Table of Contents

BOOK FIFTEENTH

THE JESUITS.

BOOK FIFTEENTH

THE JESUITS.


CHAPTER 1 Back to Top

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

Rome's New Army–Ignatius Loyola–His Birth–His Wars–He is Wounded–Betakes him to the Legends of the Saints–His Fanaticism Kindled–The Knight-Errant of Mary–The Cave at Manressa–His Mortifications–Comparison between Luther and Ignatius Loyola–An Awakening of the Conscience in both–Luther turns to the Bible, Loyola to Visions–His Revelations.

PROTESTANTISM had marshalled its spiritual forces a second time, and placing itself at the heart of Christendom–at a point where three great empires met–it was laboring with redoubled vigor to propagate itself on all sides. It was expelling from the air of the world that ancient superstition, horn of Paganism and Judaism, which, like an opaque veil, had darkened the human mind: a new light was breaking on the eyes and a new life stirring in the souls of men: schools of learning, pure Churches, and free nations were springing up in different parts of Europe; while hundreds of thousands of disciples were ready, by their holy lives or heroic deaths, to serve that great cause which, having broken their ancient fetters, had made them the heirs of a new liberty and the citizens of a new world. It was clear that if let alone, for only a few years, Protestantism would achieve a victory so complete that it would be vain for any opposing power to think of renewing the contest. If that power which was seated in Geneva was to be withstood, and the tide of victory which was bearing it to dominion rolled back, there must be no longer delay in the measures necessary for achieving such a result.

It was further clear that armies would never effect the overthrow of Protestantism. The serried strength of Popish Europe had been put forth to crush it, but all in vain: Protestantism had risen only the stronger from the blows which, it was hoped, would overwhelm it. It was plain that other weapons must be forged, and other arms mustered, than those which Charles and Francis had been accustomed to lead into the field. It was now that the Jesuit corps was embodied. And it must be confessed that these new soldiers did more than all the armies of France and Spain to stem the tide of Protestant success, and bind victory once more to the banners of Rome.

We have seen Protestantism renew its energies: Rome, too, will show what she is capable of doing.

As the tribes of Israel were approaching the frontier of the Promised Land, a Wizard-prophet was summoned from the East to bar their entrance by his divinations and enchantments. As the armies of Protestantism neared their final victory, there started up the Jesuit host, with a subtler casuistry and a darker divination than Balaam's, to dispute with the Reformed the possession of Christendom. We shall consider that host in its rise, its equipments, its discipline, its diffusion, and its successes.

Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde, the Ignatius Loyola of history, was the founder of the Order of Jesus, or the Jesuits. His birth was nearly contemporaneous with that of Luther. He was the youngest son of one of the highest Spanish grandees, and was born in his father's Castle of Loyola, in the province of Guipuzcoa, in 1491. His youth was passed at the splendid and luxurious comfort of Ferdinand the Catholic. Spain at that time was fighting to expel the Moors, whose presence on her soil she accounted at once an insult to her independence and an affront to her faith. She was ending the conflict in Spain, but continuing it in Africa. The naturally ardent soul of Ignatius was set on fire by the religious fervor around him. He grew weary of the gaieties and frivolities of the court; nor could even the dalliances and adventures of knight-errantry satisfy him. He thirsted to earn renown on the field of arms. Embarking in the war which at that time engaged the religious enthusiasm and military chivalry of his countrymen, he soon distinguished himself by his feats of daring. Ignatius was bidding fair to take a high place among warriors, and transmit to posterity a name encompassed with the halo of military glory–but with that halo only. At this stage of his career an incident befell him which cut short his exploits on the battlefield, and transferred his enthusiasm and chivalry to another sphere.

It was the year 1521. Luther was uttering his famous "No!" before the emperor and his princcs, and summoning, as with trnmpet-peal, Christendom to arms. It is at this moment the young Ignatius, the intrepid soldier of Spain, and about to become the yet more intrepid soldier of Rome, appears before its. He is shut up in the town of Pamplona, which the French are besieging. The garrison are hard pressed: and after some whispered consultations they openly propose to surrender. Ignatius deems the very thought of such a thing dishonor; he denounces the proposed act of his comrades as cowardice, and re-entering the citadel with a few companions as courageous as himself, swears to defend it to the last drop of his blood. By-and-by famine leaves him no alternative save to die within the walls, or to cut his way sword in hand through the host of the besiegers. He goes forth and joins battle with the French. As he is fighting desperately he is struck by a musket-ball, wounded dangerously in both legs, and laid senseless on the field. Ignatius had ended the last campaign he was ever to fight with the sword: his valor he was yet to display on other fields, but he would mingle no more on those which resound with the clash of arms and the roar of artillery.

The bravery of the fallen warrior had won the respect of the foe. Raising him from the ground, where he was fast bleeding to death, they carried him to the hospital of Pamplona, and tended him with care, till he was able to be conveyed in a litter to his father's castle. Thrice had he to undergo the agony of having his wounds opened. Clenching his teeth and closing his fists he bade defiance to pain. Not a groan escaped him while under the torture of the surgeon's knife. But the tardy passage of the weeks and months during which he waited the slow healing of his wounds, inflicted on his ardent spirit a keener pain than had the probing-knife on his quivering limbs. Fettered to his couch he chafed at the inactivity to which he was doomed. Romances of chivalry and tales of war were brought him to beguile the hours. These exhausted, other books were produced, but of a somewhat different character. This time it was the legends of the saints that were brought the bed-rid knight. The tragedy ofthe early Christian martyrs passed before him as he read. Next came the monks and hermits of the Thebaic deserts and the Sinaitic mountains. With an imagination on fire he perused the story of the hunger and cold they had braved; of the self-conquests they had achieved; of the battles they had waged with evil spirits; of the glorious visions that had been vouchsafed them; and the brilliant rewards they had gained in the lasting reverence of earth and the felicities and dignities of heaven. He panted to rival these heroes, whose glory was of a kind so bright, and pure, that compared with it the renown of the battlefield was dim and sordid. His enthusiasm and ambition were as boundless as ever, but now they were directed into a new channel. Henceforward the current of his life was changed.

He had lain down "a knight of the burning sword"–to use the words of his biographer, Vieyra–he rose up from it "a saint of the burning torch." The change was a sudden and violent one, and drew after it vast consequences not to Ignatius only, and the men of his own age, but to millions of the human race in all countries of the world, and in all the ages that have elapsed since. He who lay down on his bed the fiery soldier of the emperor, rose from it; the yet more fiery soldier of the Pope. The weakness occasioned by loss of blood, the morbidity produced by long seclusion, the irritation of acute and protracted suffering, joined to a temperament highly excitable, and a mind that had fed on miracles and visions till its enthusiasm had grown into fanaticism, accounts in part for the transformation which Ignatius had undergone. Though the balance of his intellect was now sadly disturbed, his shrewdness, his tenacity, and his daring remained. Set free from the fetters of calm reason, these qualities had freer scope than ever. The wing of his earthly ambition was broken, but he could take his flight heavenward. If earth was forbidden him, the celestial domains stood open, and there worthier exploits and more brilliant rewards awaited his prowess.

The heart of a soldier plucked out, and that of a monk given him, Ignatius vowed, before leaving his sick-chamber, to be the slave, the champion, the knight-errant of Mary. She was the lady of his soul, and after the manner of dutiful knights he immediately repaired to her shrine at Montserrat, hung up his arms before her image, and spent the night in watching them. But reflecting that he was a soldier of Christ, that great Monarch who had gone forth to subjugate all the earth, he resolved to eat no other food, wear no other raiment than his King had done, and endure the same hardships and vigils. Laying aside his plume, his coat of mail, his shield and sword, he donned the cloak of the mendicant. "Wrapped in sordid rags," says Duller, "an iron chain and prickly girdle pressing on his naked body, covered with filth, with un-combed hair and untrimmed nails," he retired to a dark mountain in the vicinity of Manressa, where was a gloomy cave, in which he made his abode for some time. There he subjected himself to all the penances and mortifications of the early anchorites whose holiness he emulated. He wrestled with the evil spirit, talked to voices audible to no ear but his own, fasted for days on end, till his weakness was such that he fell into a swoon, and one day was found at the entrance of his cave, lying on the ground, half dead.

The cave at Manressa recalls vividly to our memory the cell at Erfurt. The same austerities, vigils, mortifications, and mental efforts and agonies which were undergone by Ignatius Loyola, had but a very few years before this been passed through by Martin Luther. So far the career of the founder of the Jesuits and that of the champion of Protestantism were the same. Both had set before them a high standard of holiness, and both had all but sacrificed life to reach it. But at the point to which we have come the courses of the two men widely diverge. Both hitherto in their pursuit of truth and holiness had traveled by the same road; but now we see Luther turning to the Bible, "the light that shineth in a dark place," "the sure Word of Prophecy." Ignatius Loyola, on the other hand, surrenders himself to visions and revelations. As Luther went onward the light grew only the brighter around him. He had turned his face to the sun. Ignatius had turned his gaze inward upon his own beclouded mind, and verified the saying of the wise man, "He who wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead."

Finding him half exanimate at the mouth of his cave, sympathizing friends carried Ignatius to the town of Manressa. Continuing there the same course of penances and self-mortifications which he had pursued in solitude, his bodily weakness greatly increased, but he was more than recompensed by the greater frequency of those heavenly visions with which he now began to be favored. In Manressa he occupied a cell in the Dominican convent, and as he was then projecting a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he began to qualify himself for this holy journey by a course of the severest penances. "He scourged himself thrice a day," says Ranke, "he rose up to prayer at midnight, and passed seven hours of each day on his knees.[1]

It will hardly do to say that this marvellous case is merely an instance of an unstrung bodily condition, and of vicious mental stimulants abundantly supplied, where the thirst for adventure and distinction was still uuquenched. A closer study of the case will show that there was in it an awakening of the conscience. There was a sense of sin–its awful demerit, and its fearful award. Loyola, too, would seem to have felt the "terrors of death, and the pains of hell." He had spent three days in Montserrat in confessing the sins of all his past life [2] But on a more searching review of his life, finding that he had omitted many sins, he renewed and amplified his confession at Manressa. If he found peace it was only for a short while; again his sense of sin would return, and to such a pitch did his anguish rise, that thoughts of self-destruction, came into his mind.

