resented a similar memorial
to Pope Innocent XIII., who in 1699 imposed the _cloture_ upon all
parties, and thus effectually terminated a battle which had raged for
twenty years. Papebrock again involved himself at a later period in a
controversy touching a very tender and very important point in the Roman
system. In discussing the lives of some Chinese martyrs, he advocated
the translation of the Liturgy into the vulgar tongue of the converts;
which elicited a reply from Gueranger in his "Institutions
Theologiques;" while again between the years 1729 and 1736 a pitched
battle took place between the Bollandists and the Dominicans touching
the genealogy of their founder, St. Dominic. All these controversies,
with many other minor ones in which they were engaged, will be found
summed up in an apologetic folio which the Bollandists published. In
looking through it the reader will specially be struck by this
instructive fact, that the bitterness and violence of the controversy
were always in the inverse ratio of the importance of the points at
issue. This much also must any fair mind allow: the Society of Jesus,
since the days of Pascal and the "Provincial Letters," has been regarded
as a synonym for dishonesty and fraud. From any such charge the student
of the "Acta Sanctorum" must regard the Bollandists as free. In them we
behold oftentimes a credulity which would not have found place among men
who knew by experience more of the world of life and action, but, on
the other hand, we find in them thorough loyalty to historical truth.
They deal in no suppression of evidence; they give every side of the
question. They write like men who feel, as Bollandus their founder did,
that under no circumstances is it right to tell a lie. They never
hesitate to avow their own convictions and predilections. They draw
their own conclusions, and put their own gloss upon facts and documents;
but yet they give the documents as they found them, and they enable the
impartial student--working not in trammels as they did--to make a
sounder and truer use of them. They display not the spirit of the mere
confessor whose tone has been lowered by the stifling atmosphere of the
casuistry with which he has been perpetually dealing; but, the braced
soul, the hardy courage of the historical critic, who having climbed the
lofty peaks of bygone centuries, has watched and noted the inevitable
discovery and defeat of lies, the grandeur and beauty of truth. They