“And, lest from those things which have been expressly prohibited in this decree, any one may infer or believe that we tacitly approve of or permit other usages which were wont to be practised in these missions, we absolutely reject this false interpretation, and we explicitly declare the contrary to be our intention. We will, also, _for just causes known to us_, that the present decree should have full force, and should be considered as published, after it has been delivered up by our Chancellor to Father Guy Tachard, Vice-provincial of the French Fathers of the Society of Jesus in India; and we command him, by virtue of holy obedience, to transmit four similar copies to the Father-provincial of the province of Malabar, to the Superiors of the Mission at Madura and Mysore, and of the Carnatic, who after two months, and all the other missionaries after three months, from the day in which this decree shall be notified to Father Tachard, shall be bound to consider it as having been made public, and notified to every one. “Given at Pondicherry, this day, 23d June 1704.” Nothing can more effectually prove the culpability of the Jesuits, and their sacrilegious crime, in encouraging such abominable idolatry, than this decree, emanating from so high a Roman Catholic authority, and from a man who reproaches himself for being too lenient towards the fathers. This document is a terrible and overwhelming proof against the order’s orthodoxy, and M. Crétineau himself can find no fault with it. His only complaint is, that the different historians who have quoted the prelate’s decree, have omitted to speak of the preamble, in which the patriarch declares that he had been assisted in the investigation by two of the Jesuits, from which fact he (M. Crétineau) seems anxious that we should infer that the Jesuits themselves have condemned these practices. This, besides being contradictory to what M. Crétineau has just said, is by no means true in the sense in which he wishes us to receive it. According to Father Norbert’s version,[104] it seems that the patriarch arrived at the truth of the whole matter by making use of a little Jesuitical cunning. He called two of the fathers to a private conference, received them with great kindness and urbanity, praised their zeal, pitied them in their difficult position, and so overcame them, that they frankly confessed every thing to him. Now, their confession was written down by two secretaries, who were concealed in a closet for the purpose. The superior, to whom the Jesuits related what had taken place, was indignant and alarmed at their wonderful ingenuousness, and sent them back to the prelate to retract what they had said.[105] But it was too late. The legate, to give more weight to the decree, begins somewhat maliciously by saying, that he had been helped in his investigation by Fathers Venant Bouchet and Charles Bartolde, “learned and zealous men, who had