entirety, during his pontificate, which terminated during the last year of the eighteenth century. The Jesuit writers have taxed their ingenuity to the utmost to explain the attitude of Pius VI towards their society. They have struggled hard to prove that, notwithstanding he caused the decree of Clement XIV to be executed, he was in fact opposed to it. One of them, heretofore cited--whose work abounds in a mixture of apologies for their conduct and vilification of their adversaries--says: "In the opinion of Pius VI the Society of Jesus was _disbanded only for a time; it was not abolished_."[148] To this it may be answered, in the first place, there is nothing to show that Pius VI ever so committed himself; in the second place, that Clement XIV decreed that it should be abolished _forever_; and in the third place that, if he had considered the society as suspended merely for a time, he would have revived it by his own decree, or fixed the tenure of suspension. But this method of treating the question is trifling with a serious matter which should be treated with fairness and candor. It is equivalent to saying that Pius VI executed the decree of his predecessor, which absolutely abolished the society forever, when in his conscience he did not approve it. If he did entertain this opinion, it is not shown to have been authoritatively announced by him; and to allege that he did, in the absence of proof to that effect, has the appearance of attempting to substitute fiction for fact--to make history rather than to record it.