In vain have the _rigorists,_ becoming aware of the ruin that menaced the theory of Ethic, struggled against the theoreticians of the morally indifferent, or _latitudinarians._ So long as neither party left the legalitarian field, one side was right against the other and both were equally wrong, Pharisees and Sadducees, Jansenists and Molinists. The rigorists clung desperately to the law, refusing to admit that it could be _doubtful_ and give rise to the morally indifferent; the law was _certain._ But the law is never really either doubtful or certain: revolving upon empirical concepts, it never limits anything with precision and therefore is not certain; having for its object, not concrete action, but only preparation for it, does not propose to limit the illimitable and so is neither uncertain nor doubtful: it stands on this side or the other of such categories. Thus the rigorists also found themselves face to face with the morally indifferent, and had no way of vanquishing it. They could advise the choice of the most painful and repugnant action, self-denial, self-tormenting; but this too was a kind of wilfulness and evil. The latitudinarians, on the other hand, could enlarge the field of the morally indifferent at their pleasure, placing in evidence the dubiety of law and its consequent impotence as a practical principle; but since they did not recognize any practical principle outside the form of law, they were finally obliged to have recourse to it, that they might have some point of orientation in the guidance of their lives. And since they could not find it in the law itself, recognized as doubtful, they were obliged to place it in the authority of its interpreters; and when these authorities were at variance, in the adding up of authorities (just as is done for the Roman jurists in the law of citation made by Theodosius II.); and since, finally, two or three or four or a hundred authorities, when they are uncertain, are not of greater value than one who is equally uncertain, any sort of authority finally had to suffice them as justification for an action. _Probabilitism,_ far from being merely an illegitimate degeneration of legalism, is its logical consequence. Reduced as they were to authority, why should one be of more account than another, when all are estimable people worthy of credence? Why should the precedence be given to Papinian over Paul or over Ulpian? If Villalobos be of opinion that a priest who has committed a moral sin cannot say mass the same day, Sanchez, on the other hand, Jopines that he can: why, then, should a priest who finds himself in that case follow Villalobos rather than Sanchez? It is true that if he make a blind choice between Villalobos and Sanchez, he becomes the prey of self-will; but self-will and legalism are indissoluble, and the more carefully he tries to free himself from the bond, the more tightly it winds itself around him.