or the society of Jesus, one of the most celebrated monastic
orders of the Romish church, was founded in the year 1540, by Ignatius
Loyola, Forsaking the military for the ecclesiastical profession, he
engaged himself in the wildest and most extravagant adventures, as the
knight of the blessed virgin. After performing a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and pursuing a multitude of visionary schemes, he returned to
prosecute his theological studies in the universities of Spain, when he
was about thirty-three years of age. He next went to Paris, where he
collected a small number of associates; and, prompted by his fanatical
spirit, or the love of distinction, began to conceive the establishment
of a new religious order. He produced a plan of its constitution and
laws, which he affirmed to have been suggested by the immediate
inspiration of Heaven, and applied to the Roman pontiff, Paul III. for
the sanction of his authority to confirm the institution. At a time when
the papal authority had received so severe a shock from the progress of
the Reformation, and was still exposed to the most powerful attacks in
every quarter, this was an offer too tempting to be resisted. The
reigning pontiff, though naturally cautious, and though scarcely
capable, without the spirit of prophecy, of foreseeing all the
advantages to be derived from the services of this nascent order, yet
clearly perceiving the benefit of multiplying the number of his devoted
servants, instantly confirmed by his bull the institution of the
Jesuits, granted the most ample privileges to the members of the
society, and appointed Loyola to be the first general of the order.
2. The simple and primary object of the society, says a writer in the
Edinburgh Encyclopædia, was to establish a spiritual dominion over the
minds of men, of which the pope should appear as the ostensible head,
while the real power should reside with themselves. To accomplish this
object, the whole constitution and policy of the order were singularly
adapted, and exhibited various peculiarities which distinguished it from
all other monastic orders. The immediate design of every other religious
society was to separate its members from the world; that of the Jesuits,
to render them masters of the world. The inmate of the convent devoted
himself to work out his own salvation by extraordinary acts of devotion
and self-denial; the follower of Loyola considered himself as plunging
into all the bustle of secular affairs, to maintain the interests of the
Romish church. The monk was a retired devotee of heaven; the Jesuit a
chosen soldier of the pope. That the members of the new order might have
full leisure for this active service, they were exempted from the usual
functions of other monks. They were not required to spend their time in
the long ceremonial offices and numberless mummeries of the Romish
worship. They attended no processions, and practised no austerities.
They neither chanted nor prayed. “They cannot sing,” said their enemies;
“for birds of prey never do.” They were sent forth to watch every
transaction of the world which might appear to affect the interests of
religion, and were especially enjoined to study the dispositions and
cultivate the friendship of persons in the higher ranks. Nothing could
be imagined more open and liberal than the external aspect of the
institution, yet nothing could be more strict and secret than its
internal organization. Loyola, influenced, perhaps, by the notions of
implicit obedience which he had derived from his military profession,
resolved that the government of the Jesuits should be absolutely
monarchical. A general, chosen for life by deputies from the several
provinces, possessed supreme and independent power, extending to every
person, and applying to every case. Every member of the order, the
instant that he entered its pale, surrendered all freedom of thought and
action; and every personal feeling was superseded by the interests of
that body to which he had attached himself. He went wherever he was
ordered; he performed whatever he was commanded; he suffered whatever he
was enjoined; he became a mere passive instrument incapable of
resistance. The gradation of ranks was only a gradation in slavery; and
so perfect a despotism over a large body of men, dispersed over the face
of the earth, was never before realized.
The maxims of policy adopted by this celebrated society were, like its
constitution, remarkable for their union of laxity and rigour. Nothing
could divert them from their original object; and no means were ever
scrupled which promised to aid its accomplishment. They were in no
degree shackled by prejudice, superstition, or real religion.
