I remain, dear Sir, Very faithfully yours, EDWARD HOARE. H. Waller, Esq. * * * * * 8, New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, Dec. 1851. My dear Sir, I have to thank you for the manner in which you have received my communication, but I am sorry to find that, contrary to my expectation, a simple reference to the original text of the Constitutions has not sufficed to show you that the version for which you contend is, as I still believe I shall be able to convince you, founded in misapprehension. I attribute to you—I am bound to attribute to you a _wish_ to see it satisfactorily proved, that the passage has not the dreadful sense which has been given it, and which you assign to it simply because it seems to you unavoidable. I cannot think, then, that I have a difficult task to accomplish. In several places in the Constitutions the expressions, “obligatio ad peccatum,” “obligatio peccati,” and “obligatio sub pœnâ peccati,” are used indifferently, as equivalent to one another. Thus, the title of cap. v., pars vi., itself is, “Quod Constitutiones peccati obligationem non inducunt;” obviously the same thing must be meant as by, “obligatio ad peccatum,” in the chapter itself. Now you admit that, “obligatio peccati” has the same meaning as “obligatio sub pœnâ peccati;” surely then “obligatio ad peccatum” has the same meaning too. In pars ix., c. v., § 6, the following passage occurs: “si non compulerit talis obedientia Summi Pontificis, _quæ ad peccatum obligare posset_;” even in the translation which accompanies the edition of the Constitutions to which you have referred me, this is rendered, “unless such obedience to the Pope, as is _compulsive under the penalty of sin_, oblige him, &c.” What could have led the translator to put a different meaning on the same expression in the passage we are discussing, I cannot conceive, except I impute it to prejudice.