SIR;
At the close of your first Letter, you promise to refer, in your next, to the evidences for the statements, which you have made. I was curious to see upon what historical evidence such a mass of forgeries could rest. In labouring through your second Letter, I discovered much intrinsic evidence, that you are a still improving adept in the art of bold and unsupported assertion, but not a shadow of proof, that your rants were ever believed by any man before yourself. The only authority cited in it is of one Collado, who asserted, that the conduct of the Jesuits was the occasion of the abolition of Christianity in Japan; but whoever has read the history of
Christianity in those islands will deny the position, upon grounds more certain than those on which it is advanced. The whole of your second Letter is no more than an unconnected congeries of the grossest impostures. In my second I marked out a few; I shall presently indicate some others; and I shall leave my readers to determine, whether you have substantiated your first calumnies, only by the production of new ones.
I have searched your third Letter in quest of evidence, of proof, of historical support; and I find, that the two most prominent names in it are Prynne and De Thou. I may here remark, that it is highly illiberal and unjust to uphold imputations of guilt, even against the worst of culprits, solely upon the asseverations of their declared enemies; and, if these enemies stand otherwise convicted of malicious calumnies, this circumstance alone must go far towards the acquittal of the accused. Now, it is well known,
that Prynne and De Thou wrote in the most turbulent times, amidst the distractions and rage of civil wars, occasioned in England and in France by restless sectaries; that they were both inflamed with party rage, and never spared their adversaries. If, then, their testimony is to be admitted as irrefragable, in the present times, in one point, why not in another? If, without a shadow of proof, we must believe with Prynne and you, that the Irish massacre and the British civil wars were to be imputed to Jesuits, and especially to Cuneus, the pope's nuncio, and cardinal Barberini (who, by the way, never were Jesuits), we must also believe every thing written by that foul mouthed lawyer against Charles I, against episcopacy, and against the famous archbishop Laud. But we know, that the fellow's ears were twice bored and cropped in the pillory for his defamatory libels, and that his cheeks were seared with the letters S. L. (seditious libeller.) I believe my readers will agree, that the stigma might, with propriety, be transferred to the unblushing front of the retailer of his falsehoods.
Before I speak of De Thou, I will mention only a few of your insufferable fabrications, which hardly Prynne himself would have ventured to utter. 1. "In matters both of faith and practice, the members of the society are bound to obey the society, and not the church[[100]]." In what part of their Institute is this canon found? It was unknown to the council of Trent, and to the several popes, whose confirmation and commendation that Institute obtained. 2. "They have invariably opposed episcopacy, and they have repeatedly attacked the decrees of general councils, especially that of Trent[[101]]." It should seem, that, in a protestant country, attacks upon catholic councils would not be deemed very enormous sins. But, since they have been repeatedly committed by Jesuits, it would have been easy for Laicus to convict them, at least, in one instance. Why has it been omitted? 3. "The society has prisons,
independent of secular authority, in which refractory members are put to death; a right which Laines obtained for them[[102]]." Quere, from whom did he obtain it? From the pope? In what bullarium then may the grant be found? Did Jesuits ever attempt to use this right? Did secular sovereigns quietly acquiesce in such a glaring usurpation of their most undoubted right? Of what avail could such a privilege have been to the Jesuits, who always had the power to dismiss refractory members from their society, as they dismissed Jerom Zarowicz, Antonio de Dominis, abbé Raynal, and many others? Poor Laicus cannot answer one of these questions. He has disclaimed all pretension to novelty; he is satisfied with copying malignity; and, to the shame of the Encyclopedia Britannica, he has transcribed this impudent forgery from vol. ix of that work (page 510, art. Laines), where, without a shadow of proof or of probability, it is roundly stated, that "Laines,
general of the Jesuits, procured from pope Paul IV the privilege of having prisons independent of the secular authority, in which they (the Jesuits) put to death refractory brethren." 4. "One peculiar object of the society is to direct and aid the operations of the Inquisition[[103]]." It is not easy to ascertain the precise source of this falsehood. Probably it is not borrowed from foreign libels, because, in all catholic countries, it was universally known, that Jesuits never had any concern in the administration, or proceedings, of the Inquisition. 5. "The Jesuits usurped the sovereignty of Paraguay, and held the Indians in slavery[[104]]." This has been a thousand times said; and it has been as often demonstrated, to the satisfaction of impartial inquirers, that the Jesuits were the steady friends and defenders of the liberty of the Indians, and that the success of their missions in South America was a glorious triumph of
humanity and religion, hardly to be equalled in the history of the Christian church. 6. "They formed two conspiracies against king Joseph of Portugal, and his whole family[[105]]." In spite of the prepotency of the cruel minister Pombal, truth has prevailed, and the world remains convinced, that not even one conspiracy was ever formed against king Joseph of Portugal, either by Jesuits, or by any other persons. 7. "The Jesuits beheaded eighty Frenchmen and hung five hundred friars for maintaining the rights of Anthony king of Portugal, in the island of Tercera, where they had compelled him to take refuge, after having disposed of his crown[[106]]." All this is a blundering confusion of the adventures of the bastard Portuguese prince Antonio, prior of Crato, and of the history of king Alfonso, who, a hundred years later, was deposed and confined in the island of Tercera. Whoever has looked into Portuguese
history may remember, that Antonio's pretensions to the crown were settled, not by Jesuits, but by the duke of Alva, at the head of a Spanish army of twenty thousand men. He may have read, that several persons were executed in Tercera, for supporting Antonio's cause, by the commanders of a Spanish armament; but no man has read, that five hundred friars were put to death, or ever existed at one time, in the island of Tercera. Whatever the case may be, the Jesuits had no concern in what befel the pretender Antonio, or king Alfonso, or the poor friars of Tercera. 8. "The Jesuits deposed the grand duke of Muscovy with great bloodshed, for a creature of their own[[107]]." When did all this happen, and who was the grand duke? Laicus will not easily answer these questions. 9. "A memoir of cardinal Noailles leaves no doubt of Louis XIV having taken the four vows of the Jesuits[[108]]." On this