that, as far as authority extends, there is a great and brilliant balance in their favour; that, on the ground of reasoning, the proof of their virtue as well as of their religion does not fall short of demonstration in the account of their institute; that they are not at war with protestant governments, whose catholic subjects they are well known long to have trained up in loyalty; and, that the small number now in this country have completed those proofs of loyalty by a solemn oath of allegiance to the king. * * * * * THE LETTERS OF CLERICUS. * * * * * Calumniare audacter; semper aliquid adhærebit. * * * * * {261} THE LETTERS OF CLERICUS TO LAICUS. * * * * * LETTER I. _Jesuitæ, qui se maxime nobis opponunt, aut necandi, aut si hoc commodè fieri non potest, ejiciendi, aut certe mendaciis et calumniis opp imendi sunt._--Calv. Axiom.--Vide Becan. tom. i, opusc. xvii, aphor. 15[95]. In God's name, Laicus, who are you, and what is your aim? The order of Jesuits, you tell us, has been _totally abolished_. Every person {262} of moderate information knows, that to accomplish that abolition, which was not total, all the artifices of calumny were exhausted. Neither Calvin, nor Le Courayer, nor even Laicus, could have added a mite to the torrent of abuse of Jesuits, which inundated Europe about fifty years ago, when the complete overthrow of that order was finally planned and determined. The Jesuits fell; and within a few years Rome was sacked and pillaged; two successive pontiffs were lodged in dungeons; every French infidel, every fanatical gospeller throughout Europe, exulted in the discomfiture of the scarlet whore; the papacy was, on every side, pronounced to be extinct. But, behold, by the unerring operation of Providence, the papacy is again seated on the seven hills, and its old champions, the Jesuits, are once more called forth to sustain the assaults of calumny. But what inept calumny, what {263} falsehoods, what inconsistencies, what contradictions, have you, Laicus, raked together, to stifle the new life, which they are only beginning to enjoy! Thus in days of old conspired the Jewish pharisees to murder Lazarus, as soon as the Son of God had raised him from the tomb.--John xii, 10. Consider, Sir--you need not be so precipitate. Many years must yet pass, many powers must concur, to recruit, to drill, to marshal a new body of Jesuits, capable of achieving the mischief, which your virulent declamation imputes to their predecessors. I have spent some years of my life in foreign countries; I there read every libel against the Jesuits, that came in my way; but I never found one so perfectly contemptible as your two tottering columns in the TIMES, newspaper, of January the 27th. They will not support either themselves, or the credit of the publication which has received them.