d so much the more successfully, as some
degree of austerity at least was expected from his character and
profession. But what is to prevent another from flattering still more?
We have just now seen an instance (a respectable one, it is true) of
these spiritual infidelities.

In changing continually one confessor for another, merely on account of
his being more gentle and indulgent than the former, we run the risk of
falling very low in morality. To get the upper hand over so many
accommodating directors, an entirely new standard of effeminacy and
baseness is required. The new comer must entirely change the
characters; and instead of being the judge, as formerly, at the bar of
penitence, he must be a suppliant; justice will be obliged to plead
before the sinner, and the divine man becomes the penitent!

The Jesuits, who by these means supplanted so many directors, bear
witness, that in this sort of opposition they had no one to fear. They
knew well enough, that no other would be found better qualified than a
Jesuit for easy indulgence, disguised connivance, and subtilty to
overreach the Deity. Father Cotton was so little afraid of his
penitents leaving him, that, on the contrary, he used occasionally to
advise them to go to the other confessors: "Go," said he, "go and try
them; you will return to me!"

Only imagine this general emulation among confessors, directors, and
consulting casuists, to justify everything, to find every day some
adroit means of carrying indulgence still further, of declaring
innocent some new case, that had hitherto been supposed guilty. The
result of this manner of waging war against sin, emulously carried by
so many learned men, was its gradual and universal disappearance from
the common life of man; sin could no longer find a haven of refuge, and
one might reasonably suppose that in a few years it would cease to
exist in the world.

The great book of "Provinciales," with all the artifice of method,
omits one thing, which we regret. In showing us the unanimity of the
casuists, the author presents them, as it were, on the same line, and
as contemporaries. It would have been more instructive to have dated
them, and given to each his appointed period; and thus, according to
his merits in the progressive development of casuistry, to show how
they severally advanced towards perfection, outbidding, surpassing, and
eclipsing one another.

In so great a rivalry, it was necessary to make e