A just analysis leaves of the one hundred and thirty-two decisions exactly three--one on simony, one on the action of a judge in receiving presents, and the third on usury--all three of which are doubtful and matters for discussion. There is besides these, the doctrine of equivocation, which is a favorite shaft against the Society. Of this Belloc says: "This specifically condemned form of equivocation (that is, equivocation involving a private reservation of meaning), moreover, was not particularly Jesuit. It had been debated at length, and favorably, long before the Jesuit Order came into existence, and within the great casuist authorities of that Order there were wide differences of opinion upon it. Azor, for instance, condemns instances which Sánchez allows. Of all this conflict Pascal allows you to hear nothing." Finally, it may be noted that the "Provincial Letters" were not a plea for truth, but a device to distract the public mind from the chicanery of the Jansenists, who, when the famous "five propositions" were condemned, pretended that they were not in the "Augustinus" written by Jansenius. Perhaps the commonest libel formulated against the Society is the accusation that it is the teacher, if not the author, of the immoral maxim: "the end justifies the means", which signifies that an action, bad in itself, becomes good if performed for a good purpose. If the Society ever taught this doctrine, at least it cannot be charged with having the monopoly of it. Thus, for instance, the great Protestant empire which is the legitimate progeny of Martin Luther's teaching, proclaimed to the world that the diabolical "frightfulness" which it employed in the late war was prompted solely by its desire for peace. On the other side of the Channel, an Anglican prelate informed his contemporaries that "the British Empire could not be carried on for a week, on the principles of the 'Sermon on the Mount'" (The Month, Vol. 106, p. 255). The same might be predicated of numberless other powers and principalities past and present. The ruthless measures resorted to in business and politics for the suppression of rivalry are a matter of common knowledge. Finally, every unbiased mind will concede that the persistent use of poisonous gas by the foes of the Society is nothing else than a carrying out of the maxim of "the end justifies the means."