Note 198 — LETTER IX.

The method by which Father Daniel evades this charge is truly Jesuitical. First, he attempts to involve the question in a cloud of difficulties, by supposing extreme cases, in which equivocation may be allowed to preserve life, &c. He has then the assurance to quote Scripture in defence of the practice, referring to the equivocations of Abraham which he vindicates; to those of Tobit and the angel Raphael, which he applauds; and even to the sayings of our blessed Lord, which he charges with equivocation! (Entretiens, pp. 378, 382.) Even Bossuet was ashamed of this abominable maxim. “I know nothing” he says speaking of Sanchez, “more pernicious in morality, than the opinion of that Jesuit in regard to an oath; he maintains that the intention is necessary to an oath, without which in giving a false answer to a judge, when questioned at the bar, one is not capable of perjury.” (Journal de l’Abbé le Dieu, apud Dissertation sur la foi qui es due au temoignage de Pascal, &c., p. 50.)