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dded a mite to the torrent of abuse of Jesuits, which inundated Europe about fifty years ago, when the complete overthrow of that order was finally planned and determined. The Jesuits fell; and within a few years Rome was sacked and pillaged; two successive pontiffs were lodged in dungeons; every French infidel, every fanatical gospeller throughout Europe, exulted in the discomfiture of the scarlet whore; the papacy was, on every side, pronounced to be extinct. But, behold, by the unerring operation of Providence, the papacy is again seated on the seven hills, and its old champions, the Jesuits, are once more called forth to sustain the assaults of calumny. But what inept calumny, what {263} falsehoods, what inconsistencies, what contradictions, have you, Laicus, raked together, to stifle the new life, which they are only beginning to enjoy! Thus in days of old conspired the Jewish pharisees to murder Lazarus, as soon as the Son of God had raised him from the tomb.--John xii, 10. Consider, Sir--you need not be so precipitate. Many years must yet pass, many powers must concur, to recruit, to drill, to marshal a new body of Jesuits, capable of achieving the mischief, which your virulent declamation imputes to their predecessors. I have spent some years of my life in foreign countries; I there read every libel against the Jesuits, that came in my way; but I never found one so perfectly contemptible as your two tottering columns in the TIMES, newspaper, of January the 27th. They will not support either themselves, or the credit of the publication which has received them. And yet this infamous trash must be noticed, because it is calculated to do harm. I say again, who are you? Tell me, if you dare. If you have written truth, why should you skulk {264} from the light? But, alas! _Omnis, qui male agit, odit lucem._--John iii, 20. I need not ask again, what is your aim? Your two columns plainly tell it. It is not to convey information to discerning men; it is to poison the minds of the undiscriminating vulgar; it is to raise a popular cry, which, in this country, has more than once either intimidated virtuous ministers, or favoured the projects of bad ones. There is, you know it, even in this enlightened nation, a mass of fanaticism and bigotry, which may easily be called into action. If you are forty-five years old, you may remember, that, in 1780, one extravagant religionist made the streets stream with blood, and nearly wra
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