It may be asserted with truth, that Pope Benedict XIV. would have acted better on such an occasion than his successor Clement XIII. He would not, like the latter, have written to a king, who did him the honour of consulting him, “that the Jesuits must remain as they were:” he would have returned an equivocal answer, as he did on occasion of the refusal of the sacraments to the Jansenists; he would have gained time; he would have granted the parliaments some modifications in regard to the institution (at least with respect to the French Jesuits); he would have flattered and engaged the Jansenists, by some bull, in favour of _efficacious grace_: in short, he would have deadened or weakened the blows that were aimed at his regiment of guards. But it looks as if, in this affair, the Jesuits and their friends had been seized with a fit of giddiness, and that they did themselves all that was necessary to accelerate their ruin: they shewed themselves, for the first time, inflexible in a matter, where it was of the highest importance to them not to be so: they caballed in secret, and talked openly at court against their enemies: they cried out, that religion was undone, if we parted with them; that we drove them away only to establish in France incredulity and heresy: and by these means they cast oil on the fire, instead of extinguishing it. It looks as if the Jansenists had put up to God, for the destruction of the society, the following prayer of Joad in Athalia. Daigne, daigne, grand Dieu, sur _son chef_ & sur elle Répandre cet esprit d’imprudence & d’erreur, De _leur destruction_ funeste avant-coureur. Accordingly the Jansenists strongly assured us in their bigotted language, that the _finger of God_ was manifest on all parts in this affair: “Alas!” replied a quondam Jesuit, seemingly consoled at being no longer of the order, “you may say, all his four fingers, and the thumb too!” Thus then was this famous society cut off from amidst us; heaven grant that it may be without return, were it only for the sake of peace, and that we may at last be able to say, _hic jacet_. Its best friends (we are not afraid to assert it) are too good subjects to think the contrary: the re-establishment of this turbulent, irritated, and fanatical society, would do more hurt to the state, than it could, in the opinion even of its own partisans, do good to the church. This event (if Providence please to make it durable) will form not only an epoch, but, according to many people, a true chronological æra in the history of religion: dates will be reckoned henceforth in that history from the _Jesuitical Hegira_[19], at least in Portugal and in France; and the Jansenists hope, that this new _ecclesiastical computation_ will not be long before it be admitted into other Catholic countries. This is the end of those fervent prayers which they put up to God for the greatest good of their enemies, and for bringing about “the return of the society to itself.”