and irksome. The Jesuits have, if we may say so, beat down Pelagius’s price: they have said to Christians, “You can do every thing, and God requires but little of you.” This is the way in which we must speak to carnal people; and especially to the great of the age, whenever we would have them listen to us. These are not the only cautions which they have taken; for they have thought of every thing. They have had (indeed in small number) severe casuists and directors; compared with the small number of those, who thro’ temper or scruple wanted to impose, in all its rigour, the yoke of the gospel. By this means, making themselves, to use the expression, “all to all,” according to a saying of scripture (the sense of which indeed they wrested a little) on one side they procured to themselves friends of every kind; and on the other they refuted, or thought they refuted, before-hand, the objection which might be made to them, of teaching universally looseness of morals, and of having made it the uniform doctrine of their society. This kind of complete assortment, designed to satisfy all tastes, is pretty well described in the following well-known lines of Despréaux: Si Bourdaloue un peu sévère Nous dit, craignez la volupté, Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père, Nous la permet pour la santé. It must also be observed, that most of those Jesuits, who were so severe in their writings, or in their sermons, were less so towards their penitents. It has been said of Bourdaloue himself, that if he required too much in the pulpit, he abated it in the confessional chair: a new stroke of policy, well understood on the part of the Jesuits, in as much as speculative severity suits persons of rigid morals, and practical condescension attracts the multitude. In China they employed still other methods: they rendered light to the people the yoke which they came to impose on them, by permitting them to mingle with the practical duties of Christianity, some ceremonies of the religion of the country; to which the multitude, every where superstitious and tumultuous, was too firmly attached.