[De veritate dicenda aut tacenda]

"for a handful of barley and a fragment of bread, so that you would kill the souls that do not die and give life to the souls that do not live, lying to my people who believe in lies" (Ezekiel 13:19). Regarding which Jerome says: "Then as now, there are true and false preachers who keep sinners enclosed with vain promises, so that they would not perform penance." As in the time of Paul and the apostles, in our own dark times, however, few are found to provide or admit the saving antidote of admonition, correction, or instruction, especially in those who are given to the people as lights; in a certain number, although there are many, who would be in need of their eyes, which are obscured by excessive solicitude for temporal things, yet they estimate that they are in need of nothing at all, and those whom they see to excel them in authority, they even consider themselves to excel in holiness and knowledge. And what I have promised regarding the conduct of a confessor—concerning the declaration of truth with respect to an individual—I wish to be understood regarding the shepherds of the Lord's flock, to whom Peter says: "Feed the flock that is among you." Although in the forest of the sacred scriptures many things are expressed concerning the solicitude of those who preside over public chairs than about private confessors, nonetheless, a confessor can first and ought to inquire of the penitent, through investigation, cautiously regarding those things about which a reputation has preceded him, lest by chance, through forgetfulness, fear, or shame, he hides the secrets of his conscience from the confessor, and similarly regarding other matters according to the quality and condition of the person, so that he may, according to the prophet, dig into the wall because of hidden and lurking abominations. Nor do I consider it to be of little weight for anyone to be a judge of another's conscience, when one's own conscience to each person is an impenetrable abyss, although today it is reckoned as nothing, and I seem to myself to easily persuade