Thus, fathers, it is unquestionable that your authors have given permission to kill in defence of property and honor, though life should be perfectly free from danger. And it is upon the same principle that they authorize duelling, as I have shown by a great variety of passages from their writings, to which you have made no reply. You have animadverted in your writings only on a single passage taken from Father Layman, who sanctions the above practice, “when otherwise a person would be in danger of sacrificing his fortune or his honor;” and here you accuse me with having suppressed what he adds, “that such a case happens very rarely.” You astonish me, fathers: these are really curious impostures you charge me withal. You talk as if the question were, Whether that is a rare case? when the real question is, If, in such a case, duelling is lawful? These are two very different questions. Layman, in the quality of a casuist, ought to judge whether duelling is lawful in the case supposed; and he declares that it is. We can judge without his assistance, whether the case be a rare one; and we can tell him that it is a very ordinary one. Or, if you prefer the testimony of your good friend Diana, he will tell you that “the case is exceedingly common.”[261] But be it rare or not, and let it be granted that Layman follows in this the example of Navarre, a circumstance on which you lay so much stress, is it not shameful that he should consent to such an opinion as that, to preserve a false honor, it is lawful in conscience to accept of a challenge, in the face of the edicts of all Christian states, and of all the canons of the Church, while, in support of these diabolical maxims, you can produce neither laws, nor canons, nor authorities from Scripture, or from the fathers, nor the example of a single saint, nor, in short, anything but the following impious syllogism: “Honor is more than life: it is allowable to kill in defence of life; therefore it is allowable to kill in defence of honor!” What, fathers! because the depravity of men disposes them to prefer that factitious honor before the life which God hath given them to be devoted to his service, must they be permitted to murder one another for its preservation? To love that honor more than life, is in itself a heinous evil; and yet this vicious passion, which, when proposed as the end of our conduct, is enough to tarnish the holiest of actions, is considered by you capable of sanctifying the most criminal of them!