Approaching the window of his cell, he was about to throw himself from it, when it suddenly flashed upon him that the act was abhorrent to the Almighty, and he withdrew, crying out, "Lord, I will not do aught that may offend thee."[3]

One day he awakened as from a dream. Now I know, said he to himself, that all these torments are from the assaults of Satan. I am tossed between the promptings of the good Spirit, who would have me be at peace, and the dark suggestions of the evil one, who seeks continually to terrify me. I will have done with this warfare. I will forget my past life; I will open these wounds not again. Luther in the midst of tempests as terrible had come to a similar resolution. Awaking as from a frightfnl dream, he lifted up his eyes and saw One who had borne his sins upon His cross: and like the mariner who clings amid the surging billows to the rock, Luther was at peace because he had anchored his soul on an Almighty foundation. But says Ranke, speaking of Loyola and the course he had now resolved to pursue, "this was not so much the restoration of his peace as a resolution, it was an engagement entered into by the will rather than a conviction to which the submission of the will is inevitable. It required no aid from Scripture, it was based on the belief he entertained of an immediate connection between himself and the world of spirits. This would never have satisfied Luther. No inspirations–no visions would Luther admit; all were in his opinion alike injurious. He would have the simple, written, indubitable Word of God alone.[4]

From the hour that Ignatius resolved to think no more of his sins his spirtual horizon began, as he believed, to clear up. All his gloomy terrors receded with the past which he had consigned to oblivion. His bitter tears were dried up, and his heavy sighs no longer resounded through the convent halls. He Was taken, he felt, into more intimate communion with God. The heavens were opened that he might have a clearer insight into Divine mysteries. True, the Spirit had revealed these things in the morning of the world, through chosen and accredited channels, and inscribed them on the page of inspiration that all might learn them from that infallible source. But Ignatius did not search for these mysteries in the Bible; favored above the sons of men, he received them, as he thought, in revelations made specially to himself. Alas! his hour had come and passed, and the gate that would have ushered him in amid celestial realities and joys was shut, and henceforward he must dwell amid fantasies and dreams.

It was intimated to him one day that he should yet see the Savior in person. He had not long to wait for the promised revelation. At mass his eyes were opened, and he saw the incarnate God in the Host. What farther proof did he need of transubstantiation, seeing the whole process had been shown to him? A short while thereafter the Virgin revealed herself with equal plainness to his bodily eyes. Not fewer than thirty such visits did Loyola receive. One day as he sat on the steps of the Church of St. Dominic at Manressa, singing a hymn to Mary, he suddenly fell into a reverie, and had the symbol of the ineffable mystery of the Trinity shown to him, under the figure of "three keys of a musical instrument." He sobbed for very joy, and entering the church, began publishing the miracle. On another occasion, as he walked along the banks of the Llobregat, that waters Manressa, he sat down, and fixing his eyes intently on the stream, many Divine mysteries became apparent to him, such "as other men," says his biographer Maffei, "can with great difficulty understand, after much reading, long vigils, and study."

This narration places us beside the respective springs of Protestantism and Ultramontanism. The source from which the one is seen to issue is the Word of God. To it Luther swore fealty, and before it he hung up his sword, like a true knight, when he received ordination. The other is seen to be the product of a clouded yet proud and ambitious imagination, and a wayward will. And therewith have corresponded the fruits, as the past three centuries bear witness. The one principle has gathered round it a noble host clad in the panoply of purity and truth. In the wake of the other has come the dark army of the Jesuits.

CHAPTER 2 Back to Top

LOYOLA'S FIRST DISCIPLES.

Vision of Two Camps–Ignatius Visits Jerusalem–Forbidden to Proselytise–Returns to Spain–Resolves to make Christendom his Field–Puts himself to School–Repairs to Paris–His Two Companions–Peter Fabre–Francis Xavier–Loyola subjects them to a Severe Regimen–They become his Disciples–Loyola's First Nine Followers–Their Vow in the Church of Montmartre–The Book of Spiritual Exercises–Its Course of Discipline–Four Weeks of Meditation–Topic of each Week–The Spiritual Exercises and the Holy Spirit–Visits Venice–Repairs to Rome–Draft of Rules–Bull Constituting the Society.

AMONG the wonderful things shown to Ignatius Loyola by special revelation was a vision of two great camps. The center of the one was placed at Babylon; and over it there floated the gloomy ensign of the prince of darkness. The Heavenly King had erected his standard on Mount Zion, and made Jerusalem his headquarters. In the war of which these two camps were the symbols, and the issues of which were to be grand beyond all former precedent, Loyola was chosen, he believed, to be one of the chief captains. He longed to place himself at the center of action. The way thither was long. Wide oceans and gloomy deserts had to be traversed, and hostile tribes passed through. But he had an iron will, a boundless enthusiasm, and what was more, a Divine call–for such it seemed to him in his delusion. He set out penniless (1523), and begging his bread by the way, he arrived at Barcelona. There he embarked in a ship which landed him on the shore of Italy. Thence, travelling on foot, after long months, and innumerable hardships, he entered in safety the gates of Jerusalem.

But the reception that awaited him in the "Holy City" was not such as he had fondly anticipated. His rags, his uncombed locks, which almost hid his emaciated features, but ill accorded with the magnificence of the errand which had brought him to that shore. Loyola thought of doing in his single person what the armies of the Crusaders had failed to do by their combined strength. The head of the Romanists in Jerusalem saw in him rather the mendicant than the warrior, and fearing doubtless that should he offer battle to the Crescent, he was more likely to provoke a tempest of Turkish fanaticism than drive back the hordes of the infidel, he commanded him to desist under the threat of excommunication. Thus withstood Loyola returned to Barcelona, which he reached in 1524.

Derision and insults awaited his arrival in his native Spain. His countrymen failed to see the grand aims he cherished beneath his rags; nor could they divine the splendid career, and the immortality of fame, which were to emerge from this present squalor and debasement. But not for one moment did Loyola's own faith falter in his great destiny. He had the art, known only to those fated to act a great part, of converting impediments into helps, and extracting new experience and fresh courage from disappointment. His repulsion from the "holy fields" had taught him that Christendom, and not Asia, was the predestined scene of his warfare, and that he was to do battle, not with the infidels of the East, but with the ever-growing hosts of heretics in Europe. But to meet the Protestant on his own ground, and to fight him with his own weapons, was a still more difficult task than to convert the Saracen. He felt that meanwhile he was destitute of the necessary qualifications, but it was not too late to acquire them.

Though a man of thirty-five, he put himself to school at Barcelona, and there, seated amid the youth of the city, he prosecuted the study of Latin. Having acquired some mastery of this tongue, he removed (1526) to the University of Alcala to commence theology. In a little space he began to preach. Discovering a vast zeal in the propagation of his tenets, and no little success in making disciples, male and female, the Inquisition, deeming both the man and his aims somewhat mysterious, arrested him. The order of the Jesuits was on the point of being nipped in the bud. But finding in Loyola no heretical bias, the Fathers dismissed him on his promise of holding his peace. He repaired to Salamanca, but there too he encountered similar obstacles. It was not agreeable thus to champ the curb of privilege and canonical authority; but it ministered to him a wholesome discipline. It sharpened his circumspection and shrewdness, without in the least abating his ardor. Holding fast by his grand purpose, he quitted his native land, and repairing in 1528 to Paris, entered himself as a student in the College of St. Barbara.

In the world of Paris he became more practical; but the flame of his enthusiasm still burned on. Through penance, through study, through ecstatic visions, and occasional checks, he pursued with unshaken faith and unquenched resolution his celestial calling as the leader of a mighty spiritual army, of which he was to be the creator, and which was to wage victorious battle with the hosts of Protestantism. Loyola's residence in Paris, which was from 1528 to 1535, [1] coincides with the period of greatest religious excitement in the French capital. Discussions were at that time of hourly occurrence in the streets, in the halls of the Sorbonne, and at the royal table. Loyola must have witnessed all the stirring and tragic scenes we have already described; he may have stood by the stake of Berquin; he had seen with indignation, doubtless, the saloons of the Louvre opened for the Protestant sermon; he had felt the great shock which France received front the Placards, and taken part, it may be, in the bloody rites of her great day of expiation. It is easy to see how, amid excitements like these, Loyola's zeal would burn stronger every hour; but his ardor did not hurry him into action till all was ready. The blow he meditated was great, and time, patience, and skill were necessary to prepare the instruments by whom he was to inflict it.

It chanced that two young students shared with Loyola his rooms, in the College of St. Barbara. The one was Peter Fabre, from Savoy. His youth had been passed amid his father's flocks; the majesty of the silent mountains had sublimed his natural piety into enthusiasm; and one night, on bended knee, under the star-bestudded vault, he devoted himself to God in a life of study. The other companion of Loyola was Francis Xavier, of Pamplona, in Navarre. For 500 years his ancestors had been renowned as warriors, and his ambition was, by becoming a scholar, to enhance the fame of his house by adding to its glory in arms the yet purer glory of learning. These two, the humble Savoyard and the high-born Navarrese, Loyola had resolved should be his first disciples.

As the artist selects his block, and with skillful eye and plastic hand bestows touch after touch of the chisel, till at last the superfluous parts are cleared away, and the statue stands forth so complete and perfect in its symmetry that the dead stone seems to breathe, so did the future general of the Jesuit army proceed to mold and fashion his two companions, Fabre and Xavier. The former was soft and pliable, and easily took the shape which the master-hand sought to communicate. The other was obdurate, like the rocks of his native mountains, but the patience and genius of Loyola finally triumphed over his pride of family and haughtiness of spirit. He first of all won their affection by certain disinterested services; he next excited their admiration by the loftiness of his own asceticism; he then imparted to them his grand project, and fired them with the ambition of sharing with him in the accomplishment of it. Having brought them thus far he entered them on a course of discipline, the design of which was to give them those hardy qualities of body and soul, which would enable them to fulfill their lofty vocation as leaders in an army, every soldier in which was to be tried and hardened in the fire as he himself had been. He exacted of them frequent confession; he was equally rigid as regarded their participation in the Eucharist; the one exercise trained them in submission, the other fed the flame of their zeal, and thus the two cardinal qualities which Loyola demanded in all his followers were developed side by side. Severe bodily mortifications were also enjoined upon them. "Three days and three nights did he compel them to fast. During the severest winters, when carriages might be seen to traverse the frozen Seine, he would not permit Fabre the slightest relaxation of discipline." Thus it was that he mortified their pride, taught them to despise wealth, schooled them to brave danger and contemn luxury, and inured them to cold, hunger, and toil; in short, he made them dead to every passion save that of the "Holy War," in which they were to bear arms.