Expediency, in its most simple and licentious form, was the basis of
their morals, and their principles and practices were uniformly
accommodated to the circumstances in which they were placed; and even
their bigotry, obdurate as it was, never appears to have interfered with
their interests. The paramount and characteristic principle of the
order, from which none of its members ever swerved, was simply this,
that its interests were to be promoted by all possible means, at all
possible expense. In order to acquire more easily an ascendancy over
persons of rank and power, they propagated a system of the most relaxed
morality, which accommodated itself to the passions of men, justified
their vices, tolerated their imperfections, and authorized almost every
action which the most audacious or crafty politician would wish to
perpetrate. To persons of stricter principles they studied to recommend
themselves by the purity of their lives, and sometimes by the austerity
of their doctrines. While sufficiently compliant in the treatment of
immoral practices, they were generally rigidly severe in exacting a
strict orthodoxy in opinions. “They are a sort of people,” said the Abbé
Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.” They
adopted the same spirit of accommodation in their missionary
undertakings; and their Christianity, chamelionlike, readily assumed the
colour of every religion where it happened to be introduced. They freely
permitted their converts to retain a full proportion of the old
superstitions, and suppressed, without hesitation, any point in the new
faith which was likely to bear hard on their prejudices or propensities.
They proceeded to still greater lengths; and, beside suppressing the
truths of revelation, devised the most absurd falsehoods, to be used for
attracting disciples, or even to be taught as parts of Christianity. One
of them in India produced a pedigree to prove his own descent from
Brama; and another in America assured a native chief that Christ had
been a valiant and victorious warrior, who, in the space of three years,
had scalped an incredible number of men, women, and children. It was, in
fact, their own authority, not the authority of true religion, which
they wished to establish; and Christianity was generally as little
known, when they quitted the foreign scenes of their labours as when
they entered them.
These detestable objects and principles, however, were long an
impenetrable secret: and the professed intention of the new order was to
promote, with unequalled and unfettered zeal, the salvation of mankind.
Its progress, nevertheless, was at first remarkably slow. Charles V.,
who is supposed, with his usual sagacity, to have discerned its
dangerous tendency, rather checked than encouraged its advancement; and
the universities of France resisted its introduction into that kingdom.
Thus, roused by obstacles, and obliged to find resources within
themselves, the Jesuits brought all their talents and devices into
action. They applied themselves to every useful function and curious
art; and neither neglected nor despised any mode, however humble, of
gaining employment or reputation. The satirist’s description of the
Greeks in Rome has been aptly chosen to describe their indefatigable and
universal industry:--
_Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes,
Augur, schœnobates, medicus, magus; omnia novit
Græculus._
Juvenal, lib. iii, 76.
“A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,
Which shifts to every form, and shines in all:
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Rope-dancer, conjuror, fiddler, and physician,--
All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts.”
GIFFORD.
They laboured with the greatest assiduity to qualify themselves as the
instructers of youth; and succeeded, at length, in supplanting their
opponents in every Catholic kingdom. They aimed, in the next place, to
become the spiritual directors of the higher ranks; and soon established
themselves in most of the courts which were attached to the papal faith,
not only as the confessors, but frequently also as the guides and
ministers, of superstitious princes. The governors of the society
pursuing one uniform system with unwearied perseverance, became entirely
successful; and, in the space of half a century, had in a wonderful
degree extended the reputation, the number, and influence of the order.
When Loyola, in 1540, petitioned the pope to authorize the institution
of the Jesuits, he had only ten disciples; but in 1608 the number
amounted to 10,581. Before the expiration of the sixteenth century they
had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every
Catholic country in Europe, and had become the confessors of almost all
its noblest monarchs. In spite of their vow of poverty, their wealth
increased with their power; and they soon rivalled, in the extent and
value of their possessions, the most opulent monastic fraternities.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, they obtained from the
court of Madrid the grant of the large and fertile province of Paraguay,
which stretches across the southern continent of America, from the
mountains of Potosi to the banks of the river La Plata; and, after every
deduction which can reasonably be made from their own accounts of their
establishment, enough will remain to excite the astonishment and
applause of mankind. They found the inhabitants in the first stage of
society, ignorant of the arts of life, and unacquainted with the first
principles of subordination. They applied themselves to instruct and
civilize these savage tribes. They commenced their labours by collecting
about fifty families of wandering Indians, whom they converted and
settled in a small township. They taught them to build houses, to
cultivate the ground, and to rear tame animals; trained them to arts and
manufactures, and brought them to relish the blessings of security and
order. By a wise and humane policy, they gradually attracted new
subjects and converts; till at last they formed a powerful and well
organized state of three hundred thousand families.
