Inxtncer (July, 1852), fh)m which we take the follow- ing passage : "• The first source of the Jesuitical casu- istry is to be sought in the inherited habits of thought which had been formed in the Middle-age schools. Conditions, restrictions, distinctions multiplied, of course; but so did the authorities and decisions, in- venting doubts, extending liberty, and taking away scruples. Its next cause was the practical need of casuistry (under the Romish system) — ^the endeavor to fix what cannot be fixed — the limits, in every possi- ble case, of mortal sin. Doubtiess moral questions are very important and often very hard. But there are epdless questions on which no answer can be given except a bad one — ^which cannot be answered in the shape proposed at all. We may think it very desira- ble to be able to state in the abstract, yet for practical use, the extreme cases, which excuse killing, or taking what is not our own ; but if we cannot get beyond de- cisions which leave the door open for unquestionable murders or thefts, or shut it only by vague verbal restrictions, unexi^ained and inexplicable, about *prtt- denee,* and ^moderation,* and ^neceuilyj* and ^gravity of drcurngtances,* it is a practical illustration of the difficulty of casuistry, which seems to point out that, tmless we can do better, we had best leave it alone. But these men were hard to daunt They could not trust the consciences of mankind with principles of duty, but they could trust without a misgiving their own dialectic forms, as a calculus which nothing could resist. The consequence was twofold. Their method often did fail, and in the attempt to give exact formu^ 1» of right and wrong action^ they proved unable to express the right wi^out comprehending the wrong with it. From all evil designs the leaders, at any rate, may be safely absolved ; though whether they did not lose their sense of the reality of human action in the formal terms in which they contemplated it, may be a question^ But, though the design of corrupting morality is one of the most imi^obable charges against any men, the effect may more easily follow, even where not intended. These casuists would not trust the in^ dividual conscience, and it had its revenge. They were driven onward till they had no choice left be- tween talking nonsense, or what was worse. They would set conscience to rights in minutest detail, and so they had to take the responsibility of whatever could not be set to rights. Nature outwitted them ; it gave up its liberty in the gross, and then foh»d them to surrender it again in detail. And thus, at length, under the treatment of compilers and abridg- ers, and under the influence <^ that idea of authority which deferred to opinions on the same rule as it de- ferred to testimony — exhibited in the coarsest brevity, and with the affBctation of outbidding the boldest prece- dents— grew up that form of casuistry which is exhib- ited in £e Escobars and Baunys ; which, professing to be the indispensable aid to common sense, envelops it in a very Charybdis of discordant opinions ; amid whose grotesque suppositions, and whimsical distinc- tions, and vague yet peremptory rules, bandied about between metaphysics and real lifo, the mind sinks into a hopeless confyision of moral ideas, and loses every dew to simple and straightforward action.''
The principal casuists of the Roman Church are Vasquez (f 1604), Sanchez (f 1610), Suarez (f 1617), Laymann (f 1635), Filliucius (f 1622), Bauny (f 1649), Escobar (f 1669), Busenbaum (f 1669). Most of these names are immortalized in Pascal's Provincial Letters (see also each name in its proper place in this Cydo- paB<^). See also Migne, Dictionnaire de cas de Con- science (Paris, 1847, 2 vols. 4to). The books of so- called Moral Theology^ in the Roman Catholic Church, are generally repertories of casuistry. The most im- portant of them of late are Ligorio, Theologia Moralis (Paris, 1852, 6 vols. 12mo) ; Gury, Casus Conscientia (Lyons, 1866, 2 vols. 8vo).
8. Protestant Casmtry.—Tb^ Reformation, of course,
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lironght the office of such cesnifltry to an end. " The decision of moral qneetionB was left to each man*s own conscience ; and his reponsibility as to his own moral and spiritoal condition could no longer be transferred to others. For himself he most stand or fall. He might, indeed, aid himself by the best lights which the Church could supply — ^by the counsel of wiser and holier servants of God ; and he was earnestly eigoined to seek counsel of God himself by hearty and humble prayer. But he could no longer lean the whole weight of his doubts and his sins upon his father confessor and his mother Church. He must^ucertain for him- self what is the true and perfect law of God. He could no longer derive hope or satisfaction firom the collec- tions of cases, in which the answer rested on the mere authority of men &Uible and sinful like himself. Thus the casuistical works of the Bomamsts lost all weight, ahd almost all value, in the eyes of the Reformed churches. Indeed, they were looked upon, and justly, as among the glaring evidences of the perversions and human inventions by which the truth of Crod had been disfigured. But even after the sophistry and the moral perversion connected with casuistry were exploded, the form of that science was preserved, and many val- uable moral principles in conformity to it delivered. The writers of the Reformed churches did not at first attempt to substitute anything in the place of the casuistical works of the' Romish Church. Besides an aversion to the subject itself^ which, as remarked above, they naturally felt, they were, for a considera^ ble period after the Reformation, fully employed upon more urgent objects. It this had not been so, they could not have flailed soon to perceive that, in reality, most persons do requhre some guidance for their con- sciences, and that rules and precepts, by which men may strengthen themselves against the temptations which cloud the judgment when it is brought into con- tact with special cases, are of great value to every body of moral and Christian men. But the drcum- Btances of the times compelled them to give their < ergies mainly to controversies with the Romish and other adversaries, and to leave to each man's own thoughts the regtdation of his conduct and feelings." — Whewell, History of Moral PkUosofhy in En^amd (Lond. 1852, 1 vol. 8vo, p. xxviii sq.).