was; and that it is a monster of monsters, if they think that they have now come to give knowledge of salvation to his people. For to this end he came who enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world; who built the Church as the ground and pillar of truth, and to whom he entrusted the deposit to be guarded — which she has, beyond doubt, preserved. Here there is need, not of doctrine, but of consideration, and of at least the lowest degree of humility. This, therefore, we unhesitatingly assert must be done with these books: that which, through them, was done with the holy books of God and of the Saints — that these may live and reign; and to the opiners we can say that word of the Apostle: Now you reign without us: and I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you. Would, I say, that you reigned — you, namely, who are able to reign together with them. If not — if one or the other party must go into exile — I call upon every Christian judge to say which of them he judges ought to reign."

XII. What this man of God, this servant and companion of Jesus Christ, has here touched in few words, he proves with full pen in his work — a work worthy of gold and of cedar. I shall subjoin an example in confirmation of the things that have been said in passing. Fr. Thomas Tamburini frees from grave fault children who marry — and marry even unworthy persons — without consulting their parents. To the divine Scriptures, and to the Fathers of the Church who teach the opposite, what answer does he furnish? Hear him speaking thus in book 5 on the Decalogue, chapter 2, § 3, number 6: If Pope Evaristus decreed that a girl whom her father himself does not give in espousal is by no means to be held for a wife; if Pope Leo, if Ambrose say that it belongs not to virginal modesty to choose a husband, but that the judgment of the parents is to be awaited; if in the sacred letters this office is entrusted to the parents — Give thy daughter to a prudent man; if St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, expressly teaches that daughters are to be given in marriage by their parents; if many examples of the sacred letters, which Bellarmine adduces, manifestly demonstrate it: what then is to be done? Hear, and be aghast. I answer with Sanchez: these things, and the like, prove indeed that it is very honorable to seek counsel of this kind from one's father; they do not prove the dire necessity of mortal sin.

XIII. A marvelous and truly prodigious force do these three words contain — I answer with Sanchez — against the sacred letters, against Paul the Apostle, against Pope Evaristus, against Leo, Ambrose, Bellarmine, and all the rest! Yet the reason for wonder ceases, if the system of Fr. Sanchez be considered. The first and gravest commandment of the first Table, concerning the love of God, he reduced almost to nothing, restricting it, of itself, to the article of death. What wonder, then, if he reduces the first precept of the second Table, concerning the honoring of parents, to a mere counsel of propriety — and that in the gravest matter of all, namely the contracting of marriage? In the course of this work I shall bring forward examples by the hundred, in which not a few Casuists elude the doctrine of divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers.

XIV. Admonition IV. I therefore inculcate, and with all zeal and with the whole endeavor of my powers I urge, the reading and humble meditation of holy Scripture, for this reason: that men will not subject themselves to the judgments and opinions of other men. Hence proceeds that endless multitude of the Casuists' volumes: for while men read citations of this kind — thus teach Diana, Bonacina, Caramuel, Tamburini, Sanchez, Vasquez, Escobar, Zanardi, Candidus, Leander, Gobat, La-Croix, Pichler, Sporer, and so forth — they straightway infer: if these authors teach thus, others defend the opposite; nay, in the very Moralists cited they find other Casuists cited who teach the opposite. Behold Christian ethics reduced to Scepticism and Pyrrhonism! They are men, they say, and therefore liable to error. Hence it is that, although the pagan philosophers taught excellent lessons of morals, they did not reform morals: because those lessons were regarded as given by men, and the rest of men would not obey them. Only the supreme authority of God subjects to itself the minds and wills of men. When I, reading holy Scripture, reflect that it is God who speaks to me, that it is God who commands me, straightway, trembling and fearful, dismissing all argumentations and cavils, I conclude that God is to be obeyed, not disputed with. When, after the divine Scriptures, I turn over the volumes of the holy Fathers, I reason in like manner: these are they whom holy Mother Church has given me for masters; their interpretations of the Scriptures, therefore, I ought to embrace; upon their method I must insist in expounding Christian theology. Now they are wholly intent upon persuading — with what abundant eloquence, with what vivid figures, with what invincible argumentations! — the observance of the Law. If I am bound to follow them, as men given to me by the Church for masters, then those authors are not altogether to be trusted who fill their volumes with quibbles, disputations, and evasions; who bring all things into doubt, and scarcely ever inflame the souls of their Readers to the execution of the Law. So arid, so thorny, and so sterile is the discourse of most of them, that it extinguishes rather than kindles the spirit of the Christian profession. I do not doubt that all Readers have experienced this very fruit. Far be it from me, however, to condemn the reading of the graver theologians, and especially when the ecclesiastical Laws are to be explained.