Though the power of the Jesuits had become so extensive, and though
their interests generally prospered during a period of more than two
centuries, their progress was by no means uninterrupted; and, by their
own misconduct, they soon excited the most formidable counteractions.
Scarcely had they effected their establishment in France, in defiance of
the parliaments and universities, when their existence was endangered by
the fanaticism of their own members. John Chastel, one of their pupils,
made an attempt upon the life of Henry IV.; and Father Guiscard, another
of the order, was convicted of composing writings favourable to
regicide. The parliaments seized the moment of their disgrace, and
procured their banishment from every part of the kingdom, except the
provinces of Bourdeaux and Toulouse. From these rallying points, they
speedily extended their intrigues in every quarter, and in a few years
obtained their re-establishment. Even Henry, either dreading their
power, or pleased with the exculpation of his licentious habits, which
he found in their flexible system of morality, became their patron, and
selected one of their number as his confessor. They were favoured by
Louis XIII. and his minister Richelieu, on account of their literary
exertions; but it was in the succeeding reign of Louis XIV. that they
reached the summit of their prosperity. The Fathers La Chaise and Le
Teltier were successively confessors to the king; and did not fail to
employ their influence for the interest of their order: but the latter
carried on his projects with so blind and fiery a zeal, that one of the
Jesuits is reported to have said of him, “He drives at such a rate, that
he will overturn us all.” The Jansenists were peculiarly the objects of
his machinations, and he rested not till he had accomplished the
destruction of their celebrated college and convent at Port Royal.
Before the fall, however, of this honoured seminary, a shaft from its
bow had reached the heart of its proud oppressor. The “Provincial
Letters of Pascal” had been published, in which the quibbling morality
and unintelligible metaphysics of the Jesuits were exposed in a strain
of inimitable humour, and a style of unrivalled elegance. The impression
which they produced was wide and deep, and gradually sapped the
foundation of public opinion, on which the power of the order had
hitherto rested. Under the regency of the duke of Orleans, the Jesuits,
and all theological personages and principles were disregarded with
atheistical superciliousness; but under Louis XV. they partly recovered
their influence at court, which, even under Cardinal Fleury, they
retained in a considerable degree. But they soon revived the odium of
the public by their intolerant treatment of the Jansenists, and probably
accelerated their ruin by refusing, from political rather than religious
scruples, to undertake the spiritual guidance of Madame de la Pampadour,
as well as by imprudently attacking the authors of the “_Encyclopêdie_.”
Voltaire directed against them all the powers of his ridicule, and
finished the piece which Pascal had sketched. Their power was brought to
a very low ebb, when the war of 1756 broke out, which occasioned the
famous law-suit that led to their final overthrow.
In the mean time the king of Portugal was assassinated; and Carvalho,
the minister, who detested the Jesuits, found means to load them with
the odium of the crime. Malagrida, and a few more of these fathers, were
charged with advising and absolving the assassins; and, having been
found guilty, were condemned to the stake. The rest were banished with
every brand of infamy, and were treated with the most iniquitous
cruelty. They were persecuted without discrimination, robbed of their
property without pity, and embarked for Italy without previous
preparation; so that, no provision having been made for their reception,
they were literally left to perish with hunger in their vessels. These
incidents prepared the way for a similar catastrophe in France. In
March, 1762, the French court received intelligence of the capture of
Martinico by the British; and, dreading a storm of public indignation,
resolved to divert the exasperated feelings of the nation, by yielding
the Jesuits to their impending fate. On the sixth of August, 1762, their
institute was condemned by the parliament, as contrary to the laws of
the state, to the obedience due to the sovereign, and to the welfare of
the kingdom. The order was dissolved, and their effects alienated. But
in certain quarters, where the provincial parliaments had not decided
against them, Jesuits still subsisted; and a royal edict was afterward
promulgated, which formally abolished the society in France, but
permitted its members to reside within the kingdom under certain
restrictions.
