Storia do Mogor 359.2.3

359.2.3

Gentlemen, when God decided to punish Pharaoh, as the Scripture tells us, he hardened the heart of that unhappy prince — ' Induravit cor Pharaonis' (Exod. vii. 22, and viii. 32). I know not, gentlemen, if God, who hates iniquity, means to punish the reverend Jesuit fathers. But of this I feel assured : that hearts must be very hard which act as they do. For, finally, there is no mental reservation here that can absolve them from the guilt of such a calumny, still less any which could authorize their doing these things. I do not speak solely of their usurpation of our cure over the Malabãrls, but also of their conduct in regard to the said cure, which they carry on in the accustomed manner in spite of the censures fulminated in the decrees. However, this is an affair which, please God, will be examined into at the court of Rome, and I do not wish to enlarge farther upon it. All I will say in passing is that the following words of Ps. cxiii. are applicable to the reverend Jesuit fathers : ' Óculos habent et non videbunt, aures habent et non audient.' For, of a truth, it would be necessary to have lost one's brains to [235] imagine that acts done so openly and so maliciously should not be known everywhere, above all at the court of Rome, where causes are gone into closely, where they weigh them in the scales of justice and with the weights of the sanctuary. Can they persuade themselves that nothing will be said to them when their disobedience to the Holy See is known ?