and vices which we really
have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them;
they rather do us good, since they help us to free ourselves from an evil,
namely, the ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be angry at
their knowing our faults and despising us; it is but right that they should
know us for what we are and should despise us, if we are contemptible.

Such are the feelings that would arise in a heart full of equity and
justice. What must we say then of our own heart, when we see it in a wholly
different disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth and those who
tell it us, and that we like them to be deceived in our favour, and prefer
to be esteemed by them as being other than what we are in fact? One proof of
this makes me shudder. The Catholic religion does not bind us to confess our
sins indiscriminately to everybody; it allows them to remain hidden from all
other men save one, to whom she bids us reveal the innermost recesses of our
heart and show ourselves as we are. There is only this one man in the world
whom she orders us to undeceive, and she binds him to an inviolable secrecy,
which makes this knowledge to him as if it were not. Can we imagine anything
more charitable and pleasant? And yet the corruption of man is such that he
finds even this law harsh; and it is one of the main reasons which has
caused a great part of Europe to rebel against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man, which feel