y excommunicated, then it must be proved that
there was no other cause of incorruption--which can never be proved.

Moreover, anything so equivocal as incorruption, cannot be adduced as
a proof in so serious a matter as this. It is owned, that often the
bodies of saints are preserved from decay; that is looked upon as
certain, among the Greeks as among the Latins--therefore, we cannot
thence conclude that this same incorruption is a proof that a person
is excommunicated.

In short, this proof is universal and general, or only particular. I
mean to say, either all excommunicated persons remain undecayed, or
only a few of them. We cannot maintain that all those who die in a
state of excommunication, are incorruptible. For then all the Greeks
towards the Latins, and the Latins towards the Greeks, would be
undecayed, which is not the case. That proof then is very frivolous,
and nothing can be concluded from it. I mistrust, a great deal, all
those stories which are related to prove this pretended
incorruptibility of excommunicated persons. If well examined, many of
them would doubtless be found to be false.

CHAPTER LXI.

WHAT IS RELATED CONCERNING THE BODIES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED LEAVING
THE CHURCH, IS SUBJECT TO VERY GREAT DIFFICULTIES.

Whatever respect I may feel for St. Gregory the Great, who relates
some instances of deceased persons who died in a state of
excommunication going out of the church before the eyes of every one
present; and whatever consideration may be due to other authors whom I
have cited, and who relate other circumstances of a similar nature,
and even still more incredible, I cannot believe that we have these
legends with all the circumstances belonging to them; and after the
reasons for doubt which I have recorded at the end of these stories, I
believe I may again say, that God, to inspire the people with still
greater fear of excommunication, and a greater regard for the
sentences and censures of the church, has willed on these occasions,
for reasons unknown to us, to show forth his power, and work a miracle
in the sight of the faithful; for how can we explain all these things
without having recourse to the miraculous? All that is said of persons
who being dead chew under ground in their graves, is so pitiful, so
puerile, that it is not worthy of being seriously refuted. Everybody
owns that too often people are buried who are not quite dead. There
are but too many instances of this in