The Jesuits, following practices or customs of their own, had thought fit to exhibit a kind of religious plays or farces. The devil in these pieces is always the buffoon; he plays harlequin and slight-of-hand tricks, fires squibs and gun-powder, very little consistent with the decency of the other persons who compose the drama. This continued to be practised in several Catholic countries in Europe, while that learned company existed[60]. It happened to be necessary to introduce figures of this kind blacked all over, and in masks, with cloven feet, &c. The first exhibition of these figures so surprised and terrified the Abyssinian audience, that they fled immediately upon their appearance, crying out, Alas! alas! these Franks have brought devils into our country with them! This great extension of civil jurisdiction, and the large strides it took to annihilate the civil power, the encroachments it made upon the prerogative of the king, till now supreme in all causes ecclesiastical and civil, the more than regal, the more, if possible, than papal pride of the patriarch, began to be felt universally, and it was seen to be intended to lessen every order of government, from the king to the lowest officer in the province. From this time, therefore, we date the decline of the Catholic interest in Abyssinia. The first blow was given it by the king himself, not with a view to destroy it, for he was a sincere Catholic upon principle, but to controul and keep it within some bounds, as he found there was no order could otherwise be maintained. He desired the patriarch to permit the use of the ancient liturgies of Ethiopia, altered by himself in every thing where they did not agree with that of the church of Rome. With this the patriarch was obliged to comply, because there was in it an appearance of reason that men should pray to God in a language that they understood, and which was their own, rather than a foreign tongue of which they did not understand one word. This was thought so obvious in Ethiopia as not to admit any doubt. But the order and practice of the church of Rome was just the contrary; and this wound was a mortal one; for no sooner was the permission given to use their own liturgies, than all the Abyssinians embraced them to a man, and went on in their old prayers and services without any of the patriarch’s alterations.