But that is precisely the transaction which you have cleared from the guilt of simony.  Yet, since you cannot do away with the name of simony, and there must be some matter to which the name attaches, you have devised for that purpose an imaginary idea, which never enters the minds of simoniacs at all, and indeed would be quite useless to them.  This is, that simony consists in valuing the money, considered in itself, as highly as the spiritual privilege, considered in itself.  Who would ever dream of comparing things which are so disproportionate and of such different kinds?  Yet, according to your authors, so long as a man does not entertain this metaphysical comparison, he may give his benefice to another, and may receive money in return, without incurring the guilt of simony.  It is thus that you make game of religion in order to pander to human passions.

The abusive language which you utter against me will never clear up our differences, nor shall any of your threats restrain me from defending myself.  You trust in your strength and impunity, but I believe that I possess truth and innocence.  The war by which violence attempts to oppress the truth is a strange and a long one, for all the efforts of violence are unable to weaken truth, and serve only to make it more evident.  On the other hand, all the light of truth can do nothing to arrest violence, but rather inflames it.  When force combats force, the stronger destroys the weaker; when argument is opposed to argument, true and convincing reasoning confounds that which is based on vanity and lies; but violence and truth have, no power one over the other.  That is not to say that these two things are equal.  There is this extreme difference between them:  the career of violence is limited by the divine order, which determines its effects to the glory of the truth which it attacks; but truth, on the other hand, exists externally, and triumphs at last over its enemies, because it is eternal and powerful as God Himself.

V.—­HOMICIDE

Let us now see, fathers, how you value that life of man, which is so jealously safeguarded by human justice.  It appears from your novel laws that there is only one judge in a case of affront or injury, and that this judge is to be he who has received the offence.  He is to be at the same time judge, plaintiff, and executioner.  He demands the death of the offender, sentences him to death, and immediately executes the sentence; and so, without respect either for the body or for the soul of his brother, slays and imperils the salvation of him for whom Christ died.  And all this is to be done to avoid a blow, a slander, an insulting word, or some other offence for which neither the law nor any authorised judge could assign the penalty of death.

Not only so, but even a priest is held to have contracted neither sin nor irregularity in this infliction of death without authority and against law.  Can these be religious men and priests who speak in this way?  Are they Christians or Turks—­men or demons?  Spread over the whole earth, according to St. Augustine, there are two peoples and two worlds—­the world of the children of God, who form one body, of which Jesus Christ is king, and the world of the enemies of God, of whom the devil is king.