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Updated: May 8, 2025
He desires to impress upon the public mind the conviction that I am a crafty, scheming man, simply untrustworthy; that, in becoming a Catholic, I have just found my right place; that I do but justify and am properly interpreted by the common English notion of Roman casuists and confessors; that I was secretly a Catholic when I was openly professing to be a clergyman of the Established Church; that so far from bringing, by means of my conversion, when at length it openly took place, any strength to the Catholic cause, I am really a burden to it an additional evidence of the fact, that to be a pure, german, genuine Catholic, a man must be either a knave or a fool.
XVI. In reply to these statements, the following arguments are often adduced by those who are not unskilful in discussions, and who, in this question, have all the greater weight of authority, because, when we inquire, Who is a good man? understanding by that term a frank and single-minded man we have little need of captious casuists, quibblers, and slanderers.
I leave to casuists the decision whether to the morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.
A formal renunciation of all right to the Spanish succession had been made at the time of the marriage; but such renunciations were never of any practical effect, and many casuists and jurists of the age even held them to be intrinsically void, as time passed on, and the prospect of Charles II. of Spain dying without lineal heirs became more and more certain, so did the claims of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish crown after his death become matters of urgent interest to French ambition on the one hand, and to the other powers of Europe on the other.
The man he must see, the man on whom everything depended, the old friend whom he most trusted and believed in stood in sore peril. The cause for which he had come all these miles must fail so sure as Nolan slipped into the power of the adversary, even though grasped by the hand of the law. It was no time for ethics no time for casuists.
The Malcontent generals of the Walloon troops were inexpressibly anxious lest the cause of religion should be endangered; but the arguments by which Parma convinced those military casuists as to the compatibility of the Ghent peace with sound doctrine have already been exhibited.
The human mind, among the best of us, inclines to narrow limitations, and certain Catholics, aware of the comparatively greater importance of the supernatural, partially overlook the natural. Then, too, casuists have incidentally done us harm.
Was it here that the haughty Don Juan de Vera, coming to demand for the Catholic kings the arrears of tribute due them from the Moor, "paused to regard its celebrated fountain" and "fell into discourse with the Moorish courtiers on certain mysteries of the Christian faith"? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him.
Nor do these most pious casuists discover anything in Scripture which forbids the burning of heretics, notwithstanding such texts as 'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed, which they contend inquisitors do never violate the true meaning or spirit of, it being evident that to burn men is not to shed their blood thus eluding the maxim Ecclesia non novit sanguinem.
"Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head. "Now, do you know what I always say to casuists...?" MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter. The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in unabated enjoyment. "Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point.
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