A beginning had been made. The first recruits had been enrolled in that army which was speedily to swell into a mighty host, and unfurl its gloomy ensigns and win its dismal triumphs in every land. We can imagine Loyola's joy as he contemplated these two men, fashioned so perfectly in his own likeness. The same master-artificer who had molded these two could form others–in short, any number. The list was soon enlarged by the addition of four other disciples. Their names–obscure then, but in after-years to shine with a fiery splendor–were Jacob Lainez, Alfonso Salmeron, Nicholas Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriguez. The first three were Spaniards, the fourth was a Portuguese. They were seven in all; but the accession of two others increased them to nine: and now they resolved on taking their first step.

On the 15th of August, 1534, Loyola, followed by his nine companions, entered the subterranean chapel of the Church of Montmartre, at Paris, and mass being said by Fabre, who had received priest's orders, the company, after the usual vow of chastity and poverty, took a solemn oath to dedicate their lives to the conversion of the Saracens, or, should circumstances make that attempt impossible, to lay themselves and their services unreservedly at the feet of the Pope. They sealed their oath by now receiving the Host. The day was chosen because it was the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin, and the place because it was consecrated to Mary, the queen of saints and angels, from whom, as Loyola firmly believed, he had received his mission. The army thus enrolled was little, and it was great. It was little when counted, it was great when weighed. In sublimity of aim, and strength of faith–using the term in its mundane sense–it wielded a power before which nothing on earth– one principle excepted–should be able to stand.[2]

To foster the growth of this infant Hercules, Loyola had prepared beforehand his book entitled Spiritual Exercises. This is a body of rules for teaching men how to conduct the work of their "conversion." It consists of four grand meditations, and the penitent, retiring into solitude, is to occupy absorbingly his mind on each in succession, during the space of the rising and setting of seven suns. It may be fitly styled a journey from the gates of destruction to the gates of Paradise, mapped out in stages so that it might be gone in the short period of four weeks. There are few more remarkable books in the world. It combines the self-denial and mortification of the Brahmin with the asceticism of the anchorite, and the ecstasies of the schoolmen, it professes, like the Koran, to be a revelation. "The Book of Exercises," says a Jesuit, "was truly written by the finger of God, and delivered to Ignatius by the Holy Mother of God."[3]

The Spiritual Exercises, we have said, was a body of rules by following which one could effect upon himself that great change which in Biblical and theological language is termed "conversion." The book displayed on the part of its author great knowledge of the human heart. The method prescribed was an adroit imitation of that process of conviction, of alarm, of enlightenment, and of peace, through which the Holy Spirit leads the soul–that undergoes that change in very deed. This Divine transformation was at that hour taking place in thousands of instances in the Protestant world. Loyola, like the magicians of old who strove to rival Moses, wrought with his enchantments to produce the same miracle. Let us observe how he proceeded.

The person was, first of all, to go aside from the world, by entirely isolating himself from all the affairs of life. In the solemn stillness of his chamber he was to engage in four meditations each day, the first at daybreak, the last at midnight. To assist the action of the imagination on the soul, the room was to be artificially darkened, and on its walls were to be suspended pictures of hell and other horrors. Sin, death, and judgment were exclusively to occupy the thoughts of the penitent during the first week of his seclusion. He was to ponder upon them till in a sense "he beheld the vast conflagration of hell; its wailings, shrieks, and blasphemies; felt the worm of conscience; in fine, touched those fires by whose contact the souls of the reprobate are scorched."

The second week he was to withdraw his eye from these dreadful spectacles and fix it upon the Incarnation. It is no longer the wailings of the lost that fill the ear as he sits in his darkened chamber, it is the song of the angel announcing the birth of the Child, and "Mary acquiescing in the work of redemption." At the feet of the Trinity he is directed to pour out the expression of the gratitude and praise with which continued meditation on these themes causes his soul to overflow.

The third week is to witness the solemn act of the soul's enrollment in the army of that Great Captain, who "bowed the heavens and came down" in his Incarnation. Two cities are before the devotee–Jerusalem and Babylon–in which will he choose to dwell? Two standards are displayed in his sight–under which will he fight? Here a broad and brave pennon floats freely on the wind. Its golden folds bear the motto, "Pride, Honor, Riches." Here is another, but how unlike the motto inscribed upon it, "Poverty, Shame, Humility." On all sides resounds the cry "To arms." He must make his choice, and he must make it now, for the seventh sun of his third week is hastening to the setting. It is under the banner of Poverty that he elects to win the incorruptible crown.

Now comes his fourth and last week, and with it there comes a great change in the subjects of his meditation. He is to dismiss all gloomy ideas, all images of terror; the gates of Hades are to be closed, and those of a new life opened. It is morning with him, it is a spring-time that has come to him, and he is to surround himself with light, and flowers, and odors. It is the Sabbath of a spiritual creation; he is to rest, and to taste in that rest the prelude of the everlasting joys. This mood of mind he is to cultivate while seven suns rise and set upon him. He is now perfected and fit to fight in the army of the Great Captain.

A not unsimilar course of mental discipline, as our history has already shown, did Wicliffe, Luther, and Calvin pass through before they became captains in the army of Christ. They began in a horror of great darkness; through that cloud there broke upon them the revelation of the "Crucified;" throwing the arms of their faith around the Tree of Expiation, and clinging to it, they entered into peace, and tasted the joys to come. How like, yet how unlike, are these two courses! In the one the penitent finds a Savior on whom he leans; in the other he lays hold on a rule by which he works, and works as methodically and regularly as a piece of machinery. Beginning on a certain day, he finishes, like stroke of clock, duly as the seventh sun of the fourth week is sinking below the horizon. We trace in the one the action of the imagination, fostering one overmastering passion into strength, till the person becomes capable of attempting the most daring enterprises, and enduring the most dreadful sufferings. In the other we behold the intervention of a Divine Agent, who plants in the soul a new principle, and thence educes a new life. The war in which Loyola and his nine companions enroled themselves when on the 15th of August, 1534, they made their vow in the church of Montmarte, was to be waged against the Saracens of the East. They acted so far on their original design as to proceed to Venice, where they learned that their project was meanwhile impracticable. The war which had just broken out between the Republic and the Porte had closed the gates of Asia. They took this as an intimation that the field of their operations was to be in the Western world. Returning on their path they now directed their steps towards Rome. In every town through which they passed on their way to the Eternal City, they left behind them an immense reputation for sanctity by their labors in the hospitals, and their earnest addresses to the populace on the streets. As they drew nigh to Rome, and the hearts of some of his companions were beginning to despond, Loyola was cheered by a vision, in which Christ appeared and said to him, "In Rome will I be gracious unto thee."[4] The hopes this vision inspired were not to be disappointed. Entering the gates of the capital of Christendom, and throwing themselves at the feet of Paul III., they met a most gracious reception. The Pope hailed their offer of assistance as most opportune. Mighty dangers at that hour threatened the Papacy, and with the half of Europe in revolt, and the old monkish orders become incapable, this new and unexpected aid seemed sent by Heaven. The rules and constitution of the new order were drafted, and ultimately approved, by the Pope. Two peculiarities in the constitution of the proposed order specially recommended it in the eyes of Paul III. The first was its vow of unconditional obedience. The society swore to obey the Pope as an army obeys its general. It was not canonicle but military obedience which its members offered him. They would go to whatsoever place, at whatsoever time, and on whatsoever errand he should be pleased to order them. They were, in short, to be not so much monks as soldiers. The second peculiarity was that their services were to be wholly gratuitous; never would they ask so much as a penny from the Papal See.

It was resolved that the new order should bear the name of The Company of Jesus. Loyola modestly declined the honor of being accounted its founder. Christ himself, he affirmed, had dictated to him its constitution in his cave at Manressa. He was its real Founder: whose name then could it so appropriately bear as His? The bull constituting it was issued on the 27th of September, 1540, and was entitled Regimini Militantis Eeclesiae,[5] and bore that the persons it enrolled into an army were to bear "the standard of the Cross, to wield the arms of God, to serve the only Lord, and the Roman Pontiff, His Vicar on earth."

CHAPTER 3 Back to Top

ORGANIZATION AND TRAINING OF THE JESUITS.

Loyola's Vast Schemes–A General for the Army–Loyola Elected– "Constitutions"–Made Known to only a Select Few–Powers of the General–An Autocrat–He only can make Laws–Appoints all Officers, etc.–Organization–Six Grand Divisions–Thirty-seven Provinces– Houses, Colleges, Missions, etc.–Reports to the General–His Eye Surveys the World–Organization–Preparatory Ordeal–Four Classes–Novitiates–Second Novitiate–Its Rigorous Training–The Indifferents–The Scholars–The Coadjutors–The Professed–Their Oath–Their Obedience.

THE long-delayed wishes of Loyola had been realised, and his efforts, abortive in the past, had now at length been crowned with success. The Papal bull had given formal existence to the order, what Christ had done in heaven his Vicar had ratified on the earth. But Loyola was too wise to think that all had been accomplished; he knew that he was only at the beginning of his labors. In the little band around him he saw but the nucleus of an army that would multiply and expand till one day it should be as the stars in multitude, and bear the standard of victory to every land on earth. The gates of the East were meanwhile closed against him; but the Western world would not always set limits to the triumphs of his spiritual arms. He would yet subjugate both hemispheres, and extend the dominion of Rome from the rising to the setting sun. Such were the schemes that Loyola, who hid under his mendicant's cloak an ambition vast as Alexander's, was at that moment revolving. Assembling his comrades one day about this time, he addressed them, his biographer Bouhours tells us, in a long speech, saying, "Ought we not to conclude that we are called to win to God, not only a single nation, a single country, but all nations, all the kingdoms of the world?" [1]

An army to conquer the world, Loyola was forming. But he knew that nothing is stronger than its weakest part, and therefore the soundness of every link, the thorough discipline and tried fidelity of every soldier in this mighty host was with him an essential point. That could be secured only by making each individual, before enrolling himself, pass through an ordeal that should sift, and try, and harden him to the utmost.

