Fuentes, in the same valley. The opinion, notwithstanding, that the discovery was altogether miraculous, instead of having been abandoned at the commencement, was confirmed still more and more with the progress of time. The Jesuits Antonio Ruiz and Pedro Lozano, in their respective histories of the missions of Paraguay, &c. undertook to demonstrate that the apostle St. Thomas had been in America. This thesis, which was so novel, and so well calculated to draw the public attention, required, more than any other, the aid of the most powerful reasons, and of the most irrefragable documents, to be able to maintain itself, even in an hypothetical sense; but nothing of all this was brought forward. Certain miserable conjectures, prepossession, and personal interest, supplied the place of truth and criticism. The form of a human foot, which they fancied they saw imprinted on the rock, and the different fables of this description invented by ignorance at every step, were the sole foundations on which all the relations on this subject were made to repose. The one touching the peregrinations of St. Thomas from Brasil to Quito, must be deemed apocryphal,[1] when it is considered
- ↑ In addition to what is said by the illustrious Feyjoo, in his discourse on supposed miracles, the Peruvian writer Macanaz combats very successfully the histories of Ruiz and Lozano, under the head of miraculous discoveries. But experience, still more than all these testimonies, teaches us to mistrust the relations of the Jesuits, on the subjects of missions and antiquities. The interest and credit of the society occasionally required the sacrifice of the truth, which they did not hesitate to make. The famous Chronicles of Flavius Dextrus, Marcus the Hermit, Luis Prando, &c. led the whole world into an error: it was represented that they had been found in the archives of the abbey of Fulda, at the same time that they were extracts, surrepti-
