l estimate of the veracity of the
writers, if they now were alive? Were a man, who is so fierce with St.
Alfonso, to meet Paley or Johnson to-morrow in society, would he look
upon him as a liar, a knave, as dishonest and untrustworthy? I am sure
he would not. Why then does he not deal out the same measure to Catholic
priests? If a copy of Scavini, which speaks of equivocation as being in
a just cause allowable, be found in a student's room at Oscott, not
Scavini himself, but even the unhappy student, who has what a Protestant
calls a bad book in his possession, is judged to be for life unworthy of
credit. Are all Protestant text-books, which are used at the University,
immaculate? Is it necessary to take for gospel every word of Aristotle's
Ethics, or every assertion of Hey or Burnett on the Articles? Are
text-books the ultimate authority, or rather are they not manuals in the
hands of a lecturer, and the groundwork of his remarks? But, again, let
us suppose, not the case of a student, or of a professor, but of Scavini
himself, or of St. Alfonso; now here again I ask, since you would not
scruple in holding Paley for an honest man, in spite of his defence of
lying, why do you scruple at holding St. Alfonso honest? I am perfectly
sure that you would not scruple at Paley personally; you might not agree
with him, but you would not go further than to call him a bold thinker:
then why should St. Alfonso's person be odious to you, as well as his
doctrine?

Now I wish to tell you why you are not afraid of Paley; because, you
would say, when he advocated lying, he was taking _extreme_ or _special
cases_. You would have no fear of a man who you knew had shot a burglar
dead in his own house, because you know you are _not_ a burglar: so you
would not think that Paley had a habit of telling lies in society,
because in the case of a cruel alternative he thought it the lesser evil
to tell a lie. Then why do you show such suspicion of a Catholic
theologian, who speaks of certain extraordinary cases in which an
equivocation in a penitent cannot be visited by his confessor as if it
were a sin? for this is the exact point of the question.

But again, why does Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical
matter is actually before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of
lying, which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is
forming a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as
it comes. And this is j