Storia do Mogor 359.1.8

359.1.8

Gentlemen, who has ever seen an act like this? How could the Reverend Father Tachard, whose conscience ought to be more tender than yours, he being a regular cleric while you are not, dare all this in order to extort a Pastoral, which cannot shield him from the censures of the Church. Such a thing would not have been done by you for all the riches in the world. But since you may not, perhaps, know, gentlemen, the motive of the calumny with which they assail us, I will expose it to you in a few words. The Reverend Father Tachard, and all the reverend Jesuit fathers of Pondicherry, perceived that the decrees had been published, and that, because we had published them, we were probably in possession of Monsignor's permission, as is most fully the truth, these being the words that his Lordship appended to the petition of the Reverend Father Michel Ange, which I never tire of repeating as our justification : ' I did not give permission to your Reverence, neither in thought, much less in words ; all I said to you was that you might publish the decrees, as you could publish other orders in your church, without my permission and without anyone preventing you.'