Catherine, and I doubt whether Russia was ever more indebted to any sovereign than for this step, which was at once magnanimous, wise, and popular. CLEMENT XIII. I should not have thought of enrolling a pope among the authorities in favour of the Jesuits, it being natural to suppose, that every pope was a friend to the society, had I not found a list of them arrayed against them by sir John Hippisley, on the authority of Ganganelli's rescript. Now, that the sovereign pontiffs interfered in the proceedings and writings of the members of the society; that they blamed them for the dissentions in which their zeal involved them with their enemies in all parts of the world; and that they have condemned some of the fanatical (for this is a term as appropriate to catholic as puritan zealots), I say some of the fanatical maxims formerly preached by individuals is not denied, and has {127} been already noticed in these pages; and this is all that can be gathered from the rescript; but that this renders the popes _impugners_ of the order is far from being the fact, and for this reason it is I have been induced to cite this pontiff, as well as his successor, in the catalogue of authorities. By the word _impugner_, I presume, that sir John means _assailant_; now, that the disapproval of some casuists, and the blaming of untimely or misplaced zeal of some of the society was no assailing of the order, the following words of Clement XIII, addressed to the archbishops and bishops of France, will, I think, sufficiently prove: "But the thing, which gives the deepest wound to the public weal, and to the faithful, which is the greatest insult to the apostolic see and to you, is the persecution they have raised against the society of Jesus, which has ever supplied the church with many able champions, and now, by the credit of a prevailing faction, is oppressed and dissipated. Its institute, that institute, which the Roman catholic church, {128} assembled in the council of Trent, approved of; that institute upon which our predecessors have bestowed so many solemn encomiums; which has hitherto found protection and received the most signal marks of favour from the kings of France; that institute, which you yourselves, not so much out of gratitude as from a principle of equity, have celebrated and publicly declared, that it was of very singular service to you in your respective dioceses, is now loaded with antiquated and groundless calumnies, is treated as a pest, which had crept into the church, and is publicly burned with all the marks of infamy[49]." GANGANELLI.