How many men are there, who never knew more of Jesuits than their name, that have, from the hideous caricatures, which have been drawn of them, imbibed such prejudices, and admitted such horrible impressions against the society, as to render it a wonder, and with some a scandal, that any person should dare to make the slightest attempt towards their vindication. On the perusal of this volume, I trust, that the wonder and the scandal will appear to be, that men should have so suffered their reason to be imposed upon, and their feelings betrayed, as to be tamely led into the views of the destroyers, {174} not only of this religious order, but of religion itself, and of social order. I will endeavour here to give a faithful miniature of the noble original, which, under distorted features, we have been invited to ridicule and to detest. I do not, however, pretend to offer to the reader a deep-reasoned discussion, but only a slight sketch of the much traduced institute of the Jesuits, and of the pursuits and past successes of the men, who devoted themselves to it. Jesuits were never much known in this kingdom. They were never more than a small detachment of missionary priests, privately officiating to the scattered catholics, like other priests, sent from the English seminaries of Rome, Douay, Valladolid, and Lisbon. They were distinguished only by more pointed severity of the ancient penal statutes, which the wisdom and liberality of the legislature has considerably relaxed. This greater severity arose, not from their conduct, but from the general prejudice against their order; and, in England, this {175} prejudice kept pace with the esteem in which they were held in all catholic countries. Formerly, every enemy of catholic religion was their foe declared. Their perseverance and their successes still provoked new hostilities. It is the remark of Spondanus, that no set of men were ever so violently opposed, or ever so successfully triumphed over opposition. Their assiduity, in their multifarious relations to the public, in all countries, where they had settlements; in their schools and seminaries, in pulpits and confessionals, in hospitals and workhouses, in the cultivation of sciences, in national and foreign missions; all this professional business afforded them a large field for exertion, and enabled them to recommend themselves to kings, prelates, and magistrates, by signal services to the public, and thus to blunt the stings of envy and the shafts of malice. The small number, which frequented England for nearly two hundred years, in the face of the penal laws, had no such field of action. They were confined to administer the rites of religion to their brethren {176} in private houses; they were necessitated to live separate; they were forced to disguise their profession and character, and frequently their very names; they lived under the laws, and they were not protected by the laws; they knew, that the