is a most {296} wonderful Jesuit. You have
already sported him as the associate of Campion to assassinate queen Bess
in 1581, that is, one hundred and four years before James II became king of
England; and it is very certain, that he died and was fairly buried at
Rome, in the month of April, 1610; that is, twenty-three years before king
James II was born. I omit many other Jesuitical pranks, which you allege,
relative to English history, because every reader may find the refutation
of them, only by looking into Dr. Milner's celebrated Letters to Dr.
Sturges, where the profligacy of Elizabeth and her ministers, and the
futility of the assassination-plots, with which they charged Jesuits and
other priests, are evinced to demonstration. It is now time to think of De
Thou.

This writer's character is well drawn by the learned professor of Lovain,
Dr. Paquot:--_Thuanus audax nimium; hostis Jesuitarum imcabilis;
calumniator Guisiorum; protestantium exscriptor, laudator, amicus; sedi
apostolicae et_ {297} _synodo Tridentinae, totique rei catholicae parum
aequus._ De Thou was fully animated with the general and prevalent spirit of
the parliament of Paris, in which he held the rank of _president a
mortier_; and this spirit led them at all times to advance their own
importance, by favouring every party that opposed either the church or the
crown. Their constant aim was to balance the power of the monarch, and to
depress the spiritual authority of the holy see and the bishops. During the
active administration of Louis XIV, they were confined to their proper
functions of civil and criminal justice; but in the times, which preceded
and followed that reign, they were leaguers, and favourers of the Hugonots,
and abettors of the Fronde, and, lastly, open protectors of the Jansenists.
De Thou never publicly seceded from the catholic church; he was satisfied
with insulting it. His abilities were great; the elegance of his style is
engaging: but, as he wrote solely to favour the Hugonots, his narrations
are compiled only upon their memoirs, or they are sports of his own {298}
imagination. He professes to write the history only of his own times; and,
consequently, his story rests upon his own credit, unsupported by vouchers:
his _ipse dixit_ is the whole proof. He is wonderfully fond of detailing
conspiracies against princes, and, in these fabulous tales, he completely
sacrifices the dignity of the historian; he sinks into a romancer and a