helieu and others; and all this has been
repeatedly sanctioned, confirmed, and extolled by popes, who, according to
you, were at once governed and opposed, ruled and thwarted, overswayed and
disobeyed, and sometimes murdered by Jesuits. What idiots these popes must
have been! In what chapter of the Institute did {282} Laicus discover the
power or the practice of admitting men of all religions into the society?
Could men, of various religious persuasions have ever coalesced into one
regular system of propagating exclusively the Roman catholic religion,
which, as well as persecution of protestants and their own aggrandisement,
you allow to have been at all times the main object of Jesuits? Who can
believe, that _protestant Jesuits_ would ever have submitted to persecute
protestants? Who can imagine unanimity of mind, heart, and action among
men, who disagreed in the fundamental principle? In what historian, or in
what tradition, has Laicus found, that pope Innocent XIII was murdered, or
murdered by _Jesuits_? Strange, that the discovery of such a crime should
have been reserved for Laicus, ninety-one years after the death of that
pontiff[99]! Who, before Laicus, ever wrote, {283} that the assassin of
Henry III of France was _instigated_ by Jesuits? Wait another number of the
TIMES, Laicus will improve: he will roundly assure us, that the miserable
Jacques Clement actually was a Jesuit. No man conversant in the history of
France ever doubted of the civil wars of the sixteenth century having
originated with the rebellious Hugonots; but no man before Laicus ever
attributed all the horrors of that dismal period to Jesuits. The famous
league opposed the succession of the Bourbons in the person of {284} Henry
IV; and the whole guilt of their proceedings against Henry IV is
exclusively ascribed to Jesuits. And yet this very monarch, whom Laicus
calls _the greatest and best king of France_, was perhaps, of all men that
ever wore a crown, the warmest friend and protector of the Jesuits.
Possibly I may be wrong in this assertion; because the glory of Henry IV,
in this particular, is certainly rivalled, if not exceeded, by the
illustrious favour and protection afforded to the persecuted Jesuists by
the late empress Catharine of Russia, and by the present magnanimous
emperor Alexander. Henry IV condescended to refute in public the passionate
imputations of the president Harlay against the Jesuits. His son, Louis
XIII, and his grandson,