Muratori, Montesquieu, Raynal, and Leibniz, bear ample testimony.-Mr. Southey, the poet laureat, though generally hostile, in his writings, to the catholic religion and to catholic institutions of every kind, observes, that "the Indians could not con"template without astonishment the conduct of "the jesuits; their disinterested enthusiasm, their indefatigable perseverance, and the privation and << danger which they endured for no earthly reward, They, who had only heard of these wonderful men, " became curious of seeing them; but they, who "once came within the influence of such superior "minds, and felt the contagion of example, were "not long before they submitted to the gainful "sacrifice of their old superstitions*." In a subsequent part of the same work, Mr. Southey notices the pomp, with which the secular year of the foundation of the society of Jesus was solemnized in South America. “At one place,” we are told by him, "six hundred triumphal arches were erected "by the Indians, and decorated with all the orna"ments and good things which they possessed: a display of the benefits which they, above all

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men, derived from the society: the centenary of "their institution could not be celebrated by these "tribes with more gratitude and joy than were "justly duet."

History of Brazil, vol. ii. p. 299, 300. + Ibid. p. 331, 332.

LXXV. 4.

Their Missions in China.

IN China their religious labours were equally successful. In 1552, St. Francis Xavier reached Macao. In 1715, the number of the christians in China amounted to 300,000, and they possessed 300 churches. In their propagation of the gospel in China, the jesuits showed great good sense. They did every thing to conciliate public and individual favour; they carefully abstained from every thing that had a tendency to draw on them public or individual dislike; and, so far as it could be done without trenching on the essentials of religion, they accommodated their instructions to the opinions and feelings of the country. In some instances, they were supposed to carry this spirit of accommodation too far, and by a papal bull, they were obliged to retrace some steps of their conciliating advances. Their readiness to comply with the bull did them honour.

Between the years 1581 and 1681,-one hundred and twenty-six European jesuits were employed in the missions in China. "It must," says sir George Staunton*, "appear a singular spectacle "to every class of beholders, to see men, actuated

by motives, different from those of most human "actions, quitting for ever their country and their "connections, to devote themselves for life, for the purpose of changing the tenets of a people they

* Embassy to China, vol. ii. p. 159.

" had never seen; and, in pursuing that object, to "run every risk, suffer every persecution, and sa"crifice every comfort; insinuating themselves,"by address, by talent, by perseverance, by humility, by application to studies, foreign from their "original education, or by the cultivation of arts, "to which they had not been bred,-into notice " and protection;-overcoming the prejudice of being strangers in a country, where most strangers were prohibited, and where it was a crime to have "abandoned the tombs of their ancestors; and gaining, at length, establishments necessary for "the propagation of the faith, without turning "their influence to any personal advantage. Every "European," sir George adds from his own experience, "was greeted by them as countrymen, "entitled to regard and service."

All the information, which the missionaries could acquire of the learning, the arts, and the sciences of China, they transmitted to Europe. It is principally to be found in their "Lettres Edifiantes et "Curieuses," of which Fontenelle said, that "he "had never read a work which answered better to "its title." To the general accuracy of these letters, and of the works of father du Halde and father Gaubil, the interesting account published by sir George Staunton of his embassy to China bears testimony; and the writer of these pages has often heard him speak of them, in terms of high commendation. La Croze mentions with praise the

• Histoire du Christianisme de l'Ethiope et de l'Arménie, p. 269, 402.

account given of Armenia, in the third volume of their "Nouveaux Mémoires des Missions du Lévant:" and, as Mr. Gibbon justly observes*, the work of a jesuit must have sterling merit when it is praised by la Croze.-Such was the conduct of the jesuits in China.-May it not be confidently asked, whether history records an instance, in which science has been made more subservient to the faith of Christ?

LXXV. 5.

Their Antichristian and Anticatholic Adversaries.

SUCH have been the services rendered by the jesuits to religion, to letters, to civilized and uncivilized society. With such titles to gratitude, is it not surprising that they should have had so many enemies? But, such has been the general fate of benefactors to humanity!-how few of these have closed their labours, without

"Th' unwilling gratitude of low mankind!"

POPE.

Among the enemies of the jesuits, several are found, whose hostility must be thought, by all christians, to reflect honour on the society. When we open the correspondence of Voltaire and his intimates, and observe their furious and determined hatred of christianity, and their schemes and efforts for its destruction, and find at the same time their avowed enmity to the jesuits, as their most formidable opponents, surely all, who invoke the name

* Chap. xlvii. note 148.

of Christ, must think with respect and gratitude of the jesuits, as the ablest defenders, in the opinion of its bitterest enemies, of their common christianity? By the same principle, when a catholic finds the polemic hatred, which the early disciples of Luther and Calvin discovered, in all their writings, against the jesuits, it should elevate them in his opinion, as the hatred evidently proceeded from its being felt by the lutherans and calvinists, that the jesuits were, in their time, the most powerful champions of the catholic faith.

Great, however, is the force of truth! When antichristian and anticatholic feelings have not guided their judgments, the atheist, the deist, and the protestant, has equally done justice to the jesuits. Ardent for their expulsion from every other kingdom, Frederic of Prussia prudently preserved them in his own, and heartily laughed at the vagaries of the philosophers, who solicited their banishment. "I cannot," says lord Bacon, "contemplate the "application and the talent of these preceptors, in "cultivating the intellects, and forming the manners "of youth, without bringing to my mind the ex"pression of Agesilaus to Pharnabazus ;- Being "such as you are, is it possible that you should not "belong to us."""I am persuaded," said Leibnitz, the most universal scholar, and one of the most profound mathematicians and metaphysicians of his age, "that the jesuits are often calumniated, and "that opinions, which have never come into their "minds, have often been imputed to them." The count de Merode, having informed Leibnitz that he