nd
which corrected those two passages of which I spoke: _Hallo se la razon
del tiempo que el S. P. Francisco Xavier nacio, en un libro manual de su
hermano el Capitan Juan de Azpilcueta: la qual saco de un libro, de su
padre Don Juan Jasso; viz_. "The time when the blessed Father Francis
Xavier was born, is found in the journal of his brother Don Juan de
Azpilcueta, who extracted it from the journal or manual of his father Don
Juan Jasso." 'Tis on this foundation, that, before I had read the Life
written by Father Massei, I had already closed with the opinion of Father
Poussines.

As to the precise day of the father's death, I have followed the common
opinion, which I take to be the most probable, in conformity to the bull
of his canonization. For the historians who have mentioned it, agree not
with each other, on what clay he died. 'Tis said in Herbert's Travels to
the Indies and Persia, translated out of the English, "St Francis Xavier,
the Jesuit of Navarre, died the 4th of December, 1552." Ferdinand Mendez
Pinto, the Portuguese, affirms, that he died at midnight, on Saturday the
2d of December, the same year. A manuscript letter, pretended to be
written by Anthony de Sainte Foy, companion to Xavier for the voyage of
China, the truth of which I suspect, relates, that the Saint died on a
Sunday night at two of the clock, on the 2d of December, 1552. Now 'tis
most certain, that in the year 1552, the 2d of December fell on a Friday;
so that it is a manifest mistake to say, that St Xavier died that year
either on Saturday or Sunday the 2d of December.

I should apprehend, lest a life so extraordinary as this might somewhat
shock the profaner sort of men, if the reputation of St Francis Xavier
were not well established in the world, and that the wonderful things he
did had not all the marks of true miracles. As the author who made the
collection of them has well observed, the mission of the saint gives them
an authority, even in our first conceptions of them: for being sent from
God for the conversion of infidels, it was necessary that the faith
should be planted in the East, by the same means as it had been through
all the world, in the beginning of the church.

Besides which, never any miracles have been examined with greater care,
or more judicially than these. They were not miracles wrought in private,
and which we are only to believe on the attestation of two or three
interested persons, such who might have been su