The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

that sense, which shall be confirmed by instancing
those of our order who assuredly know them
not."[14]
It was some time before the contingency of
exposure here provided against actually happened.
But in the beginning of the seventeenth century the
accidents of war dragged these Secret Instructions
from the darkness in which their authors had hoped
to conceal them from the knowledge of the world.
The Duke of Brunswick, having plundered the
Jesuits' college at Paderborn in Westphalia, made a
present of their library to the Capuchins of the
same town. Among the books which had thus come
into their possession was found a copy of the
Secret Instructions. Another copy is said to have
been discovered in the Jesuits' college at Prague.
Soon thereafter reprints and translations appeared
in Germany, Holland, France, and England. The
authenticity of the work was denied, as was to be
expected; for any society that was astute enough to
compile such a book would be astute enough to
deny it. To only the fourth or highest order of
Jesuits were these Instructions to be
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