The "Manual of Cases of Conscience" of Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, the Spanish theologian, furnished infinite material for the Jansenists of France to blacken the name of the Society. Necessarily, every enormity that human nature can be guilty of is discussed in such treatises, but it would be just as absurd to charge their authors with writing them for the purpose of inculcating vice, as it would be to accuse medical practitioners of propagating disease by their clinics and dissecting rooms. The purpose of both is to heal and prevent, not to communicate disease, whether it be of the soul or body. In both cases, the books that treat of such matters are absolutely restricted to the use of the profession, and as an additional precaution, in the matter of moral theology, the treatises are written in Latin, so that they cannot be understood by people who have nothing to do with such disagreeable and sometimes disgusting topics. To accuse the men who condemned themselves to the study of such subjects solely that they might lift depraved humanity out of the depths into which it descends, is an outrage. This literary war crossed the ocean to the French possessions of Canada, and much of the religious trouble that disturbed the colony from the beginning may be traced to the editorial activity of the Jansenists of France. Thus, when Brébeuf, Charles Lalemant and Massé came up the St. Lawrence, after a terrible voyage across the Atlantic, they were actually forbidden to land. The pamphlet known as "Anti-Coton" had been distributed and read by the few colonists who were then on the Rock of Quebec, and they would have nothing to do with the associates of a man who like Coton, was represented as rejoicing in the assassination of Henry IV. It did not matter that Father Coton and the king were not only intimate but most affectionate friends, and that assassination in such circumstances would be inconceivable; that it was asserted in print was enough to cause these three glorious men, who were coming to die for the Catholic Faith and for France, to be forbidden to land at Quebec. This anti-Coton manifestation in the early days of the colony was only a prelude to the antagonism that runs all through early Canadian history. It was kept up by a clique of writers in France, chief of whom were the Jansenist Abbés Bernou and Renaudot. Their contributions may be found in the voluminous collection known as Margry's "Découvertes," which Parkman induced the United States government to print in the language in which they were written. They teem with the worst kind of libels against the Society. Some of them pretend to have been written in America, but are so grotesque that the forgery is palpable. Indeed, among them is a letter from Bernou to Renaudot which says: "Get La Salle to give me some points and I will write the Relation."