these nations, is a secret satisfaction, which is not forbidden you to
take; the blessings of your people are a prelibation of the joys in
heaven, and a lawful ambition here on earth.

Your majesty is authorized, by the greatest example of a mother, to
rejoice in a promised son. The blessed Virgin was not without as great a
proportion of joy, as humanity could bear, when she answered the
salutation of the angel in expressions, which seemed to unite the
contradicting terms of calmness, and of transport: "Be it to thy
hand-maid, according to thy word."

It is difficult for me to leave this subject, but more difficult to
pursue it as I ought; neither must I presume to detain your majesty by a
long address. The life of Saint Francis Xavier, after it had been written
by several authors in the Spanish and Portuguese, and by the famous Padre
Bartoli in the Italian tongue, came out at length in French, by the
celebrated pen of Father Bohours, from whom I have translated it, and
humbly crave leave to dedicate it to your patronage. I question not but
it will undergo the censure of those men, who teach the people, that
miracles are ceased. Yet there are, I presume, a sober party of the
Protestants, and even of the most learned among them, who being
convinced, by the concurring testimonies of the last age, by the
suffrages of whole nations in the Indies and Japan, and by the severe
scrutinies that were made before the act of canonization, will not
dispute the truth of most matters of fact as they are here related; nay,
some may be ingenuous enough to own freely, that to propagate the faith
amongst infidels and heathens, such miraculous operations are as
necessary now in those benighted regions, as when the Christian doctrine
was first planted by our blessed Saviour and his apostles.