The maxims of Xavier and Laines, consigned in your _Monita Secreta_, were first brought to light, you tell us, at the close of the seventeenth century, about one hundred and forty years after the decease of the supposed author; and yet you have not a shadow of proof to allege, that they {277} made any sensation in the world; that any prince, prelate, or magistrate, that any man whatever gave credit to them. Would you know, Sir, the origin of your despicable _Monita_? Not in the days of Laines, not at the close, but in the early years of the seventeenth century, a Jesuit was dismissed with ignominy from the society in Poland, an uncommon circumstance but judged due to his misconduct. The walls of the city of Cracow were soon covered with sheets of revengeful insults; and, in the year 1616, this outcast of the society published his fabricated _Secreta Monita_, with a view to cover his own disgrace, or to gratify his revenge. "Whether he attained either of these objects," says the elegant historian, Cordara (a name well known in the republic of letters), "I cannot determine; but certain it is, nothing was ever more ineptly silly, than this work: _Quo opere, ut modeste dicam, nihil ineptius._"--Vid. Cordara, Hist. Soc. Jes. page 29. Cordara would have made an exception in favour of Laicus, if he had lived to read {278} his Letters in the Times. The libel, however, though condemned and prohibited at Rome by the Congregation of the Index on the 10th of May, 1616, was industriously propagated, meeting every where its merited contempt. It was victoriously refuted by Gretser, who died in 1625, seventy-five years before the work was discovered, if the admirable Laicus is to be believed. This refutation, which was not wanted, may be read in Gretser's works, edit. of Ratisbon, 1634[98]. {279}