Ixxri. PROLEGOMENA. 



The Society has been accused iu former times, when 

 they were numerous, of political intrigues, of artfulness, 

 and of other vices, the very opposite to their real character, 

 and contrary to their strictest rules ; but these charges 

 have been utterly foundatiouless, and are only to be 

 accounted for on that principle of general and ingenious 

 mendacity by which the Devil has contrived, in every 

 age of the world, to detract from the essential merits of 

 virtue, by setting up the language of paradox and employ- 

 ing the woful engine of universal misnomer. 



There can be no scheme better fitted for making men 

 happj' here, than that which fits them for hereafter. Vari- 

 ous plans have been tried ; Philosophy has been tried, 

 Private Judgment has been tried, Libertinism has been 

 tried ; all have failed : we are forced to come back to 

 Christianity again. And it is to be hoped, that those who 

 profess to be Christians, will learn by degrees, and before 

 direful experience teaches them, that there is no better 

 rule of life than that of Christ. 



The Society of Jesus have been the greatest promoters 

 of human learning that have ever existed in this world, 

 though their labours have been objectively directed towards 

 the next. Our learned Fathers of this body, besides great 

 works on theology, have revised, purified, and published, 

 the best editions of the classics, as well as books on science ; 

 they have travelled desolate regions in the great work of 

 conversion, and have brought home the more useful plants 

 and natural curiosities to Europe ; they have improved 

 medicine, stored our pharmacopoeas, and enriched our 

 gardens ; and have composed the best plans and rules of 

 education; and all this under a system of discipline and of 

 religion that refers all their thoughts, wor Is, and works, 

 to God's glory alone, verifying, in the stupendous mass of 

 their collateral acquirements, the promise of Christ, that, 



