“I did not say it in earnest,” returned the father; “but let us speak more seriously.” “I am quite disposed to do so, if you prefer it; that depends upon you, father. But I must say, that I have been astonished to see your friends carrying their attentions to all sorts and conditions of men so far as even to regulate the legitimate gains of sorcerers.” “One cannot write for too many people,” said the monk, “nor be too minute in particularizing cases, nor repeat the same things too often in different books. You may be convinced of this by the following anecdote, which is related by one of the gravest of our fathers, as you may well suppose, seeing he is our present Provincial—the reverend Father Cellot: ‘We know a person,’ says he, ‘who was carrying a large sum of money in his pocket to restore it, in obedience to the orders of his confessor, and who, stepping into a bookseller’s shop by the way, inquired if there was anything new?—_numquid novi?_—when the bookseller showed him a book on moral theology, recently published; and turning over the leaves carelessly, and without reflection, he lighted upon a passage describing his own case, and saw that he was under no obligation to make restitution: upon which, relieved from the burden of his scruples, he returned home with a purse no less heavy, and a heart much lighter, than when he left it:—_abjecta scrupuli sarcina, retento auri pondere, levior domum repetiit_.’[182] “Say, after hearing that, if it is useful or not to know our maxims? Will you laugh at them now? or rather, are you not prepared to join with Father Cellot in the pious reflection which he makes on the blessedness of that incident? ‘Accidents of that kind,’ he remarks, ‘are, with God, the effect of his providence; with the guardian angel, the effect of his good guidance; with the individuals to whom they happen, the effect of their predestination. From all eternity, God decided that the golden chain of their salvation should depend on such and such an author, and not upon a hundred others who say the same thing, because they never happen to meet with them. Had that man not written, this man would not have been saved. All, therefore, who find fault with the multitude of our authors, we would beseech, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to beware of envying others those books which the eternal election of God and the blood of Jesus Christ has purchased for them!’ Such are the eloquent terms in which this learned man proves so successfully the proposition which he had advanced, namely, ‘How useful it must be to have a great many writers on moral theology—_quàm utile sit de theologia morali multos scribere_!’”