Storia do Mogor 358.3.3

358.3.3

Although His Most Illustrious Lordship says it, this statement is very hard of digestion : ' neither by order of his Holiness nor by mine, as they falsely allege.' Here is his authentic permission, which I write once more, to clear us of his Lordship's calumny : ' I did not give your Reverence permission, not even in thought, much less in words. I only said . . .' Weigh well these words, gentlemen, I beseech of you, and think how a bishop, who ought never to act unless by God's Spirit, could address to you these words, ' as they falsely allege,' after having expressed himself in the following terms : ' I only said to him that he could publish the decrees on his own authority, just as he could publish any other order (as he thought fit) in his church, without my permission and without anyone hindering him.' Gentlemen, if it had not been a bishop, to whom I owe all imaginable respect, but any other person who had written these words, ' as they falsely allege,' after having given so valid a permission, I might make use of the expression in Holy Scripture, ' De ore tuo te judico ' [Vulgate, Luke xix. 22]. But remembering, as I do, the respect I owe to his Lordship, all I will say is that he accuses us very much out of place of having falsely alleged an order of his Holiness. For the Sacred Congregation, which does no act without his orders and without his consent, has sent us the decrees, dated January 11 of the year 1656, of which we insert here the tenor.