e, that the word _professed_ implies deceit, instead of the _open_
and _declared_ intention of the Jesuits. Not content with this low
falsifying of Robertson's ideas by Italic implication, he practises the
same trick by an Italic addition of some lines of his own to the text of
the historian, as follows: "_their great and leading maxim having uniformly
been, to do evil that good might come_." Can any thing be more
reprehensible? {18}

I will adduce one instance more of the disingenuousness of this writer.
Speaking, _exclusively_, of the Jesuits, he charges _them_ with "rendering
Christianity utterly odious in the vast empire of Japan[6]," and with
"enormities in China Proper." To have implicated other priests would not,
as Voltaire observed, answer the purpose: the Jesuits, as before, must be
isolated to be recrushed. Now, in this, as in the other accusations, we
shall find the anti-catholic writers including other orders. Let us see
what one of these writers says upon this occasion: after speaking of the
pride, avarice, and folly of the clergy, he tells us of an {19} execution
of twenty-six persons, "in the number whereof were _two foreign Jesuits_,
and several other fathers of the _Franciscan_ order." And a little after,
the same writer says, "some _Franciscan_ friars were guilty at this time of
a most imprudent step: they, during the whole of their abode in the
country, preached openly in the streets of Macao, where they resided; and
of their own accord built a church, contrary to the imperial commands, and
contrary to the advice and earnest solicitations _of the Jesuits_[7]." The
authority of the Encyclopedia Britannica will not be objected to by the
enemies of the catholics; nor, I presume, will that of Montesquieu, who
gives a very different reason for the Christian religion being so odious in
Japan: "We have already," says he, "mentioned the perverse temper of the
people of Japan. The magistrates considered the firmness which Christianity
inspires, when they attempted to make the people renounce their faith, as
in {20} itself most dangerous: they fancied that it increased their
obstinacy. The law of Japan punishes severely the least disobedience. They
ordered them to renounce the Christian religion: they did not renounce it;
this was disobedience: they punished this crime; and the continuance in
disobedience seemed to deserve another punishment[8]." As to the enormities
in China, we shall find, upon inquiry, that t