DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

...recalcitrating like fawns, and swept aside, they stray from the designated orbit of Pietas piety, harsh to their monitors, and prone to the precipices of a more licentious life.

This assertion you have clearly proven with repeated examples for more than forty years, since you first swore as a Neoptolemus a young warrior, here a novice in the order to the pious canons of sacred warfare, when you were the Trampler of Vanity. From that time until the present, you have never failed Virtue, nor has Virtue failed You: nor the reward for both. For you had scarcely left the adolescence of religion when you were applied to communal ministries; soon you had given yourself to your own genius for any distinguished documents of industry for administering: of dexterity for executing: of gravity for consulting: of prudence for discerning: of maturity for governing; by which, gradually, Your Province saw you prepared with such happy success for the solid duties of our Institute, as your Sons today, widely dispersed through Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Bohemia, as well as the Margraviate of Baden and Transylvania, admire and venerate.

Your ability to handle the affairs of the Institute...