of those who furnish the
Bibles and shekels. And who will measure the slander that grows out of
the dunghill of Protestant ignorance of what Catholics really believe!

CHAPTER XCI.
RASH JUDGMENT.

THE Eighth Commandment is based on the natural right every fellow-man
has to our good opinion, unless he forfeits it justly and publicly. It
forbids all injury to his reputation, first, in the estimation of
others, which is done by calumny and detraction; secondly, in our own
estimation, and this is done by rash judgment, by hastily and without
sufficient grounds thinking evil of him, forming a bad opinion of him.
He may be, as he has a right to be, anxious to stand well in our esteem
as well as in the esteem of others.

A judgment, rash or otherwise, is not a. doubt, neither is it a
suspicion. Everybody knows what a doubt is. When I doubt if another is
doing or has done wrong, the idea of his or her guilt simply enters my
mind, occurs to me and I turn it over and around, from one side to
another, without being satisfied to accept or reject it. I do not say:
yes, it is true; neither do I say: no, it is not true. I say nothing, I
pass no judgment; I suspend for the moment all judgment, I doubt.

A doubt is not evil unless there be absolutely no reason for doubting,
and then the doubt is born of passion and malice. And the evil,
whatever there is of it, is not in the doubt's entering our mind--
something beyond our control; but in our entertaining the doubt, in our
making the doubt personal, which supposes an act of the will.

Stronger than doubt is suspicion. When I suspect one, I do not keep the
balance perfectly even between yes and no, as in the case of doubt; I
lean mentally to one side, but do not go so far as to assent one way or
the other. Having before me a person who excites my suspicion, I am
inclined to think him guilty on certain evidence, but I fear to judge
lest I should be in error, because there is evidence also of innocence.
If my suspicion is based on good grounds, it is natural and lawful;
otherwise it is rash and sinful; it is uncharitable and unjust to the
person suspected. A suspicion often hurts more than an accusation.

Doubt and suspicion, when rash, are sinful; but the malice thereof
is not grave unless they are so utterly unfounded as to betoken
deep-seated antipathy and aversion and a perverse will; or unless in
peculiar circumstances the position of the person is such as to make
the susp