In Spain, where they conceived their establishment to be perfectly
secure, they experienced an overthrow equally complete, and much more
unexpected. The necessary measures were concerted under the direction of
De Choiseul, by the Marquis D'Ossun, the French ambassador at Madrid,
with Charles III., king of Spain, and his prime minister, the Count
D'Aranda. The execution of their purposes was as sudden as their plans
had been secret. At midnight, March 31st, 1767, large bodies of military
surrounded the six colleges of the Jesuits in Madrid, forced the gates,
secured the bells, collected the fathers in the refectory, and read to
them the king’s order for their instant transportation. They were
immediately put into carriages previously placed at proper stations; and
were on their way to Carthagena before the inhabitants of the city had
any intelligence of the transaction. Three days afterward, the same
measures were adopted with regard to every other college of the order in
the kingdom; and, ships having been provided at the different sea ports,
they were all embarked for the ecclesiastical states in Italy. All their
property was confiscated, and a small pension assigned to each
individual as long as he should reside in a place appointed, and satisfy
the Spanish court as to his peaceable demeanour. All correspondence with
the Jesuits was prohibited, and the strictest silence on the subject of
their expulsion was enjoined under penalties of high treason. A similar
seizure and deportation took place in the Indies, and an immense
property was acquired by the government. Many crimes and plots were laid
to the charge of the order; but whatever may have been their demerit,
the punishment was too summary to admit of justification; and many
innocent individuals were subjected to sufferings beyond the deserts
even of the guilty. Pope Clement III. prohibited their landing in his
dominions; and, after enduring extreme miseries in crowded transports,
the survivors, to the number of two thousand three hundred, were put
ashore on Corsica. The example of the king of Spain was immediately
followed by Ferdinand VI. of Naples, and soon after by the prince of
Parma. They had been expelled from England in 1604; from Venice in 1606;
and from Portugal in 1759, upon the charge of having instigated the
families of Tavora and D'Aveiro to assassinate King Joseph I. Frederick
the Great, of Prussia, was the only monarch who showed a disposition to
afford them protection; but in 1773 the order was entirely suppressed by
Pope Clement XIV., who is supposed to have fallen a victim to their
vengeance. In 1801 the society was restored in Russia by the Emperor
Paul; and in 1804, by King Ferdinand, in Sardinia. In August, 1814, a
bull was issued by Pope Pius VII., restoring the order to all their
former privileges, and calling upon all Catholic princes to afford them
protection and encouragement. This act of their revival is expressed in
all the solemnity of papal authority; and even affirmed to be above the
recall or revision of any judge, with whatever power he may be clothed;
but to every enlightened mind it cannot fail to appear as a measure
altogether incapable of justification, from any thing either in the
history of Jesuitism, or in the character of the present times.
3. It would be in vain to deny that many considerable advantages were
derived by mankind from the labours of the Jesuits. Their ardour in the
study of ancient literature, and their labours in the instruction of
youth, greatly contributed to the progress of polite learning. They have
produced a greater number of ingenious authors than all the other
religious fraternities taken together; and though there never was known
among their order one person who could be said to possess an enlarged
philosophical mind, they can boast of many eminent masters in the
separate branches of science, many distinguished mathematicians,
antiquarians, critics, and even some orators of high reputation. They
were in general, also, as individuals, superior in decency, and even
purity of manners, to any other class of regular clergy in the church of
Rome. But all these benefits by no means counterbalanced the pernicious
effects of their influence and intrigues on the best interests of
society.
The essential principles of the institution, namely, that their order is
to be maintained at the expense of the society at large, and that the
end sanctifies the means, are utterly incompatible with the welfare of
any community of men. Their system of lax and pliant morality,
justifying every vice, and authorizing every atrocity, has left deep and
lasting ravages on the face of the moral world. Their zeal to extend the
jurisdiction of the court of Rome over every civil government, gave
currency to tenets respecting the duty of opposing princes who were
hostile to the Catholic faith, which shook the basis of all political
allegiance, and loosened the obligations of every human law. Their
indefatigable industry, and countless artifices in resisting the
progress of reformed religion, perpetuated the most pernicious errors of
Popery, and postponed the triumph of tolerant and Christian principles.
