hey help us to
deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these imperfections.
We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults and despise us,
since it is but just they should know us as we are, and despise us if
we are despicable.

Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity
and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it a
wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth,
and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an
erroneously favorable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than
indeed we are?

One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not
oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all; it allows us
to remain hidden from men in general; but she excepts one alone, to
whom she commands us to open the very depths of our hearts, and to
show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the
world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable
secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as tho it were not. We can
imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the
corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of
the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt
against the Church.

How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to
be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just
to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?

There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may
be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from
self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove
others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid
shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse them,
mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and esteem.
Yet this medicine is bitter to self-love, which takes as little as it
can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger.

Hence it happens that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a
service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would
wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we
wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they
deceive us.

Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes
us further from truth, because we fear most to wound