urified, and
sometimes returns into the body of a cow. That such a favour,
notwithstanding, is not conferred but on heroic souls, who contemn life,
and die generously, either by casting themselves headlong from a
precipice, or leaping into a kindled pile, or throwing themselves under
the holy chariot wheels, to be crushed to death by the pagods, while they
are carried in triumph about the town.

We are not to wonder, after this, that the Brachmans cannot endure the
Christian law; and that they make use of all their credit and their
cunning to destroy it in the Indies. Being favoured by princes, infinite
in number, and strongly united amongst themselves, they succeed in all
they undertake; and as being great zealots for their ancient
superstitions, and most obstinate in their opinions, it is not easy to
convert them.

Father Xavier, who saw how large a progress the gospel had made amongst
the people, and that if there were no Brachmans in the Indies, there
would consequently be no idolaters in all those vast provinces of Asia,
spared no labour to reduce that perverse generation to the true knowledge
of Almighty God. He conversed often with those of that religion, and one
day found a favourable occasion of treating with them: Passing by a
monastery, where above two hundred Brachmans lived together, he was
visited by some of the chiefest, who had the curiosity to see a man whose
reputation was so universal. He received them with a pleasing
countenance, according to his custom; and having engaged them by little
and little, in a discourse concerning the eternal happiness of the soul,
he desired them to satisfy him what their gods commanded them to do, in
order to it after death. They looked a while on one another without
answering. At length a Brachman, who seemed to be fourscore years of age,
took the business upon himself, and said in a grave tone, that two things
brought a soul to glory, and made him a companion to the gods; the one
was to abstain from the murder of a cow, the other to give alms to the
Brachmans. All of them confirmed the old man's answer by their
approbation and applause, as if it had been an oracle given from the
mouths of their gods themselves.

Father Xavier took compassion on this their miserable blindness, and the
tears came into his eyes. He rose on the sudden, (for they had been all
sitting,) and distinctly repeated, in an audible tone, the apostles'
creed, and the ten commandments, making a pa