But first the Company of Jesus had to elect a head. The dignity was offered to Loyola. He modestly declined the post, as Julius Caesar did the diadem. After four days spent in prayer and penance, his disciples returned and humbly supplicated him to be their chief. Ignatius, viewing this as an intimation of the will of God, consented. He was the first General of the order. Few royal sceptres bring with them such an amount of real power as this election bestowed on Loyola. The day would come when the tiara itself would bow before that yet mightier authority which was represented by the cap of the General of the Jesuits.

The second step was to frame the "Constitutions" of the society. In this labor Loyola accepted the aid of Lainez, the ablest of his converts. Seeing it was at God's command that Ignatius had planted the tree of Jesuitism in the spiritual vineyard, it was to be expected that the Constitutions of the Company would proceed from the same high source. The Constitutions were declared to be a revelation from God, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.[2] This gave them absolute authority over the members, and paved the way for the substitution of the Constitution and canons of the Society of Jesus in the room of Christianity itself. These canons and Instructions were not published: they were not communicated to all the members of the society even; they were made known to a few only–in all their extent to a very few. They took care to print them in their own college at Rome, or in their college at Prague; and if it happened that they were printed elsewhere, they secured and destroyed the edition. "I cannot discover," says M. de la Chalotais, "that the Constitutions of the Jesuits have ever been seen or examined by any tribunal whatsoever, secular or ecclesiastic; by any sovereign–not even by the Court of Chancery of Prague, when permission was asked to print them... They have taken all sorts of precautions to keep them a secret.[3] For a century they were concealed from the knowledge of the world; and it was an accident which at last dragged them into the light from the darkness in which they had so long been buried.

It is not easy, perhaps it is not possible, to say what number of volumes the Constitutions of the Jesuits form. M. Louis Rene de la Chalotais, Procurator-General of King Louis XV., in his Report on the Constitutions of the Jesuits', given in to the Parliament of Bretagne, speaks of fifty volumes folio. That was in the year 1761, or 221 years after the founding of the order. This code, then enormous, must be greatly more so now, seeing every bull and brief of the Pope addressed to the society, every edict of its General, is so much more added to a legislation that is continually augmenting. We doubt whether any member of the order is found bold enough to undertake a complete study of them, or ingenious enough to reconcile all their contradictions and inconsistencies. Prudently abstaining from venturing into a labyrinth from which he may never emerge, he simply asks, not what do the Constitutions say, but what does the General command? Practically the will of his chief is the code of the Jesuit.

We shall first consider the powers of the General. The original bull of Paul III. constituting the Company gave to "Ignatius de Loyola, with nine priests, his companions," the power to make Constitutions and particular rules, and also to alter them. The legislative power thus rested in the hands of the General and his company–that is, in a "Congregation" representing them. But when Loyola died, and Lainez succeeded him as General, one of his first acts was to assemble a Congregation, and cause it to be decided that the General only had the right to make rules.[4] This crowned the autocracy of the General, for while he has the power of legislating for all others, no one may legislate for him. He acts without control, without responsibility, without law. It is true that in certain cases the society may depose the General. But it cannot exercise its powers unless it be assembled, and the General alone can assemble the Congregation. The whole order, with all its authority, is, in fact, comprised in him. In virtue of his prerogative the General can command and regulate everything in the society. He may make special Constitutions for the advantage of the society, and he may alter them, abrogate them, and make new ones, dating them at any time he pleases. These new rules must be regarded as confirmed by apostolic authority, not merely from the time they were made, but the time they are dated.

The General assigns to all provincials, superiors, and members of the society, of whatever grade, the powers they are to exercise, the places where they are to labor, the missions they are to discharge, and he may annul or confirm their acts at his pleasure. He has the right to nominate provincials and rectors, to admit or exclude members, to say what proffered dignity they are or are not to accept, to change the destination of legacies, and, though to give money to his relatives exposes him to deposition, "he may yet give alms to any amount that he may deem conducive to the glory of God." He is invested moreover with the entire government and regulation of the colleges of the society. He may institute missions in all parts of the world. When commanding in the name of Jesus Christ, and in virtue of obedience, he commands under the penalty of mortal and venial sin. From his orders there is no appeal to the Pope. He can release from vows; he can examine into the consciences of the members; but it is useless to particularise–the General is the society.[5]

The General alone, we have said, has power to make laws, ordinances, and declarations. This power is theoretically bounded, though practically absolute. It has been declared that everything essential (" Substantia Institutionis ") to the society is immutable, and therefore removed beyond the power of the General. But it has never yet been determined what things belong to the essence of the institute. Many attempts have been made to solve this question, but no solution that is comprehensible has ever been arrived at; and so long as this question remains without an answer, the powers of the General will remain without a limit.

Let us next attend to the organization of the society. The Jesuit monarchy covers the globe. At its head, as we have said, is a sovereign, who rules over all, but is himself ruled over by no one. First come six grand divisions termed Assistanzen, satrapies or princedoms. These comprehend the space stretching from the Indus to the Mediterranean; more particularly India, Spain and Portugal, Germany and France, Italy and Sicily, Poland and Lithuania.[6] Outside this area the Jesuits have established missions. The heads of these six divisions act as coadjutors to their General; they are staff or cabinet.

These six great divisions are subdivided into thirty-seven Provinces.[7] Over each province is placed a chief, termed a Provincial. The provinces are again subdivided into a variety of houses or establishments. First come the houses of the Professed, presided over by their Provost. Next come the colleges, or houses of the novices and scholars, presided over by their Rector or Superior. Where these cannot be established, "residences" are erected, for the accommodation of the priests who perambulate the district, preaching and hearing confessions. And lastly may be mentioned "mission-houses," in which Jesuits live unnoticed as secular clergy, but seeking, by all possible means, to promote the interests of the society.[8]

From his chamber in Rome the eye of the General surveys the world of Jesuitism to its farthest bounds; there is nothing done in it which he does not see; there is nothing spoken in it which he does not hear. It becomes us to note the means by which this almost superhuman intelligence is acquired. Every year a list of the houses and members of the society, with the name, talents, virtues, and failings of each, is laid before the General. In addition to the annual report, every one of the thirty-seven provincials must send him a report monthly of the state of his province, he must inform him minutely of its political and ecclesiastical condition. Every superior of a college must report once every three months. The heads of houses of residence, and houses of novitiates, must do the same. In short, from every quarter of his vast dominions come a monthly and a tri-monthly report. If the matter reported on has reference to persons outside the society, the Constitutions direct that the provincials and superiors shall write to the General in cipher. "Such precautions are taken against enemies," says M. de Chalotais. "Is the system of the Jesuits inimical to all governments?"

Thus to the General of the Jesuits the world lies "naked and open." He sees by a thousand eyes, he hears by a thousand ears;and when he has a behest to execute, he can select the fittest agent from an innumerable host, all of whom are ready to do his bidding. The past history, the good and evil qualities of every member of the society, his talents, his dispositions, his inclinations, his tastes, his secret thoughts, have all been strictly examined, minutely chronicled, and laid before the eye of the General. It is the same as if he were present in person, and had seen and conversed with each.

All ranks, from the nobleman to the day-laborer; all trades, from the opulent banker to the shoemaker and porter; all professions, from the stoled dignitary and the learned professor to the cowled mendicant; all grades of literary men, from the philosopher, the mathematician, and the historian, to the schoolmaster and the reporter on the provincial newspaper, are enrolled in the society. Marshalled, and in continual attendance, before their chief, stand this host, so large in numbers, and so various in gifts. At his word they go, and at his word they come, speeding over seas and mountains, across frozen steppes, or burning plains, on his errand. Pestilence, or battle, or death may lie on his path, the Jesuit's obedience is not less prompt. Selecting one, the General sends him to the royal cabinet. Making choice of another, he opens to him the door of Parliament. A third he enrols in a political club; a fourth he places in the pulpit of a church, whose creed he professes that he may betray it; a fifth he commands to mingle in the saloons of the literati; a sixth he sends to act his part in the Evangelical Confrerence; a seventh he seats beside the domestic hearth; and an eighth he sends afar off to barbarous tribes, where, speaking a strange tongue, and wearing a rough garment, he executes, amidst hardships and perils, the will of his superior. There is no disguise which the Jesuit will not wear, no art he will not employ, no motive he will not feign, no creed he will not profess, provided only he can acquit himself a true soldier in the Jesuit army, and accomplish the work on which he has been sent forth. "We have men," exclaimed a General exultingly, as he glanced over the long roll of philosophers, orators, statesmen, and scholars who stood before him, ready to serve him in the State or in the Church, in the camp or in the school, at home or abroad– "We have men for martyrdom if they be required."

No one can be enrolled in the Society of Jesus till he has undergone a severe and long-continued course of training. Let us glance at the several grades of that great army, and the preparatory discipline in the case of each. There are four classes of Jesuits. We begin with the lowest. The Novitiates are the first in order of admission, the last in dignity. When one presents himself for admission into the order, a strict scrutiny takes place into his talents, his disposition, his family, his former life; and if it is seen that he is not likely to be of service to the society, he is at once dismissed. If his fitness appears probable, he is received into the House of Primary Probation.[9] Here he is forbidden all intercourse with the servants within and his relations outside the house. A Compend of the Institutions is submitted for his consideration; the full body of laws and regulations being withheld from him as yet. If he possesses property he is told that he must give it to the poor–that is, to the society. His tact and address, his sound judgment and business talent, his health and bodily vigor, are all closely watched and noted; above all, his obedience is subjected to severe experiment. If he acquits himself on the trial to the satisfaction of his examiners, he receives the Sacrament, and is advanced to the House of Second Probation.[10]

Here the discipline is of a yet severer kind. The novitiate first devotes a certain period to confession of sins and meditation. He next fulfils a course of service in the hospitals, learning humility by helping the poor and ministering at the beds of the sick. To further his advance in this grace, he next spends a certain term in begging his bread from door to door. Thus; he learns to live on the coarsest fare and to sleep on the hardest couch. To perfect himself in the virtue of self-abnegation, he next discharges for awhile the most humiliating and repulsive offices in the house in which he lives. And now, this course of service ended, he is invited to show his powers of operating on others, by communicating instruction to boys in Christian doctrine, by hearing confessions, and by preaching in public. This course is to last two years, unless the superior should see fit to shorten it on the ground of greater zeal, or superior talent.

