'La menzogna non iscusano soltanto ma lodano' (_ib._ vol.ii.p.

106).

So far, the utterances which I have quoted might pass for the rhetoric of mere spite.

But the portrait gradually becomes more definite in details limned from life.

'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (_ib._ vol.i.p.