In fine, fathers, to conclude with another charge which you bring against me, I see you complain that among the vast number of your maxims which I quote, there are some which have been objected to already, and that I “say over again, what others have said before me.” To this I reply, that it is just because you have not profited by what has been said before, that I say it over again. Tell me now what fruit has appeared from all the castigations you have received in all the books written by learned doctors, and even the whole university? What more have your fathers Annat, Caussin, Pintereau, and Le Moine done, in the replies they have put forth, except loading with reproaches those who had given them salutary admonitions? Have you suppressed the books in which these nefarious maxims are taught?[238] Have you restrained the authors of these maxims? Have you become more circumspect in regard to them? On the contrary, is it not the fact, that since that time Escobar has been repeatedly reprinted in France and in the Low Countries, and that your fathers Cellot, Bagot, Bauny, Lamy, Le Moine, and others, persist in publishing daily the same maxims over again, or new ones as licentious as ever? Let us hear no more complaints, then, fathers, either because I have charged you with maxims which you have not disavowed, or because I have objected to some new ones against you, or because I have laughed equally at them all. You have only to sit down and look at them, to see at once your own confusion and my defence. Who can look without laughing at the decision of Bauny, respecting the person who employs another to set fire to his neighbor’s barn; that of Cellot on restitution; the rule of Sanchez in favor of sorcerers; the plan of Hurtado for avoiding the sin of duelling by taking a walk through a field, and waiting for a man; the compliments of Bauny for escaping usury; the way of avoiding simony by a detour of the intention, and keeping clear of falsehood by speaking high and low; and such other opinions of your most grave and reverend doctors? Is there anything more necessary, fathers, for my vindication? and as Tertullian says, “can anything be more justly due to the vanity and weakness of these opinions than laughter?” But, fathers, the corruption of manners to which your maxims lead deserves another sort of consideration; and it becomes us to ask, with the same ancient writer, “Whether ought we to laugh at their folly, or deplore their blindness?—_Rideam vanitatem, an exprobrem cæcitatem_?” My humble opinion is, that one may either laugh at them or weep over them, as one is in the humor. _Hæc tolerabilius vel ridentur, vel flentur_, as St. Augustine says. The Scripture tells us that “there is a time to laugh, and a time to weep;” and my hope is, fathers, that I may not find verified, in your case, these words in the Proverbs: “If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest.”[239]