_Voluit mori-sot_).

In the same century Molinos, the Spanish priest, and founder of
Quietism, wrote his _Conduite Spirituelle_, which was condemned
to the flames for sixty-eight heretical propositions, whilst its
author was consigned to the prisons of the Inquisition, where he
died after eleven years of it (1696). Self-absorption of the soul
in God to the point of complete indifference to anything done to
or by the body, even to the sufferings of the latter in hell, was
the doctrine of Quietism that led ecclesiastic authority to feel
its usual alarm for consequences; and it must be admitted that
similar doctrines have at times played sad havoc with Christian
morality. But perhaps they helped Molinos the better to bear his
imprisonment.

I may next refer to seventeenth-century writers who were
fortunate enough not to share the burning of their books. (1)
Wolkelius, a friend of Socinus, the edition of whose book _De
Vera Religione_, published at Amsterdam in 1645, was there burnt
by order of the magistrates for its Socinian doctrines, appears
to have lived for many years afterwards. Schlicttingius, a
Polish follower of the same faith, escaped with expulsion from
Poland, when the Diet condemned his book, _Confessio Fidei
Christianae_, to be burnt by the executioner. Sainte Foi, or
Gerberon, whose _Miroir de la Verite Chretienne_ was condemned by
several bishops and archbishops, and burnt by order of the
Parlement of Aix (1678), lived to write other works, of probably
as little interest. La Peyrere was only imprisoned at Brussels
for his book on the _Pre-adamites_, which was burnt at Paris
(1655). And Pascal saw his famous _Lettres a un Provincial_,
which made too free with the dignity of all authorities, secular
and religious, twice burnt, once in French (1657), and once in
Latin (1660), without himself incurring a similar penalty. So did
Derodon, professor of philosophy at Nismes, outlive the
_Disputatio_ (1645), in which he made light of Cyril of
Alexandria, and which was condemned and burnt by the Parlement of
Toulouse for its opposition to some beliefs of Roman Catholicism.

Passing now to the eighteenth century, we find book-burning, then
declining in England, in full vigour on the Continent.

The most important book that so suffered was Rousseau's admirable
treatise on education, entitled _Emile_ (1762), condemned by the
Parlement of Paris to be torn and burnt at the foot of its great
staircase. It was also b