THE RANDALL FAMILY I 37
relapse when well. So, too, the eating of fish and vege- tables, and abstinence from meat for long periods, is an excellent way of keeping people effeminate and debilitated, and therefore easily managed ; while the obligation to fast, being broken and discovered at the confessional, not from the culprit, but from the females of his family, is an excel- lent mode of determining the incipient heretic, who is therefore suspected and watched. How could any nation ever have escaped from such a system save through out- side force, and how easily, when that force is withdrawn, does it slide back again under priestly government !
The Jesuits, however, whose system of education de- serves careful study for its efficiency in making scholars learned and exact through its simple habits, severe dis- cipline, and the democratic equality of its pupils, were, I think, plainly the enemies of the Catholic church, except in as far as its doctrine and discipline might enable them to build up their society on its ruins. Their casuistry as exposed by Pascal would appear like an amusement of wit, if its profound schemes of mischief had not been plainly unveiled in the exposure of their doctrines of " proba- bility," " next power," etc. One of the exposed sophis- tries is very amusing : namely, Molina, Escobar, Lessius [.?], and other Jesuits, taught seriously that a judge has a right to take a bribe to render an unjust verdict, but never for giving a just one, because a judge owes justice to all men, he therefore has no right to sell it, but he does not owe injustice to any man, he may therefore with perfect propriety sell that.
Thursday, gth. Today I receive your second letter, and perceive you have recovered your spirits and gotten my letter. I will, however, complete in some manner my sheet, and thus pay up, I think, whatever debts I may owe
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