De peste quaestiones duae explicatae

possibly use to excuse such an unworthy act, were accustomed to citing nothing other than their fear of contagion. From this it happened that those who possessed greater constancy came to believe they could not remedy this evil more surely than by teaching that this contagious disease was falsely believed to be such. But since I judge that this paradoxon paradox can be proven by sound reasons no more than if someone were to contend with Anaxagoras that snow is black, or from the hypotheses of Copernicus that the Earth itself moves and the Sun is the center of the world, I believe that this excessive fear, which induces the forgetting of every duty, must and can be abolished otherwise. Nor will I believe that this disease is not contagious until someone teaches me something more certain, either from the word of God or from reasons drawn from elsewhere (for there are, indeed, certain most firm apodeixeis demonstrations in the order of nature, as long as the order of necessary causes remains consistent). For I deny that even if the plague is established as the most contagious of all, and indeed even if an inevitable death threatens from it, the station in which God has placed everyone must therefore be abandoned. I deny, I say, that for this reason one should not prioritize what we owe to God, to the fatherland, and what men owe to each other in turn, whether by some common or private reason, over life itself. And in persuading this matter, I would certainly much prefer that effort be applied by those who dispute about curbing flight, rather than laboring to prove that paradox. Finally, I would prefer, as they speak in the schools, that in that enthymeme the conclusion rather than the antecedent be denied.