they meant deliberate evil; Pascal expressly credits
them with good intentions. But they were drawn, almost to a man, from
Italy or Spain, the two countries least alive to the spirit of the
Reformation; and most of them were Jesuits, the order that set out to be
nothing Protestantism was, and everything that Protestantism was not.
Hence they were resolutely opposed to any idea of reform; for to begin
making changes in the Church's system would be a tacit admission that
Luther had some show of reason on his side. On the other hand, they
would certainly lose their hold on the laity, unless some kind of change
were made; for many of the Church's rules were obsolete, and others far
too severe to impose on the France of Montaigne or even the Spain of
Cervantes. Thus caught between two fires the casuists developed a highly
ingenious method, not unlike that of the Roman Stoics, for eviscerating
the substance of a rule while leaving its shadow carefully intact. The
next step was to force the confessors to accept their lax interpretation
of the law; and this was accomplished by their famous theory of
_probabilism_--first taught in Spain about 1580. This made it a grave
sin in the priest to refuse absolution, whenever there was some good
reason for giving it even when there were other and better reasons for
refusing it. This principle does not deserve all the abuse that has been
lavished upon it. It secured uniformity in the confessional, and thereby
protected the penitent from the caprices of individual priests; and by
depriving these of responsibility, it forced the penitent back on
himself. But the gain was more than counterbalanced by the evil. The
less the Church could expect from its penitents, the more it was driven
to trust to the miraculous efficiency of sacramental grace. Once get a
sinner to confession, and the whole work was done. However bad his
natural disposition, the magical words of absolution would make him a
new man. As for most penitents, all they cared for was to scrape through
by the skin of their teeth. Casuistry might insist that it only proposed
to fix the minimum of a minimum, and beg them for their soul's sake to
aim a little higher. Human nature seldom resists the charms of a fixed
standard--least of all when it is applied by a live judge in a visible
court. If the priest must be satisfied with little, why be at the
trouble of offering more? For this reason, probabilism found vigorous
opponents in Bossu