The period of probation at an end, the candidate for admission into the Order of Jesus is to present himself before the superior, furnished with certificates from those under whose eye he has fulfilled the six experimenta, or trials, as to the manner in which he has acquitted himself. If the testimonials should prove satisfactory to the superior, the novitiate is enrolled, not as yet in the Company of the Jesuits, but among the Indifferents. He is presumed to have no choice as regards the place he is to occupy in the august corps he aspires to enter; he leaves that entirely to the decision of the superior; he is equally ready to stand at the head or at the foot of the body; to discharge the most menial or the most dignified service; to play his part in the saloons of the great, encompassed by luxury and splendor, or to discharge his mission in the hovels of the poor, in the midst of misery and filth; to remain at home, or to go to the ends of the earth. To have a preference, though unexpressed, is to fall into deadly sin. Obedience is not only the letter of his vow, it is the lesson that his training has written on his heart.[11]

This further trial gone through, the approved novitiate may now take the three simple vows–poverty, chastity, and obedience–which, with certain modifications, he must ever after renew twice every year. The novitiate is now admitted into the class of Scholars. The Jesuits have colleges of their own, amply endowed by wealthy devotees, and to one of these the novitiate is sent, to receive instruction in the higher mysteries of the society. His intellectual powers are here more severely tested and trained, and according to the genius and subtlety he may display, and his progress in his studies, so is the post assigned him in due time in the order. "The qualities to be desired and commended in the scholars," say the Constitutions, "are acuteness of talent, brilliancy of example, and soundness of body."[12] They are to be chosen men, picked from the flower of the troop, and the General has absolute power in admitting or dismissing them according to his expectations of their utility in promoting the designs of the institute.[13] Having finished his course, first as a simple scholar, and secondly as an approved scholar, he renews his three vows, and passes into the third class, or Coadjutors.

The coadjutors are divided into temporal and spiritual. The temporal coadjutor is never admitted into holy orders.[14] Such are retained to minister in the lowest offices. They become college cooks, porters, or purveyors. For these and similar purposes it is held expedient that they should be "lovers of virtue and perfection," and "content to serve the society in the careful office of a Martha."[15] The spiritual coadjutor must be a priest of adequate learning, that he may assist the society in hearing confessions, and giving instructions in Christian doctrine. It is from among the spiritual coadjutors that the rectors of colleges are usually selected by the General. It is a further privilege of theirs that they may be assembled in congregation to deliberate with the Professed members in matters of importance,[16] but no vote is granted them in the election of a General.

Having passed with approbation the many stringent tests to which he is here subjected, in order to perfect his humility and obedience, and having duly deposited in the exchequer of the society whatever property he may happen to possess, the spiritual coadjutor, if a candidate for the highest grade, is admitted to the oblation of his vows, which are similar in form and substance to those he has already taken, with this exception, that they assign to the General the place of God. "I promise," so runs the oath, "to the Omnipotent God, in presence of his virgin mother, and of all the heavenly hierarchy, and to thee, Father General of the Society of Jesus, holding the place of God," [17] etc. With this oath sworn on its threshold, he enters the inner circle of the society, and is enrolled among the Professed.

The Professed Members constitute the society par excellence. They alone know its deepest secrets, and they alone wield its highest powers. But perfection in Jesuitism cannot be reached otherwise than by the loss of manhood. Will, judgment, conscience, liberty, all the Jesuit lays down at the feet of his General. It is a tremendous sacrifice, but to him the General is God. He now takes his fourth, or peculiar vow, in which he binds himself to go, without question, delay, or repugnance, to whatever region of the earth, and on whatever errand, the Pope may be pleased to send him. This he promises to the Omnipotent God, and to his General, holding the place of God. The wisdom, justice, righteousness of the command he is not to question; he is not even to permit his mind to dwell upon it for a moment; it is the command of his General, and the command of his General is the precept of the Almighty. His superiors are "over him in the place of the Divine Majesty."[18] "In not fewer than 500 places in the Constitutions," says M. de la Chalotais, "are expressions used similar to the following:–"We must always see Jesus Christ in the General; be obedient to him in all his behests, as if they came directly from God himself.'"[19] When the command of the superior goes forth, the person to whom it is directed "is not to stay till he has finished the letter his pen is tracing," say the Constitutions; "he must give instant compliance, so that holy obedience may be perfect in us in every point–in execution, in will, in intellect."[20] Obedience is styled "the tomb of the will," "a blessed blindness, which causes the soul to see the road to salvation," and the members of the society are taught to "immolate their will as a sheep is sacrificed." The Jesuit is to be in the hands of his superior, "as the axe is in the hands of the wood-cutter," or "as a staff is in the hands of an old man, which serves him wherever and in whatever thing he is pleased to use it."

In fine, the Constitutions enjoin that "they who live under obedience shall permit themselves to be moved and directed under Divine Providence by their superiors just as if they were a corpse, which allows itself to be moved and handled in any way."[21] The annals of mankind do not furnish another example of a despotism so finished. We know of no other instance in which the members of the body are so numerous, or the ramifications so wide, and yet the centralisation and cohesion so perfect.

We have traced at some length the long and severe discipline which every member must undergo before being admitted into the select class that by way of eminence constitute the society. Before arriving on the threshold of the inner circle of Jesuitism, three times has the candidate passed through that terrible ordeal–first as a novice, secondly as a scholar, thirdly as a coadjutor. Is his training held to be complete when he is admitted among the Professed? No: a fourth time must he undergo the same dreadful process. He is thrown back again into the crucible, and kept amid its fires, till pride, and obstinacy, and self-will, and love of ease–till judgment, soul, and conscience have all been purged out of him, and then he comes forth, fully refined, completely attempered and hardened, "a vessel fully fitted" for the use of his General; prepared to execute with a conscience that never remonstrates his most terrible command, and to undertake with a will that never rebels the most difficult and dangerous enterprises he may assign him. In the words of an eloquent writer–"Talk of drilling and discipline! why, the drilling and the discipline which gave to Alexander the men that marched in triumph from Macedon to the Indus; to Caesar, the men that marched in triumph from Rome to the wilds of Caledonia; to Hannibal, the men that marched in triumph from Carthage to Rome; to Napoleon, the men whose achievements surpassed in brilliance the united glories of the soldiers of Macedon, of Carthage, and of Rome; and to Wellington, the men who smote into the dust the very flower of Napoleon's chivalry–why, the drilling and the discipline of all these combined cannot, in point of stern, rigid, and protracted severity, for a moment be compared to the drilling and discipline which fitted and molded men for becoming full members of the militant institute of the Jesuits."[22]

Such Loyola saw was the corps that was needed to confront the armies of Protestantism and turn back the advancing tide of light and liberty. Touched with a Divine fire, the disciples of the Gospel attained at once to a complete renunciation of self, and a magnanimity of soul which enabled them to brave all dangers and endure all sufferings, and to bear the standard of a recovered Gospel over deserts and oceans, in the midst of hunger and pestilence, of dungeons and racks and fiery stakes. It was vain to think of overcoming warriors like these unless by combatants of an equal temper and spirit, and Loyola set himself to fashion such. He could not clothe them with the panoply of light, he could not inspire them with that holy and invincible courage which springs from faith, nor could he so enkindle their souls with the love of the Savior, and the joys of the life eternal, as that they should despise the sufferings of time; but he could give them their counterfeits: he could enkindle them with fanaticism, inspire them with a Luciferian ambition, and so pervert and indurate their souls by evil maxims, and long and rigorous training, that they should be insensible to shame and pain, and would welcome suffering and death. Such were the weapons of the men he sent forth to the battle.

CHAPTER 4 Back to Top

MORAL CODE OF THE JESUITS–PROBABILISM, ETC.

The Jesuit cut off from Country–from Family–from Property–from the Pope even–The End Sanctifies the Means–The First Great Commandment and Jesuit Morality–When may a Man Love God?– Second Great Commandment–Doctrine of Probabilism–The Jesuit Casuists–Pascal–The Direction of the Intention–Illustrative Cases furnished by Jesuit Doctors–Marvellous Virtue of the Doctrine–A Pious Assassination!

WE have not yet surveyed the full and perfect equipment of those troops which Loyola sent forth to prosecute the war against Protestantism. Nothing was left unthought of and unprovided for which might assist them in covering their opponents with defeat, and crowning themselves with victory. They were set free from every obligation, whether imposed by the natural or the Divine law. Every stratagem, artifice, and disguise were lawful to men in whose favor all distinction between right and wrong had been abolished. They might assume as many shapes as Proteus, and exhibit as many colors as the chameleon. They stood apart and alone among the human race. First of all, they were cut off from country. Their vow bound them to go to whatever land their General might send them, and to remain there as long as he might appoint. Their country was the society. They were cut off from family and friends. Their vow taught them to forget their father's house, and to esteem themselves holy only when every affection and desire which nature had planted in their breasts had been plucked up by the roots. They were cut off from property and wealth. For although the society was immensely rich, its individual members possessed nothing. Nor could they cherish the hope of ever becoming personally wealthy, seeing they had taken a vow of perpetual poverty. If it chanced that a rich relative died, and left them as heirs, the General relieved them of their vow, and sent them back into the world, for so long a time as might enable them to take possession of the wealth of which they had been named the heirs; but this done, they returned laden with their booty, and, resuming their vow as Jesuits, laid every penny of their newly-acquired riches at the feet of the General.

They were cut off, moreover, from the State. They were discharged from all civil and national relationships and duties. They were under a higher code than the national one–the Institutions namely, which Loyola had edited, and the Spirit of God had inspired; and they were the subjects of a higher monarch than the sovereign of the nation–their own General. Nay, more, the Jesuits were cut off even from the Pope. For if their General "held the place of the Omnipotent God," much more did he hold the place of "his Vicar." And so was it in fact; for soon the members of the Society of Jesus came to recognize no laws but their own, and though at their first formation they professed to have no end but the defense and glory of the Papal See, it came to pass when they grew to be strong that, instead of serving the tiara, they compelled the tiara to serve the society, and made their own wealth, power, and dominion the one grand object of their existence. They were a Papacy within the Papacy–a Papacy whose organization was more perfect, whose instincts were more cruel, whose workings were more mysterious, and whose dominion was more destructive than that of the old Papacy.

