LETTER LVII. Usbek, to Rhedi, at Venice.

A PRODIGIOUS number of women of pleasure are maintained here by the libertines, and an innumerable quantity of dervises by the bigots. The dervises take three oaths, of obedience, poverty, and chastity. The first is said to be observed best of all; as to the second, I can assure you it is not regarded; I leave thee to judge of the third. But as rich as these dervises are, they will never quit the character of

poverty; our glorious sultan would sooner resign his sublime and noble titles: they are in the right, for this pretence to poverty prevents them from being so. The physicians, and some of these dervises, called confessors, are here always too much esteemed, or too much despised: yet it is said the heirs are better reconciled to the physicians than to the confessors. The other day I was in a convent of dervises, one of them, venerable for his grey hairs, received me very courteously; having shewn me all the house, we went into the garden, and fell into discourse. “My father, said I to him, what is your employment in the community?” “Sir, replied he, with an air of pleasantry at my question, I am a casuist.” “Casuist! replied I; from the time of my being in France, I have never heard of this employment.” “How! do you not know what a casuist is? attend; I will give you an idea of it that shall thoroughly inform you. There are two kinds of sins, mortal sins, which absolutely exclude from Paradise, and venal sins, which though indeed offensive to God, do not so provoke him as to deprive us of beatitude. Now our whole art consists in rightly distinguishing these two kinds of sin; for except some libertines, all Christians are willing to obtain Paradise; but there is scarce any person would not willingly gain it upon as easy terms as possible. When they are well acquainted what sins are mortal, they take care not to commit them, and their business is done, These are persons who do not aspire to a great degree of perfection, and as they have no ambition, are not solicitous for the first places; so as they can but get into Paradise they desire no more; provided they are there, that’s enough for them. These are those who take heaven by violence, rather than not obtain it, and who say to God, Lord, I have rigorously fulfilled the conditions, thou canst not refuse to keep thy promise; as I have done no more than what thou didst demand of me, I do not expect thou shouldest grant me more than thou hast promised. We are therefore, Sir, a very necessary kind of people. This, however, is not all; you shall hear something further. It is not the act that constitutes the sin, it is the knowledge of him who commits it; he who doth evil, if he can believe that it is not an evil, his conscience is safe: and there are a vast number of actions of a doubtful nature, a casuist can give them a degree of goodness that they have not, and pronounce them good; and provided he can persuade the man to believe they are harmless, he entirely takes away all their evil. I have here told you the secret of a trade I am grown old in: I have made you sensible of the nicety of it: there is a turn to be given to every thing, even to things which appear the least capable of it.” “My father, said I to him, all this is very well, but how do you yourself settle matters with heaven? If the grand sophi had in his court a man who was to act with respect to him as you do towards your God, who should put a distinction between his orders, and should teach his subjects in what case they ought to obey them, and in what case they might violate them, he would instantly impale him.”—I bowed to my dervise, and left him without waiting for his reply.

Paris, the 23d of the moon Maharran,
1714.