y by a
long address. The life of Saint Francis Xavier, after it had been written
by several authors in the Spanish and Portuguese, and by the famous Padre
Bartoli in the Italian tongue, came out at length in French, by the
celebrated pen of Father Bohours, from whom I have translated it, and
humbly crave leave to dedicate it to your patronage. I question not but
it will undergo the censure of those men, who teach the people, that
miracles are ceased. Yet there are, I presume, a sober party of the
Protestants, and even of the most learned among them, who being
convinced, by the concurring testimonies of the last age, by the
suffrages of whole nations in the Indies and Japan, and by the severe
scrutinies that were made before the act of canonization, will not
dispute the truth of most matters of fact as they are here related; nay,
some may be ingenuous enough to own freely, that to propagate the faith
amongst infidels and heathens, such miraculous operations are as
necessary now in those benighted regions, as when the Christian doctrine
was first planted by our blessed Saviour and his apostles.

The honourable testimonies which are cited by my author, just before the
conclusion of his work, and one of them in particular from a learned
divine of the church of England,[3] though they slur over the mention of
his miracles, in obscure and general terms, yet are full of veneration
for his person. Farther than this I think it needless to prepossess a
reader; let him judge sincerely, according to the merits of the cause,
and the sanctity of his life, of whom such wonders are related, and
attested with such clouds of witnesses; for an impartial man cannot but
of himself consider the honour of God in the publication of his gospel,
the salvation of souls, and the conversion of kingdoms, which followed
from those miracles; the effects of which remain in many of them to this
day.

But that it is not lawful for me to trespass so far on the patience of
your majesty, I should rather enlarge on a particular reflection, which I
made in my translation of this book, namely, that the instructions of the
saint, which are copied from his own writings, are so admirably useful,
so holy, and so wonderfully efficacious, that they seem to be little less
than the product of an immediate inspiration. So much excellent matter is
crowded into so small a compass, that almost every paragraph contains the
value of a sermon. The nourishment is so strong,