reverend father, said I, thanks to your probable opinions. We have fine liberty of conscience. And you casuists, have you the same liberty in your answers? Yes, said he, we answer as we please, or rather as pleases those who consult us, for here are our rules taken from our fathers, Layman, Vasquez, Sanchez, &c. Here are the words of Layman:—‘A doctor upon being consulted can give advice not only probable, according to his opinion, but contrary to his opinion, if it is estimated probable by others when his contrary advice is found more favourable and more agreeable to the person that consults him. But I say more, it would not be at all wrong that he should give to those who consult him, an opinion held probable by some learned person, even while he himself knew it to be absolutely false.’” Are we then to place our souls under the guidance of such teachers? Are we to abandon the pure, the clear, the unerring truth of Scripture, at the bidding of one who is ready to declare black white, and white black, at the bidding of his Church? I solemnly appeal to any Roman Catholic into whose hands this Lecture may ever fall, Can this be Christianity? Can such a system be from God? Is this the Divine and eternal truth which you are seeking in the Church of Rome? Nay, more! Can you place the smallest confidence in any Jesuit, priest or confessor, when you find it boldly asserted that he may give you an opinion as to the great concerns of your soul’s salvation, which at the very time he gives it he knows in his own heart to be absolutely false? But their principles of equivocation, mental restriction, and the direction of intention, are equally subversive of all that is trustworthy amongst men. By equivocation they mean the use of terms of so ambiguous a character that the hearer receives them in one sense, while the speaker employs them in another. By mental restriction is intended the suppression of certain parts of a sentence, so as to give to the remainder a meaning opposed to truth. Pascal quotes the following passage from one Sanchez: “A man may swear,” says he, “that he has not done a thing, although in fact he has done it, meaning within himself that he did not do it _on a certain day_, or _before he was born_, or understanding some other similar circumstance, without permitting it to appear in any way through the words employed! and this,” he adds, “is very convenient on many occasions, and is always perfectly right when it is necessary for the health, the honour, or the interests.”