Storia do Mogor 304: THE THIRD ARTICLE.

304

[130] The defendant is further accused of not making complete and true confession of his faults, but having, on the contrary, minimized them, prevaricated and used concealment. He has endeavoured by arguments, subterfuges, superficial signs, and sophistical twistings to hide and palliate the damnable purpose he had in making use of the propositions he put forward, the things done by him in regard to the Faith, and the contempt that he has displayed when speaking of sacred things that have been received and approved by the Church from the apostolic ages up to the present day. He has hid under the cloak of zeal the secret poison contained in the opinions he defends. He has shown visibly his vainglorious intention and his heretical determination not to conform to the belief of the whole Church universal. He confirms by his avowals the errors that he has taught and practised. On this head we have been instructed at this table, and it has, in addition, been confirmed by the interrogatories administered to him in person, whence it has been proved by the fullest evidence that he is infected with the heresy of those heretics — the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Protestants — not only in the matter of invocation of saints, but in the worship of relics and veneration of holy images. He has also tried falsely and ignorantly to teach the said heresy by plausible reasoning, quite foreign to and far off from all truth. He has wished thereby to spread this heresy in India, seeing therein nothing worthy of censure.
Not only has the accused fallen into these heresies — that is to say, the one against the honour and veneration due to holy images of the saints, and the other against their blessed relics — but also into several other errors. He has said that abstinence on Saturday is not an act of devotion, but a deception ; novenas to saints are inventions of the devil, and a mere sorcerer's rite. He has rejected graven images, it being more fitting, he says, to make use of paintings ; he has read forbidden books, and has translated the Holy Bible into the vulgar tongue. By this erroneous doctrine he has contravened the rulings of several Councils, the decrees of the Pontiffs, and the ordinary usage of the Church Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman. Further, he has conversed and kept up friendship with heretics, not in civil business only, but also in matters of the Faith and of religion.
As he is an apostolic missionary known to the public, it was a part of his duty not to vary in the least from what is practised by other friars and apostolic missionaries. On the contrary, he has given occasion for the belief, through a certain letter that he addressed to a certain governor, that he not only teaches the propositions and errors contained therein, but affirms and defends them in that same letter, which is in his handwriting. He is not excused by saying that in France it is not the custom to place in churches cast-metal images, nor by resorting to other similar subterfuges. For, in spite of their not acknowledging in that kingdom (France) the Council of Trent, the use of images is all the same accepted by the whole Church universal. That Church used holy images many ages before the holding of the said Council or the publication of its decrees, that point having been defined by the Council of Nicaea, which is received and approved by all Christendom. From the whole of the foregoing it results that he [132] is infected by several heresies; that he denies and conceals his veritable intention, which is not to observe the ceremonies of the Roman Church so as to maintain them, but to continue in the same (the heresies), as may be noted from the boldness and impertinence with which he defends them.