The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

theme, or fix its meditation upon some benefit or
advantage likely to arise from the deed, which it
knows, or at least suspects, the body is at that
moment engaged in doing, the soul contracts
neither guilt nor stain, and the man runs no risk of
ever being called to account for the murder, or
theft, or calumny, by God, or of incurring his
displeasure on that ground. We are not satirising;
we are simply stating the morality of the Jesuits.
"We never," says the Father Jesuit in Pascal's
Letters, "suffer such a thing as the formal intention
to sin with the sole design of sinning; and if any
person whatever should persist in having no other
end but evil in the evil that he does, we break with
him at once-- such conduct is diabolical. This holds
true, without exception, of age, sex, or rank. But
when the person is not of such a wretched
disposition as this, we try to put in practice our
method of directying the intention, which simply
consists in his proposing to himself, as the end of
his actions, some allowable object. Not that we do
not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade men
from doing things forbidden; but when we cannot
prevent the action, we at least, purify the motive,
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