So stood the Society of Jesus. A deep and wide gulf separated it from all other communities and interests. Set free from the love of family, from the ties of kindred, from the claims of country, and from the rule of law, careless of the happiness they might destroy, and the misery and pain and woe they might inflict, the members were at liberty, without control or challenge, to pursue their terrible end, which was the dethronement of every other power, the extinction of every other interest but their own, and the reduction of nmnkind into abject slavery, that on the ruins of the liberty, the virtue, and the happiness of the world they might raise themselves to supreme, unlimited dominion. But we have not yet detailed all the appliances with which the Jesuits were careful to furnish themselves for the execution of their unspeakably audacious and diabolical design. In the midst of these abysses there opens to our eye a yet profounder abyss. To enjoy exemption from all human authority and from every earthly law was to them a small matter; nothing would satisfy their lust for licence save the entire abrogation of the moral law, and nothing would appease their pride save to trample under foot the majesty of heaven. We now come to speak of the moral code of the Jesuits.

The key-note of their ethical code is the famous maxim that the end sanctifies the means. Before that maxim the eternal distinction of right and wrong vanishes. Not only do the stringency and sanctions of human law dissolve and disappear, but the authority and majesty of the Decalogue are overthrown. There are no conceivable crime, villany, and atrocity which this maxim will not justify. Nay, such become dutiful and holy, provided they be done for "the greater glory of God," by which the Jesuit means the honor, interest, and advancement of His society. In short, the Jesuit may do whatever he has a mind to do, all human and Divine laws notwithstanding. This is a very grave charge, but the evidence of its truth is, unhappily, too abundant, and the difficulty lies in making a selection. What the Popes have attempted to do by the plenitude of their power, namely, to make sin to be no sin, the Jesuit doctors have done by their casuistry. "The first and great commandment in the law," said the same Divine Person who proclaimed it from Sinai, "is to love the Lord thy God." The Jesuit casuists have set men free from the obligation to love God. Escobar [1] collects the different sentiments of the famous divines of the Society of Jesus upon the question, When is a man obliged to have actually an affection for God? The following are some of these:–Suarez says, "It is sufficient a man love him before he dies, not assigning any particular time. Vasquez, that it is sufficient even at the point of death.

Others, when a man receives his baptism: others, when he is obliged to be contrite: others, upon holidays. But our Father Castro-Palao [2] disputes all these opinions, and that justly. Hurtado de Mendoza pretends that a man is obliged to do it once every year. Our Father Coninck believes a man to be obliged once in three or four years. Henriquez, once in five years. But Filiutius affirms it to be probable that in rigor a man is not obliged every five years. When then? He leaves the point to the wise." "We are not," says Father Sirmond, "so much commanded to love him as not to hate him,"[3] Thus do the Jesuit theologians make void "the first; and great commandment in the law."

The second commandment in the law is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." This second great commandment meets with no more respect at the hands of the Jesuits than the first. Their morality dashes both tables of the law in pieces; charity to man it makes void equally with the love of God. The methods by which this may be done are innumerable.[4]

The first of these is termed probabilism. This is a device which enables a man to commit any act, be it ever so manifest a breach of the moral and Divine law, without the least restraint of conscience, remorse of mind, or guilt before God. What is probabilism? By way of answer we shall suppose that a man has a great mind to do a certain act, of the lawfulness of which he is in doubt. He finds that there are two opinions upon the point: the one probably true, to the effect that the act is lawful; the other more probably true, to the effect that the act is sinful. Under the Jesuit regimen the man is at liberty to act upon the probable opinion. The act is probably right, but more probably wrong, nevertheless he is safe in doing it, in virtue of the doctrine of probabalism. It is important to ask, what makes all opinion probable? To make an opinion probable a Jesuit finds easy indeed. If a single doctor has pronounced in its favor, though a score of doctors may have condemned it, or if the man can imagine in his own mind something like a tolerable reason for doing the act, the opinion that it is lawful becomes probable. It will be hard to name an act for which a Jesuit authority may not be produced, and harder still to find a man whose invention is so poor as not to furnish him with what he deems a good reason for doing what he is inclined to, and therefore it may be pronounced impossible to instance a deed, however manifestly opposed to the light of nature and the law of God, which may not be committed under the shield of the monstrous dogma of probabilism.[5]

We are neither indulging in satire nor incurring the charge of false-witness-bearing in this picture of Jesuit theology. "A person may do what he considers allowable," says Emmanuel Sa, of the Society of Jesus, "according to a probable opinion, although the contrary may be the more probable one. The opinion of a single grave doctor is all that is requisite."

A yet greater doctor, Filiutius, of Rome, confirms him in this. "It is allowable," says he, "to follow the less probable opinion, even though it be the less safe one. That is the common judgment of modern authors." "Of two contrary opinions," says Paul Laymann, "touching the legality or illegality of any human action, every one may follow in practice or in action that which he should prefer, although it may appear to the agent himself less probable in theory." he adds: "A learned person may give contrary advice to different persons according to contrary probable opinions, whilst he still preserves discretion and prudence." We may say with Pascal, "These Jesuit casuists give us elbow-room at all events!"[6]

It is and it is not is the motto of this theology. It is the true Lesbian rule which shapes itself according to that which we wish to measure by it. Would we have any action to be sinful, the Jesuit moralist turns this side of the code to us; would we have it to be lawful, he turns the other side. Right and wrong are put thus in our own power; we can make the same action a sin or a duty as we please, or as we deem it expedient. To steal the property, slander the character, violate the chastity, or spill the blood of a fellow-creature, is most probably wrong, but let us imagine some good to be got by it, and it is probably right. The Jesuit workers, for the sake of those who are dull of understanding and slow to apprehend the freedom they bring them, have gone into particulars and compiled lists of actions, esteemed sinful, unnatural, and abominable by the moral sense of all nations hitherto, but which, in virtue of this new morality, are no longer so, and they have explained how these actions may be safely done, with a minuteness of detail and a luxuriance of illustration, in which it were tedious in some cases, immodest in others, to follow them.

One would think that this was licence enough. What more can the Jesuit need, or what more can he possibly have, seeing by a little effort, of invention he can overleap every human and Divine barrier, and commit the most horrible crimes, on the mightiest possible scale, and neither feel remorse of conscience nor fear of punishment? But this unbounded liberty of wickedness did not content the sons of Loyola. They panted for a liberty, if possible, yet more boundless; they wished to be released from the easy condition of imagining some good end for the wickedness they wished to perpetrate, and to be free to sin without the trouble of assigning even to themselves any end at all. This they have accomplished by the method of directing the intention.

This is a new ethical science, unknown to those ages which were not privileged to bask in the illuminating rays of the Society of Jesus, and it is as simple as convenient. It is the soul, they argue, that does the act, so far as it is moral or immoral. As regards the body's share in it, neither virtue nor vice can be predicated of it. If, therefore, while the hand is shedding blood, or the tongue is calumniating character, or uttering a falsehood, the soul can so abstract itself from what the body is doing as to occupy itself the while with some holy theme, or fix its meditation upon some benefit or advantage likely to arise from the deed, which it knows, or at least suspects, the body is at that moment engaged in doing, the soul contracts neither guilt nor stain, and the man runs no risk of ever being called to account for the murder, or theft, or calumny, by God, or of incurring his displeasure on that ground. We are not satirising; we are simply stating the morality of the Jesuits. "We never," says the Father Jesuit in Pascal's Letters, "suffer such a thing as the formal intention to sin with the sole design of sinning; and if any person whatever should persist in having no other end but evil in the evil that he does, we break with him at once– such conduct is diabolical. This holds true, without exception, of age, sex, or rank. But when the person is not of such a wretched disposition as this, we try to put in practice our method of directying the intention, which simply consists in his proposing to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable object. Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade men from doing things forbidden; but when we cannot prevent the action, we at least, purify the motive, and thus correct the viciousness of the means by the goodness of the end. Such is the way in which our Fathers [of the society] have contrived to permit those acts of violence to which men usually resort in vindication of their honor. They have no more to do than to turn off the intention from the desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and to direct it to a desire to defend their honor, which, according to us, is quite warrantable. And in this way our doctors discharge all their duty towards God and towards man. By permitting the action they gratify the world; and by purifying the intention they give satisfaction to the Gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to the ancients; the world is indebted for the discovery entirely to our doctors. You understand it now, I hope.[7]

Let us take a few illustrative cases, but only such as Jesuit casuists themselves have furnished. "A military man," says Reginald,"[8] "may demand satisfaction on the spot from the person who has injured him, not indeed with the intention of rendering evil for evil, but with that of preserving his honor. Lessius [9] observes that if a man has received a blow on the face, he must on no account have an intention to avenge himself; but he may lawfully have an intention to avert infamy, and may, with that view, repel the insult immediately, even at the point of the sword. "If your enemy is disposed to injure you," says Escobar, "you have no right to wish his death by a movement of hatred, though you may to save yourself from harm." And says Hurtado de Mendoza [10] "We may pray God to visit with speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if there is no other way of escaping from it." "An incumbent," says Gaspar de Hurtado [11] "may without any mortal sin desire the decease of a life-renter on his benefice, and a son that of a father, and rejoice when it happens, provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is to accrue from the event, and not from personal aversion." Sanchez teaches that it is lawful to kill our adversary in a duel, or even privately, when he intends to deprive us of our honor or property unjustly in a law-suit, or by chicanery, and when there is no other way of preserving them.[12] It is equally right to kill in a private way a false accuser, and his witness, and even the judge who has been bribed to favor them. "A most pious assassination!" exclaims Pascal.

CHAPTER 5 Back to Top

THE JESUIT TEACHING ON REGICIDE, MURDER, LYING, THEFT, ETC.

The Maxims of the Jesuits on Reglcide–M. de la Chalotais' Report to the Parliament of Bretagne–Effects of Jesuit Doctrine as shown in History– Doctrine of Mental Equivocation–The Art of Swearing Falsely without Sin–The Seventh Commandment–Jesuit Doctrine on Blasphemy– Murder–Lying–Theft–An Illustrative Case from Pascal–Every Precept of the Decalogue made Void–Jesuit Morality the Consummation of the Wickedness of the Fall.

THE three great rules of the code of the Jesuits, which we have stated in the foregoing chapter–namely,

(1) that the end justifies the means;

(2) that it is safe to do any action if it be probably right, although it may be more probably wrong; and

(3) that if one know to direct the intention aright, there is no deed, be its moral character what it may, which one may not do–may seem to give a licence of acting so immense that to add thereto were an altogether superfluous, and indeed an impossible task.

