contributed, and, with God's assistance, would again
contribute towards the maintaining of faith and religion, the extirpation
of heresies, the restoration of piety and morality_, &c. Again, in the
assembly of the clergy, anno 1617, we find the Jesuits' schools proposed as
the most proper means to revive and imprint piety and religion in the minds
of the people.

Nothing, perhaps, is better calculated to convince us how high an idea your
majesty's royal predecessors had of the usefulness of this body of men,
than the patents, which they were pleased to grant, for the erecting many
of their colleges in your dominions: this was particularly remarkable in
the letters patent, granted by your majesty's great grandfather Louis XIV,
of glorious memory, for their establishment in the college of Clermont,
wherein he says, _that in this he had no other view than to_ {350}
_support, countenance, and encourage those religious in their laborious
employments for the education of youth in all useful sciences, and
particularly in the knowledge of whatever may concern their duty towards
God, and towards those who are placed over them for the government of the
people_. But this he afterwards expressed in a more emphatic manner, when
he was pleased to give his own august name to that college.

The Jesuits are also of great service in our dioceses, by enforcing and
giving new life and vigour to piety and religion, by their sermons, their
spiritual instructions, their missionary excursions, their congregations,
spiritual retreats, &c., performed with our approbation and authority.

For these reasons we are persuaded, that to deprive the people of their
instruction would be extremely prejudicial to our dioceses. And, in
particular with regard to the education and instruction of youth, it would
be a very difficult task to find persons capable of serving the public to
equal advantage, especially in the country towns, where there are no
universities.

The religious of other orders, who, by their vows and state of life, are
not devoted to this kind of labour, as they are little conversant in the
method of teaching, and strangers to that disagreeable confinement and
subjection, which is inseparable from that employment, are too much taken
up with the other necessary observances of their order to give that
constant and due attendance, which is requisite for the education of youth.

As to other clerks regular and priests living in community, the