viii.  Moreover I doubt not but you her Highness’ Council being, of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholike Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed, and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation.  Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posteritie shall never die, which beyond seas gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes.  And touching our Societie be it known to you that we have made a league—­all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England—­cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons.  The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood.  So the faith was planted:  so it must be restored.

ix.  If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us His grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

* * * * *

“Direct, true, and resolute,” Campion’s words certainly are, and they are calculated in a remarkable degree to reassure and animate his fellow Catholics and their friends, and it is for them in reality, rather than for the Lords of the Council, that the message is composed.  If the composition has a fault it is its combativeness; and in effect, though this drawback was not felt at the time, it was later.  Subsequent missionaries found it best to adopt a policy of far greater secrecy and silence.  If, however, we remember that Campion intended his paper to be published under quite different circumstances, we can see that he at least hardly deserves the reproach of being contentious, or if he does, his failing was venial when we consider the tastes of the age.  The immediate result of the publication was without question a great success.

THE “DECEM RATIONES.”