Whence, then, it may well be asked, whence the recent restoration? What
long latent proof has been discovered of the excellence, or even the
expedience, of such an institution? The sentence of their abolition was
passed by the senates, and monarchs, and statesmen, and divines, of all
religions, and of almost every civilized country in the world. Almost
every land has been stained and torn by their crimes; and almost every
land bears on its public records the most solemn protests against their
existence.
orders of the Romish church, was founded in the year 1540, by Ignatius
Loyola, Forsaking the military for the ecclesiastical profession, he
engaged himself in the wildest and most extravagant adventures, as the
knight of the blessed virgin. After performing a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and pursuing a multitude of visionary schemes, he returned to
prosecute his theological studies in the universities of Spain, when he
was about thirty-three years of age. He next went to Paris, where he
collected a small number of associates; and, prompted by his fanatical
spirit, or the love of distinction, began to conceive the establishment
of a new religious order. He produced a plan of its constitution and
laws, which he affirmed to have been suggested by the immediate
inspiration of Heaven, and applied to the Roman pontiff, Paul III. for
the sanction of his authority to confirm the institution. At a time when
the papal authority had received so severe a shock from the progress of
the Reformation, and was still exposed to the most powerful attacks in
every quarter, this was an offer too tempting to be resisted. The
reigning pontiff, though naturally cautious, and though scarcely
capable, without the spirit of prophecy, of foreseeing all the
advantages to be derived from the services of this nascent order, yet
clearly perceiving the benefit of multiplying the number of his devoted
servants, instantly confirmed by his bull the institution of the
Jesuits, granted the most ample privileges to the members of the
society, and appointed Loyola to be the first general of the order.
2. The simple and primary object of the society, says a writer in the
Edinburgh Encyclopædia, was to establish a spiritual dominion over the
minds of men, of which the pope should appear as the ostensible head,
while the real power should reside with themselves. To accomplish this
object, the whole constitution and policy of the order were singularly
adapted, and exhibited various peculiarities which distinguished it from
all other monastic orders. The immediate design of every other religious
society was to separate its members from the world; that of the Jesuits,
to render them masters of the world. The inmate of the convent devoted
himself to work out his own salvation by extraordinary acts of devotion
and self-denial; the follower of Loyola considered himself as plunging
into all the bustle of secular affairs, to maintain the interests of the
Romish church. The monk was a retired devotee of heaven; the Jesuit a
chosen soldier of the pope. That the members of the new order might have
full leisure for this active service, they were exempted from the usual
functions of other monks. They were not required to spend their time in
the long ceremonial offices and numberless mummeries of the Romish
worship. They attended no processions, and practised no austerities.
They neither chanted nor prayed. “They cannot sing,” said their enemies;
“for birds of prey never do.” They were sent forth to watch every
transaction of the world which might appear to affect the interests of
religion, and were especially enjoined to study the dispositions and
cultivate the friendship of persons in the higher ranks. Nothing could
be imagined more open and liberal than the external aspect of the
institution, yet nothing could be more strict and secret than its
internal organization. Loyola, influenced, perhaps, by the notions of
implicit obedience which he had derived from his military profession,
resolved that the government of the Jesuits should be absolutely
monarchical. A general, chosen for life by deputies from the several
provinces, possessed supreme and independent power, extending to every
person, and applying to every case. Every member of the order, the
instant that he entered its pale, surrendered all freedom of thought and
action; and every personal feeling was superseded by the interests of
that body to which he had attached himself. He went wherever he was
ordered; he performed whatever he was commanded; he suffered whatever he
was enjoined; he became a mere passive instrument incapable of
resistance. The gradation of ranks was only a gradation in slavery; and
so perfect a despotism over a large body of men, dispersed over the face
of the earth, was never before realized.
