pugn it; the other may seem less so, but is of more
practical importance. For these examples are proof, if proof were
needed, that intellectual attainments and habits are no security for good
conduct unless they are supported by religious principles; without
religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the
possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed, if well disposed only
more unhappy.

The conquerors, as they called themselves, were followed by missionaries.

_Montesinos_.--Our knowledge of the remoter parts of the world, during
the first part of the seventeenth century, must chiefly be obtained from
their recitals. And there is no difficulty in separating what may be
believed from their fables, because their falsehoods being systematically
devised and circulated in pursuance of what they regarded as part of
their professional duty, they told truth when they had no motive for
deceiving the reader. Let any person compare the relations of our
Protestant missionaries with those of the Jesuits, Dominicans,
Franciscans, or any other Romish order, and the difference which he
cannot fail to perceive between the plain truth of the one and the
audacious and elaborate mendacity of the other may lead him to a just
inference concerning the two churches.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Their fables were designed, by exciting admiration,
to call forth money for the support of missions, which, notwithstanding
such false pretences, were piously undertaken and heroically pursued.
They scrupled therefore as little at interlarding their chronicles and
annual letters with such miracles, as poets at the use of machinery in
their verses. Think not that I am excusing them; but thus it was that
they justified their system of imposition to themselves, and this part of
it must not be condemned as if it proceeded from an evil intention.

_Montesinos_.--Yet, Sir Thomas, the best of those missionaries are not
more to be admired for their exemplary virtue, and pitied for the
superstition which debased their faith, than others of their respective
orders are to be abominated for the deliberate wickedness with which, in
pursuance of the same system, they imposed the most blasphemous and
atrocious legends upon the credulous, and persecuted with fire and sword
those who opposed their deceitful villainy. One reason wherefore so few
travels were written in the age of which we are speaking is, that no
Englishman, unless he were a Papist, co