“What you have now said,” rejoined the father, “would require to be modified a little. Pay attention now, while I explain our method, and you will observe the progress of a new opinion, from its birth to its maturity. First, the grave doctor who invented it exhibits it to the world, casting it abroad like seed, that it may take root. In this state it is very feeble; it requires time gradually to ripen. This accounts for Diana, who has introduced a great many of these opinions, saying: ‘I advance this opinion; but as it is new, I give it time to come to maturity—_relinquo tempori maturandum_.’ Thus in a few years it becomes insensibly consolidated; and after a considerable time it is sanctioned by the tacit approbation of the Church, according to the grand maxim of Father Bauny, ‘that if an opinion has been advanced by some casuist, and has not been impugned by the Church, it is a sign that she approves of it.’ And, in fact, on this principle he authenticates one of his own principles in his sixth treatise, p. 312.” “Indeed, father!” cried I, “why, on this principle the Church would approve of all the abuses which she tolerates, and all the errors in all the books which she does not censure!” “Dispute the point with Father Bauny,” he replied. “I am merely quoting his words, and you begin to quarrel with _me_. There is no disputing with facts, sir. Well, as I was saying, when time has thus matured an opinion, it thenceforth becomes completely probable and safe. Hence the learned Caramuel, in dedicating his Fundamental Theology to Diana, declares that this great Diana has rendered many opinions probable which were not so before—_quæ antea non erant_; and that, therefore, in following them, persons do not sin now, though they would have sinned formerly—_jam non peccant, licet ante peccaverint_.” “Truly, father,” I observed, “it must be worth one’s while living in the neighborhood of your doctors. Why, of two individuals who do the same actions, he that knows nothing about their doctrine sins, while he that knows it does no sin. It seems, then, that their doctrine possesses at once an edifying and a justifying virtue! The law of God, according to St. Paul, made transgressors;[152] but this law of yours makes nearly all of us innocent. I beseech you, my dear sir, let me know all about it. I will not leave you till you have told me all the maxims which your casuists have established.”