with that of Valentia; and I quote it again to show you how far wrong it is in you to complain of me for saying that it does not agree with that of St. Thomas, for he avows it himself in the very passage which I quoted in my letter: “There is properly and truly no simony,” says he, “unless when a temporal good is taken as the price of a spiritual; but when taken merely as the motive for giving the spiritual, or as an acknowledgment for having received it, this is not simony, at least in point of conscience.” And again: “The same thing may be said although the temporal should be regarded as the principal end, and even preferred to the spiritual; although St. Thomas and others appear to hold the reverse, inasmuch as they maintain it to be downright simony to exchange a spiritual for a temporal good, when the temporal is the end of the transaction.” Such, then, being your doctrine on simony, as taught by your best authors, who follow each other very closely in this point, it only remains now to reply to your charges of misrepresentation. You have taken no notice of Valentia’s opinion, so that his doctrine stands as it was before. But you fix on that of Tanner, maintaining that he has merely decided it to be no simony by divine right; and you would have it to be believed that, in quoting the passage, I have suppressed these words, _divine right_. This, fathers, is a most unconscionable trick; for these words, _divine right_, never existed in that passage. You add that Tanner declares it to be simony according to _positive right_. But you are mistaken; he does not say that generally, but only of particular cases, or, as he expresses it, _in casibus a jure expressis_, by which he makes an exception to the general rule he had laid down in that passage, “that it is not simony in point of conscience,” which must imply that it is not so in point of positive right, unless you would have Tanner made so impious as to maintain that simony, in point of positive right, is not simony in point of conscience. But it is easy to see your drift in mustering up such terms as “divine right, positive right, natural right, internal and external tribunal, expressed cases, outward presumption,” and others equally little known; you mean to escape under this obscurity of language, and make us lose sight of your aberrations. But, fathers, you shall not escape by these vain artifices; for I shall put some questions to you so simple, that they will not admit of coming under your _distinguo_.[243]