We will not here pretend to refute or to give an exact account of a doctrine, which will not bear the light, and can no way be exposed to the public without danger of infection; of which we may truly say, what St. Paul said of a certain vice, "that its very name should never be heard amongst Christians." And it is with the greatest grief we see all the particulars of this damnable doctrine publicly explained in the French tongue, and purposely {354} dispersed in all parts of your kingdom in an infinity of libels, the reading of which has done more prejudice to your majesty's subjects than could possibly have been caused by reading the fanatic authors themselves, who have treated of that subject. We shall only observe, that, in order to render the Jesuits more odious to the public, care has been taken to hold them forth as the first broachers of a doctrine, that was published long before they had a being. Their enemies have spared no pains to confound and perplex all our ideas concerning this doctrine, jumbling together, at all events, right or wrong, truth and falsehood, in order to bring the Jesuits in guilty: they are ever urging against them a certain period of our history, which, as it equally involves all states and conditions[121], ought to be blotted out of our annals, and never more be mentioned amongst us. Whatever may be objected against the foreign Jesuits Mariana, Santarel, Suarez, and Busembaum, this is most certain, that the decree of their general, Acquaviva, appeared so satisfactory to your parliament of Paris, that, in the year 1614, they desired to have the same renewed; and it is well known, that, when those books first appeared in France, the Jesuits, in their declarations to the parliaments, disowned them in so clear, precise, and express terms, as did honour to their body, and gained them the applause of the whole nation. Lastly, their behaviour in the year 1682, and the declarations, which they have lately made to us, and which they desire to have registered at the respective offices in our spiritual courts, as a lasting and authentic testimony of their loyalty and fidelity, leave no room to doubt of their abhorrence and detestation of {355} any doctrine or opinion that may in any wise intrench upon the safety of the sacred person of sovereigns; or of their entire acquiescence to the maxims established by the clergy of your kingdom, in the four articles of 1682.