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His temper, he truly said, was prone to lenity; but his duty to he community forced him to be, in this one instance, severe. He declared that, in his judgment, Pagans who had never heard the name of Christ, and who were guided only by the light of nature, were more trustworthy members of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of the Popish casuists.
For if, in a Country disposed to a lighter Temper and Air, where the Church has greater Corruption, and the Theater fewer, there can yet be whole Bodies of Casuists found, disallowing the sight of their Modester Plays; Methinks it shou'd not be thought an Absurdity here, to go about to disswade so thoughtful a People as we reckon our selves, from going to ours which shew so little of that Reformation to which we pretend.
He told me the tendency not perhaps of all the members of the Company, for a great number must have shared my ignorance but the objects which our leaders have pertinaciously kept in view, ever since the foundation of the Order. I was terrified. I read the casuists.
He will then abjure the other King with a mental reservation. Do not flatter yourselves that the ingenuity of lawgivers will ever devise an oath which the ingenuity of casuists will not evade. What indeed is the value of any oath in such a matter?
He told the House, upon an important occasion, and pretty early in his service, that, "being warned by the ill effect of a contrary procedure in great examples, he had taken his ideas of liberty very low in order that they should stick to him and that he might stick to them to the end of his life." At popular elections the most rigorous casuists will remit a little of their severity.
He would have said that theoretically there was no difference between intention and commission, and however casuists might reason, he took a curious delight in being scrupulously exacting with himself in his moral requirements, the fact that he held himself in his actions practically above such considerations naturally making this less difficult than it otherwise would have been.
He has also perfectly at command the seductive sophistry of the passions, which can lend a plausible appearance to everything. The following verse in justification of perjury, and in which the reservatio mentalis of the casuists seems to be substantially expressed, is well known: The tongue swore, but the mind was unsworn.
The hypothetical case, sometimes mentioned by casuists, of one who is convinced that for him salvation outside of religion is impossible, can here safely be passed over as unpractical for young readers.
The learned Casuists teach us, that an erring conscience, though non obligat, yet ligat; though we be not obliged to do that which it prescribeth, yet are we bound not to do that which it condemneth. Quicquid fit repugnante et reclamante conscientia, peccatum est, etiamsi repugnantia ista gravem errorem includat, saith Alsted.
Who shall say whether Voltaire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or Pitt, has done most good or most evil? It is a question casuists may dispute on.
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