The maxims of policy adopted by this celebrated society were, like its
constitution, remarkable for their union of laxity and rigour. Nothing
could divert them from their original object; and no means were ever
scrupled which promised to aid its accomplishment. They were in no
degree shackled by prejudice, superstition, or real religion.
Expediency, in its most simple and licentious form, was the basis of
their morals, and their principles and practices were uniformly
accommodated to the circumstances in which they were placed; and even
their bigotry, obdurate as it was, never appears to have interfered with
their interests. The paramount and characteristic principle of the
order, from which none of its members ever swerved, was simply this,
that its interests were to be promoted by all possible means, at all
possible expense. In order to acquire more easily an ascendancy over
persons of rank and power, they propagated a system of the most relaxed
morality, which accommodated itself to the passions of men, justified
their vices, tolerated their imperfections, and authorized almost every
action which the most audacious or crafty politician would wish to
perpetrate. To persons of stricter principles they studied to recommend
themselves by the purity of their lives, and sometimes by the austerity
of their doctrines. While sufficiently compliant in the treatment of
immoral practices, they were generally rigidly severe in exacting a
strict orthodoxy in opinions. “They are a sort of people,” said the Abbé
Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.” They
adopted the same spirit of accommodation in their missionary
undertakings; and their Christianity, chamelionlike, readily assumed the
colour of every religion where it happened to be introduced. They freely
permitted their converts to retain a full proportion of the old
superstitions, and suppressed, without hesitation, any point in the new
faith which was likely to bear hard on their prejudices or propensities.
They proceeded to still greater lengths; and, beside suppressing the
truths of revelation, devised the most absurd falsehoods, to be used for
attracting disciples, or even to be taught as parts of Christianity. One
of them in India produced a pedigree to prove his own descent from
Brama; and another in America assured a native chief that Christ had
been a valiant and victorious warrior, who, in the space of three years,
had scalped an incredible number of men, women, and children. It was, in
fact, their own authority, not the authority of true religion, which
they wished to establish; and Christianity was generally as little
known, when they quitted the foreign scenes of their labours as when
they entered them.
These detestable objects and principles, however, were long an
impenetrable secret: and the professed intention of the new order was to
promote, with unequalled and unfettered zeal, the salvation of mankind.
Its progress, nevertheless, was at first remarkably slow. Charles V.,
who is supposed, with his usual sagacity, to have discerned its
dangerous tendency, rather checked than encouraged its advancement; and
the universities of France resisted its introduction into that kingdom.
Thus, roused by obstacles, and obliged to find resources within
themselves, the Jesuits brought all their talents and devices into
action. They applied themselves to every useful function and curious
art; and neither neglected nor despised any mode, however humble, of
gaining employment or reputation. The satirist’s description of the
Greeks in Rome has been aptly chosen to describe their indefatigable and
universal industry:--
_Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes,
Augur, schœnobates, medicus, magus; omnia novit
Græculus._
Juvenal, lib. iii, 76.
“A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,
Which shifts to every form, and shines in all:
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Rope-dancer, conjuror, fiddler, and physician,--
All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts.”
GIFFORD.
They laboured with the greatest assiduity to qualify themselves as the
instructers of youth; and succeeded, at length, in supplanting their
opponents in every Catholic kingdom. They aimed, in the next place, to
become the spiritual directors of the higher ranks; and soon established
themselves in most of the courts which were attached to the papal faith,
not only as the confessors, but frequently also as the guides and
ministers, of superstitious princes. The governors of the society
pursuing one uniform system with unwearied perseverance, became entirely
successful; and, in the space of half a century, had in a wonderful
degree extended the reputation, the number, and influence of the order.
