We beg you will not doubt of our fulfilling your expectations, and having constantly at heart the sincerest desire to promote your interest and advantage. Our dear Son, your Attorney General will tell you farther. In the mean time, you may be persuaded, that we shall always be ready to step forward in whatever concerns you, so that you shall have no room to complain of our inactivity or indifference, when there is an opportunity of obliging you. We beg to return the assistance of your prayers to God, that he may grant us his grace, and that we may be enabled to support the heavy burthen which has been laid upon us with courage. It is with an overflowing heart that we give you and all of your Order, our Apostolical Benediction Given at ROME the 19th July, 1769, and the first Year of our Pontificate. LETTER LETTER CLXXXV. TO MR. BARON, Secretary to the Academy of Amiens, who had sent his Holiness the Anagram of his Name. DEAR SON, WE have received at the same time the proofs of your filial affection, which assures us of the joy you felt at our exaltation, and the ingenious anagram of our name, which has given us a sensible pleasure. In testimony of our gratitude and paternal affecion, receive our Apostolical Benediction as the pledge of all the happiness we wish you. ROME, 9th Aug. 1769, and first Year of our Pontificate. LETTER LETTER CLXXXVI. TO THE ABBESS AND NUNS Of the Monastry of St. Claire de Moulins, in the Diocese of Autun. DEAR DAUGHTERS, WE have learnt with gratitude, that notwithstanding our incapacity, our elevation to the sovereign Pontificate has been matter of the greatest satisfaction to you, and the rather that our Order has thereby attained a new lustre. In consequence of which we are inclined, in spite of the important business with which we are beset, to give you by this letter no equivocal proof of our good will, in the hopes that it will excite your charity, and engage you frequently to recommend us in your prayers to God. The piety of your lives gives us an assurance of the success of your prayers in the sight of the Lord who hath distributed to you his riches most abundantly. As As we are informed that you have the Canonization of our dear Daughter in Jesus Christ, the blessed Colette, Reformatrix of your Order, and the Beatification of the venerable Agnes, greatly at heart, we will endeavour to second your wishes, without deviating from the rules in such cases prescribed. In the mean time we give you in the fullness of our heart our Apostolical Benediction. Given at ROME, St. Mary Major, the 7th March, 1770, and the first Year of our Pontificate. LETTER CLXXXVII. TO THE REV. FATHER CHASTENET DE PUISEGUR, General of the Order of the Christian Doctrine. DEAR SON, OUR paternal affection for you and your congregation, prompts us to take every part possible in your being a second time elected. In acknowledgement of your duty, and attachment to us and the the Apostolic See, we assure you, that we shall always interest ourselves in the highest degree in whatever concerns you. You have a sure pledge of what we now say to you, in the person of our dear son Valentin, a Priest of your congregation, of whose merit we are fully sensible, and with whose conversation we are singularly delighted. He has long given proofs of his great zeal for you and your congregation. We shall therefore let him know in the course of the business he is to be employed in, how much we have your advantage at heart, and how great a regard we entertain both for you and for him. The cause of the venerable servant of God, Cæsar du Bus, your founder, which he is to manage conformably to a decree of your general Chapter, will afford us the happy opportunity of granting him the marks of a good will, similar to that with which he was honoured by our wise predecessor Benedict XIV. of blessed memory, especially as we most ardently desire to second your enterprizes, which tend only to the honour of your congregation, to give new splendor to divine worship, and to have in the midst of you, a model of the virtues you may imitate. To assure you |