But if the liberty with which these three maxims endow the Jesuit cannot be made larger, its particular applications may nevertheless be made more pointed, and the man who holds back from using it in all its extent may be emboldened, despite his remaining scruples, or the dullness of his intellectual perceptions, to avail himself to the utmost of the advantages it offers, "for the greater glory of God." He is to be taught, not merely by general rules, but by specific examples, how he may sin and yet not become sinful; how he may break the law and yet not suffer the penalty.

But, further, these sons of Loyola are the kings of the world, and the sole heirs of all its wealth, honors, and pleasures; and whatever law, custom, sacred and venerable office, august and kingly authority, may stand between them and their rightful lordship over mankind, they are at liberty to throw down and tread into the dust as a vile and accursed thing. The moral maxims of the Jesuits are to be put in force against kings as well as against peasants.

The lawfulness of killing excommunicated, that is Protestant, kings, the Jesuit writers have been at great pains to maintain, and by a great variety of arguments to defend and enforce. The proof is as abundant as it is painful. M. de la Chalotais reports to the Parliament of Bretagne, as the result of his examination of the laws and doctrines of the Jesuits, that on this point there is a complete and startling unanimity in their teaching. By the same logical track do the whole host of Jesuit writers arrive at the same terrible conclusion, the slaughter, namely, of the sovereign on whom the Pope has pronounced sentence of deposition. If he shall take meekly his extrusion from Power, and seek neither to resist nor revenge his being hurled from his throne, his life may be spared; but should "he persist in disobedience," says M. de la Chalotais, himself a Papist, and addressing a Popish Parliament, "he may be treated as a tyrant, in which case anybody may kill him.[1] Such is the course of reasoning established by all authors of the society, who have written ex professo on these subjects–Bellarmine, Suarez, Molina, Mariana, Santarel–all the Ultramontanes without exception, since the establishment of the society."[2]

But have not the writers of this school expressed in no measured terms their abhorrence of murder? Have they not loudly exclaimed against the sacrilege of touching him on whom the Church's anointing oil has been poured as king? In short, do they not forbid and condemn the crime of regicide? Yes: this is true; but they protest with a warmth that is fitted to awaken suspicion. Rome can take back her anointing, and when she has stripped the monarch of his office he becomes the lawful victim of her consecrated dagger. On what grounds, the Jesuits demand, can the killing of one who is no longer a king be called regicide? Suarez tells us that when a king is deposed he is no longer to be regarded as a king, but as a tyrant: "he therefore loses his authority, and from that moment may be lawfully killed." Nor is the opinion of the Jesuit Mariana less decided. Speaking of a prince, he says: "If he should overthrow the religion of the country, and introduce a public enemy within the State, I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favorting the public wishes, would attempt to kill him... It is useful that princes should be made to know, that if they oppress the State and become intolerable by their vices and their pollution, they hold their lives upon this tenure, that to put them to death is not only laudable, but a glorious action... It is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent and mischievous race from the community of men."[3]

Wherever the Jesuits have planted missions, opened seminaries, and established colleges, they have been careful to inculcate these principles in the minds of the youth; thus sowing the seeds of future tumults, revolutions, regicides, and wars. These evil fruits have appeared sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but they have never failed to show themselves, to the grief of nations and the dismay of kings. John Chatel, who attempted the life of Henry IV., had studied in the College of Clermont, in which the Jesuit Guignard was Professor of Divinity. In the chamber of the would-be regicide, a manuscript of Guignard was found, in which, besides other dangerous articles, that Father approved not only of the assassination of Henry III. by Clement, but also maintained that the same thing ought to be attempted against le Bearnois, as he called Henry IV., which occasioned the first banishment of the order out of France, as a society detestable and diabolical. The sentence of the Parliament, passed in 1594, ordained "that all the priests and scholars of the College of Clermont, and others calling themselves the Society of Jesus, as being corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, and enemies of the king and State, should depart in three days from their house and college, and in fifteen days out of the whole kingdom."

But why should we dwell on these written proofs of the disloyal and murderous principles of the Jesuits, when their acted deeds bear still more emphatic testimony to the true nature and effects of their principles? We have only to look around, and on every hand the melancholy monuments of these doctrines meet our afflicted sight. To what country of Europe shall we turn where we are not able to track the Jesuit by his bloody foot-prints? What page of modern history shall we open and not read fresh proofs that the Papal doctrine of killing excommunicated kings was not meant to slumber in forgotten tomes, but to be acted out in the living world? We see Henry III. falling by their dagger. Henry IV. perishes by the same consecrated weapon. The King of Portugal dies by their order.

The great Prince of Orange is dispatched by their agent, shot down at the door of his own dining-room. How many assassins they sent to England to murder Elizabeth, history attests. That she escaped their machinations is one of the marvels of history. Nor is it only the palaces of monarchs into which they have crept with their doctrines of murder and assassination; the very sanctuary of their own Popes they have defiled with blood. We behold Clement XIV. signing the order for the banishment of the Jesuits, and soon thereafter he is overtaken by their vengeance, and dies by poison. In the Gunpowder Plot we see them deliberately planning to destroy at one blow the nobility and gentry of England. To them we owe those civil wars which for so many years drenched with blood the fair provinces of France. They laid the train of that crowning horror, the St. Bartholomew massacre. Philip II. and the Jesuits share between them the guilt of the "Invincible Armada," which, instead of inflicting the measureless ruin and havoc which its authors intended, by a most merciful Providence became the means of exhausting the treasures and overthrowing the prestige of Spain. What a harvest of plots, tumults, seditions, revolutions, torturings, poisonings, assassinations, regicides, and massacres has Christendom reaped from the seed sown by the Jesuits! Nor can we be sure that we have yet seen the last and greatest of their crimes.

We can bestow only the most cursory glance at the teaching of the Jesuits under the other heads of moral duty. Let us take their doctrine of mental reservation. Nothing can be imagined more heinous and, at the same time, more dangerous. "The doctrine of equivocation," says Blackwell, "is for the consolation of afflicted Roman Catholics and the instruction of all the godly." It has been of special use to them when residing among infidels and heretics. In heathen countries, as China and Malabar, they have professed conformity to the rites and the worship of paganism, while remaining Roman Catholics at heart, and they have taught their converts to venerate their former deities in appearance, on the strength of directing aright the intention, and the pious fraud of concealing a crucifix under their clothes.

Equivocation they have carried into civil life as well as into religion. "A man may swear," says Sanchez, "that he hath not done a thing though he really have, by understanding within himself that he did it not on such and such a day, or before he was born; or by reflecting on some other circumstance of the like nature; and yet the words he shall make use of shall not have a sense implying any such thing; and this is a thing of great convenience on many occasions, and is always justifiable when it is necessary or advantageous in anything that concerns a man's health, honor, or estate."[4] Filiutius, in his Moral Questions, asks, "Is it wrong to use equivocation in swearing? I answer, first, that it is not in itself a sin to use equivocation in swearing This is the common doctrine after Suarez." Is it perjury or sin to equivocate in a just cause?" he further asks. "It is not perjury," he answers. "As, for example, in the case of a man who has outwardly made a promise without the intention of promising; if he is asked whether he has promised, he may deny it, meaning that he has not promised with a binding promise; and thus he may swear."

Filiutius asks yet again, "With what precaution is equivocation to be used? When we begin, for instance, to say, I swear, we must insert in a subdued tone the mental restriction, that today, and then continue aloud, I have not eaten such a thing; or, I swear–then insert, I say–then conclude in the same loud voice, that I have not done this or that thing; for thus the whole speech is most true.[5] What an admirable lesson in the art of speaking the truth to one's self, and lying and swearing falsely to everybody else![6]

We shall offer no comment on the teaching of the Jesuits under the head of the seventh commandment. The doctrines of the society which relate to chastity are screened from exposure by the very enormity of their turpitude. We pass them as we would the open grave, whose putrid breath kills all who inhale it. Let all who value the sweetness of a pure imagination, and the joy of a conscience undefiled, shun the confessional as they would the chamber in which the plague is shut up, or the path in which lurks the deadly scorpion. The teaching of the Jesuits–everywhere deadly–is here a poison that consumes flesh, and bones, and soul.

Which precept of the Decalogue is it that the theology of the Jesuits does not set aside? We are commanded "to fear the great and dreadful name of the Lord our God." The Jesuit Bauny teaches us to blaspheme it. "If one has been hurried by passion into cursing and doing despite to his Maker, it may be determined that he has only sinned venially." [7] This is much, but Casnedi goes a little farther. "Do what your conscience tells you to be good, and commanded," says this Jesuit; "if through invincible error you believe lying or blasphemy to be commanded by God, blaspheme." [8] The license given by the Jesuits to regicide we have already seen; not less ample is the provision their theology makes for the perpetration of ordinary homicides and murders. Reginald says it is lawful to kill a false witness, seeing otherwise one should be killed by him.[9] Parents who seek to turn their children from the faith, says Fagundez, "may justly be killed by them." [10] The Jesuit Amicus teaches that it is lawful for an ecclesiastic, or one in a religious order, to kill a calumniator when other means of defense are wanting.[11] And Airult extends the same privilege to laymen. If one brings an impeachment before a prince or judge against another, and if that other cannot by any means avert the injury to his character, he may kill him secretly. He fortifies his opinion by the authority of Bannez, who gives the same latitude to the right of defense, with this slight qualification, that the calumniator should first be warned that he desist from his slander, and if he will not, he should be killed, not openly, on account of the scandal, but secretly. [12]

Of a like ample kind is the liberty which the Jesuits permit to be taken with the property of one's neighbor. Dishonesty in all its forms they sanction. They encourage cheats, frauds, purloinings, robberies, by furnishing men with a ready justification of these misdeeds, and especially by persuading their votaries that if they will only take the trouble of doing them in the way of directing the intention according to their instructions, they need not fear being called to a reckoning for them hereafter. The Jesuit Emmanuel Sa teaches "that it is not a mortal sin to take secretly from him who would give if he were asked;" that "it is not theft to take a small thing from a husband or a father;" that if one has taken what he doubts to have been his own, that doubt makes it probable that it is safe to keep it; that if one, from an urgent necessity, or without causing much loss, takes wood from another man's pile, he is not obliged to restore it. One who has stolen small things at different times, is not obliged to make restitution till such time as they amount together to a considerable sum. But should the purloiner feel restitution burdensome, it may comfort him to know that some Fathers deny it with probability.[13]

