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436 that the presence of the Jesuits in the Spanish dominions was extremely prejudicial, through their complicity in traitorous attempts, grasping and seditious spirit, fanaticism, disobedience, and intolerable pride. The unanimous decision of the members, the fiscales concurring, was that no discussion of the subject with the papal court should be entered into, and a mere acknowledgment of the receipt of the brief should be returned in answer.

Without discussing the merits of the charges preferred against the society for its conduct in Europe, or attempting to deny its worldliness in the acquisition of property and its selfish efforts to escape the burdens weighing upon other members of the church and the body politic in America, and without laying particular stress on its overbearing deportment, several instances of which have been recorded in the course of this history, it must be confessed that the Jesuits maintained, if not perfect purity of conduct, at least a degree of virtue that made them the exceptional members of a church which had at that time, but for them and a few other honorable exceptions, almost become an exemplar of vice. At all hours and seasons they were found performing the offices of religion and charity. The service of God in their churches was reverent and dignified. They spread education among all classes; their libraries were open to all. They