In following such examples, I conceived that I could not go far wrong; and, as I think I have sufficiently established this position, I shall only add, in the admirable words of Tertullian, which give the true explanation of the whole of my proceeding in this matter: “What I have now done is only a little sport before the real combat. I have rather indicated the wounds that might be given you, than inflicted any. If the reader has met with passages which have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects themselves. There are many things which deserve to be held up in this way to ridicule and mockery, lest, by a serious refutation, we should attach a weight to them which they do not deserve. Nothing is more due to vanity than laughter; and it is the Truth properly that has a right to laugh, because she is cheerful, and to make sport of her enemies, because she is sure of the victory. Care must be taken, indeed, that the raillery is not too low, and unworthy of the truth; but, keeping this in view, when ridicule may be employed with effect, it is a duty to avail ourselves of it.” Do you not think, fathers, that this passage is singularly applicable to our subject? The letters which I have hitherto written are “merely a little sport before a real combat.” As yet I have been only playing with the foils, and “rather indicating the wounds that might be given you than inflicting any.” I have merely exposed your passages to the light, without making almost a reflection on them. “If the reader has met with any that have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects themselves.” And, indeed, what is more fitted to raise a laugh, than to see a matter so grave as that of Christian morality decked out with fancies so grotesque as those in which you have exhibited it? One is apt to form such high anticipations of these maxims, from being told that “Jesus Christ himself has revealed them to the fathers of the Society,” that when one discovers among them such absurdities as “that a priest receiving money to say mass, may take additional sums from other persons by giving up to them his own share in the sacrifice;” “that a monk is not to be excommunicated for putting off his habit, provided it is to dance, swindle, or go incognito into infamous houses;” and “that the duty of hearing mass may be fulfilled by listening to four quarters of a mass at once from different priests”—when, I say, one listens to such decisions as these, the surprise is such that it is impossible to refrain from laughing; for nothing is more calculated to produce that emotion than a startling contrast between the thing looked for and the thing looked at. And why should the greater part of these maxims be treated in any other way? As Tertullian says, “To treat them seriously would be to sanction them.”