The case of merchants, whose gains may not be increasing so fast as they could wish, has been kindly considered by the Fathers. Francis Tolet says that if a man cannot sell his wine at a fair price–that is, at a fair profit– he may mix a little water with his wine, or diminish his measure, and sell it for pure wine of full measure. Of course, if it be lawful to mix wine, it is lawful to adulterate all other articles of merchandise, or to diminish the weight, and go on vending as if the balance were just and the article genuine. Only the trafficker in spurious goods, with false balances, must be careful not to tell a lie; or if he should be compelled to equivocate, he must do it in accordance with the rules laid down by the Fathers for enabling one to say what is not true without committing falsehood.[14]

Domestic servants also have been taken by the Fathers under the shield of their casuistry. Should a servant deem his wages not enough, or the food, clothing, and other necessaries provided for him not equal to that which is provided for servants of similar rank in other houses, he may recompense himself by abstracting from his master's property as much as shall make his wages commensurate with his services. So has Valerius Reginald decided.[15]

It is fair, however, that the pupil be cautioned that this lesson cannot safely be put in practice against his teacher. The story of John d'Alba, related by Pascal, shows that the Fathers do not relish these doctrines in praxi nearly so well as in thesi, when they themselves are the sufferers by them. D'Alba was a servant to the Fathers in the College of Clermont, in the Rue St. Jacques, and thinking that his wages were not equal to his merits, he stole somewhat from his masters to. make up the discrepancy, never dreaming that they would make a criminal of him for following their approved rules. However, they threw him into prison on a charge of larceny. He was brought to trial on the 16th April, 1647. He confessed before the court to having taken some pewter plates, but maintained that the act was not to be regarded as a theft, on the strength of this same doctrine of Father Bauny, which he produced before the judges, with attestation from another of the Fathers, under whom he had studied these cases of conscience. Whereupon the judge, M. de Montrouge, gave sentence as follows:–"That the prisoner should not be acquitted upon the writings of these Fathers, containing a doctrine so unlawful, pernicious, and contrary to all laws, natural, Divine, and human, such as might confound all families, and authorize all domestic frauds and infidelities;" but that the over-faithful disciple "should be whipt before the College gate of Clermont by the common executioner, who at the same time should burn all the writings of those Fathers treating of theft; and that they should be prohibited to teach any such doctrine again under pain of death."[16]

But we should swell beyond all reasonable limit, our enumeration, were we to quote even a tithe of the "moral maxims" of the Jesuits. There is not One in the long catalogue of sins and crimes which their casuistry does not sanction. Pride, ambition, avarice, luxury, bribery, and a host of vices which we cannot specify, and some of which are too horrible to be mentioned, find in these Fathers their patrons and defenders. The alchemists of the Middle Ages boasted that their art enabled them to operate on the essence of things, and to change what was vile into what was noble. But the still darker art of the Jesuits acts in the reverse order; it changes all that is noble into all that is vile. Theirs is an accursed alchemy by which they transmute good into evil, and virtue into vice. There is no destructive agency with which the world is liable to be visited, that penetrates so deep, or inflicts so remediless a ruin, as the morality of the Jesuits. The tornado sweeps along over the surface of the globe, leaving the earth naked and effaced and forgotten in the greater splendor and the more solid strength of the restored structures. Revolution may overturn thrones, abolish laws, and break in pieces the framework of society; but when the fury of faction has spent its rage, order emerges from the chaos, law resumes its supremacy, and the bare as before tree or shrub beautified it; but the summers of after years re-clothe it with verdure and beautify it with flowers, and make it smile as sweetly as before. The earthquake overturns the dwelling of man, and swallows up the proudest of his cities; but his skill and power survive the shock, and when the destroyer has passed, the architect sets up again the fallen palace, and rebuilds the ruined city, and the catastrophe is effaced and forgotten in the greater splendor and the more solid strength of the restored structures. Revolution may overturn thrones, abolish laws, and break in pieces the framework of society; but when the fury of faction has spent its rage, order emerges from the chaos, law resumes its supremacy, and the institutions which had been destroyed in the hour of madness, are restored in the hour of calm wisdom that succeeds. But the havoc the Jesuit inflicts is irremediable. It has nothing in it counteractive or restorative; it is only evil. It is not upon the works of man or the institutions of man merely that, it puts forth its fearfully destructive power; it is upon man himself. It is not the body of man that it strikes, like the pestilence; it is the soul. It is not a part, but the whole of man that it consigns to corruption and ruin. Conscience it destroys, knowledge it extinguishes, the very power of discerning between right and wrong it takes away, and shuts up the man in a prison whence no created agency or influence can set him free. The Fall defaced the image of God in which man was made; we say, defaced; it did not totally obliterate or extinguish it. Jesuitism, more terrible than the Fall, totally effaces from the soul of man the image of God. Of the "knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness" in which man was made it leaves not a tree. It plucks up by its very roots the moral constitution which God gave man. The full triumph of Jesuitism would leave nothing spiritual, nothing moral, nothing intellectual, nothing strictly and properly human existing upon the earth.

Man it would change into the animal, impelled by nothing but appetites and passions, and these more fierce and cruel than those of the tiger. Society would become simply a herd of wolves, lawless, ravenous, greedy of each other's blood, and perpetually in quest of prey. Even Jesuitism itself would perish, devoured by its own progeny. Our earth at last would be simply a vast sepulcher, moving round the sun in its annual circuit, its bosom as joyless, dreary, and waste as are those silent spaces through which it rolls.

CHAPTER 6 Back to Top

THE "SECRET INSTRUCTIONS" OF THE JESUITS.

The Jesuit Soldier in Armor complete–Secret Instructions–How to Plant their First Establishments–Taught to Court the Parochial Clergy–to Visit the Hospitals–to Find out the Wealth of their several Districts– to make Purchases in another Name–to Draw the Youth round them–to Supplant the Older Orders–How to get the Friendship of Great Men–How to Manage Princes–How to Direct their Policy– Conduct their Embassies–Appoint their Servants, etc.–Taught to Affect a Great Show of Lowliness.

SO far we have traced the enrollment and training of that mighty army which Loyola had called into existence for the conquest of Protestantism. Their leader, who was quite as much the shrewd calculator as the fiery fanatic, took care before sending his soldiers into the field to provide them with armor, every way fitted for the combatants they were to meet, and the campaign they were to wage. The war in which they were to be occupied was one against right and truth, against knowledge and liberty, and where could weapons be found for the successful prosecution of a conflict like this, save in the old-established arsenal of sophisms The schoolmen, those Vulcans of the Middle Ages, had forged these weapons with the hammers of their speculation on the anvil of their subtlety, and having made them sharp of edge, and given them an incomparable flexibility, they stored them up, and kept them in reserve against the great coming day of battle. To this armory Loyola, and the chiefs that succeeded him in command, had recourse. But not content with these weapons as the schoolmen had left them, the Jesuit doctors put them back again into the fire; they kept them in a furnace, heated seven times, till every particle of the dross of right and truth that cleaved to them had been tmrged out, and they had acquired a flexibility absolutely and altogether perfect, and a keenness of edge unattained before, and were now deemed every way fit for the hands that were to wield them, and every way worthy of the cause in which they were to be drawn. So attempered, they could cut through shield and helmet, through body and soul of the foe.

Let us survey the soldier of Loyola, as he stands in the complete and perfect panoply his General has provided him with. How admirably harnessed for the battle he is to fight! He has his "loins girt about with" mental and verbal equivocation; he has "on the breast-plate of" probabilism; his "feet are shod with the preparation of the" Secret Instruction. "Above all, taking the shield of" intention, and rightly handling it, he is "able to quench all the fiery darts of" human remorse and Divine threatenings. He takes "for an helmet the hope of" Paradise, which has been most surely promised him as the reward of his services; and in his hand he grasps the two-edged sword of a fiery fanaticism, wherewith he is able to cut his way, with prodigious bravery, through truth and righteousness.[1] Verily, the man who has to sustain the onset of soldiers like these, and parry the thrusts of their weapons, had need to be mindful of the ancient admonition, "Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."

Shrewd, practical, and precise are the instructions of the Jesuits. First of all they are told to select the best points in that great field, all of which they are in due time to subjugate and possess. That field is Christendom. They are to begin by establishing convents, or colleges, in the chief cities. The great centers of population and wealth secured, the smaller places will be easily occupied.

Should any one ask on what errand the good Fathers have come, they are instructed to make answer that their "sole object is the salvation of souls." What a pious errand! Who would not strive to be the first to welcome to their houses, and to seat at their tables, men whose aims are so unselfish and heavenly? They are to be careful to maintain a humble and submissive deportment; they are to pay frequent visits to the hospitals, the sick-chamber, and the prisons. They are to make great show of charity, and as they have nothing of their own to give to the poor, they are "to go far and near" to receive even the "smallest atoms." These good deeds will not lose their reward if only they take care not to do them in secret. Men will begin to speak of them and say, What a humble, pious, charitable order of men these Fathers of the Society of Jesus are! How unlike the Franciscans and Dominicans, who were want to care for the sick and the poor, but have now forgotten the virtues of a former tune, and are grown proud, indolent, luxurious, and rich! Thus the "new-comers," the Instructions hint, will supplant the other and older orders, and will receive "the respect and reverence of the best and most eminent in the neighborhood."[2]

Further, they are enjoined to conduct themselves very deferentially towards the parochial clergy, and not to perform any sacred function till first they have piously and submissively asked the bishop's leave. This will secure their good graces, and dispose the secular clergy to protect them; but by-and-by, when they have ingratiated themselves with the people, they may abate somewhat of this subserviency to the clergy.

The individual Jesuit takes a vow of poverty, but the society takes no such vow, and is qualified to hold property to any amount. Therefore, while seeking the salvation of souls, the members are carefully to note the rich men in the community. They must find out who own the estates in the neighborhood, and what are their yearly values. They are to secure these estates by gift, if possible; if not, by purchase. When it happens that they "get anything that is considerable, let the purchase be made under a strange name, by some of our friends, that our poverty may still seem the greater."