In the first edition it was said to be the Landgrave of Darmstat, by mistake, as shown in a note by Nicole. LETTER XVI.[277] TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS. SHAMEFUL CALUMNIES OF THE JESUITS AGAINST PIOUS CLERGYMEN AND INNOCENT NUNS. _December 4, 1656._ REVEREND FATHERS,—I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies, and shall begin with those contained in your advertisements, which remain to be noticed. As all your other writings, however, are equally well stocked with slander, they will furnish me with abundant materials for entertaining you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient. In the first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres,[278] I beg leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously wrested the meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one of his letters, which being capable of a good sense, ought, according to the spirit of the Gospel, to have been taken in good part, and could only be taken otherwise according to the spirit of your Society. For example, when he says to a friend, “Give yourself no concern about your nephew; I will furnish him with what he requires from the money that lies in my hands,” what reason have you to interpret this to mean, that he would take that money without restoring it, and not that he merely advanced it with the purpose of replacing it? And how extremely imprudent was it for you to furnish a refutation of your own lie, by printing the other letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly show that, in point of fact, it was merely _advanced_ money, which he was bound to refund. This appears, to your confusion, from the following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of July 30, 1619: “Be not uneasy about the money _advanced_; he shall want for nothing so long as he is here;” and likewise from another, dated January 6, 1620, where he says: “You are in too great haste; when the account shall become due, I have no fear but that the little credit which I have in this place will bring me as much money as I require.”