When Loyola, in 1540, petitioned the pope to authorize the institution
of the Jesuits, he had only ten disciples; but in 1608 the number
amounted to 10,581. Before the expiration of the sixteenth century they
had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every
Catholic country in Europe, and had become the confessors of almost all
its noblest monarchs. In spite of their vow of poverty, their wealth
increased with their power; and they soon rivalled, in the extent and
value of their possessions, the most opulent monastic fraternities.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, they obtained from the
court of Madrid the grant of the large and fertile province of Paraguay,
which stretches across the southern continent of America, from the
mountains of Potosi to the banks of the river La Plata; and, after every
deduction which can reasonably be made from their own accounts of their
establishment, enough will remain to excite the astonishment and
applause of mankind. They found the inhabitants in the first stage of
society, ignorant of the arts of life, and unacquainted with the first
principles of subordination. They applied themselves to instruct and
civilize these savage tribes. They commenced their labours by collecting
about fifty families of wandering Indians, whom they converted and
settled in a small township. They taught them to build houses, to
cultivate the ground, and to rear tame animals; trained them to arts and
manufactures, and brought them to relish the blessings of security and
order. By a wise and humane policy, they gradually attracted new
subjects and converts; till at last they formed a powerful and well
organized state of three hundred thousand families.
Though the power of the Jesuits had become so extensive, and though
their interests generally prospered during a period of more than two
centuries, their progress was by no means uninterrupted; and, by their
own misconduct, they soon excited the most formidable counteractions.
Scarcely had they effected their establishment in France, in defiance of
the parliaments and universities, when their existence was endangered by
the fanaticism of their own members. John Chastel, one of their pupils,
made an attempt upon the life of Henry IV.; and Father Guiscard, another
of the order, was convicted of composing writings favourable to
regicide. The parliaments seized the moment of their disgrace, and
procured their banishment from every part of the kingdom, except the
provinces of Bourdeaux and Toulouse. From these rallying points, they
speedily extended their intrigues in every quarter, and in a few years
obtained their re-establishment. Even Henry, either dreading their
power, or pleased with the exculpation of his licentious habits, which
he found in their flexible system of morality, became their patron, and
selected one of their number as his confessor. They were favoured by
Louis XIII. and his minister Richelieu, on account of their literary
exertions; but it was in the succeeding reign of Louis XIV. that they
reached the summit of their prosperity. The Fathers La Chaise and Le
Teltier were successively confessors to the king; and did not fail to
employ their influence for the interest of their order: but the latter
carried on his projects with so blind and fiery a zeal, that one of the
Jesuits is reported to have said of him, “He drives at such a rate, that
he will overturn us all.” The Jansenists were peculiarly the objects of
his machinations, and he rested not till he had accomplished the
destruction of their celebrated college and convent at Port Royal.
Before the fall, however, of this honoured seminary, a shaft from its
bow had reached the heart of its proud oppressor. The “Provincial
Letters of Pascal” had been published, in which the quibbling morality
and unintelligible metaphysics of the Jesuits were exposed in a strain
of inimitable humour, and a style of unrivalled elegance. The impression
which they produced was wide and deep, and gradually sapped the
foundation of public opinion, on which the power of the order had
hitherto rested. Under the regency of the duke of Orleans, the Jesuits,
and all theological personages and principles were disregarded with
atheistical superciliousness; but under Louis XV. they partly recovered
their influence at court, which, even under Cardinal Fleury, they
retained in a considerable degree. But they soon revived the odium of
the public by their intolerant treatment of the Jansenists, and probably
accelerated their ruin by refusing, from political rather than religious
scruples, to undertake the spiritual guidance of Madame de la Pampadour,
as well as by imprudently attacking the authors of the “_Encyclopêdie_.”
Voltaire directed against them all the powers of his ridicule, and
finished the piece which Pascal had sketched. Their power was brought to
a very low ebb, when the war of 1756 broke out, which occasioned the
famous law-suit that led to their final overthrow.
In the mean time the king of Portugal was assassinated; and Carvalho,
the minister, who detested the Jesuits, found means to load them with
the odium of the crime. Malagrida, and a few more of these fathers, were
charged with advising and absolving the assassins; and, having been
found guilty, were condemned to the stake. The rest were banished with
every brand of infamy, and were treated with the most iniquitous
cruelty. They were persecuted without discrimination, robbed of their
property without pity, and embarked for Italy without previous
preparation; so that, no provision having been made for their reception,
they were literally left to perish with hunger in their vessels. These
incidents prepared the way for a similar catastrophe in France. In
March, 1762, the French court received intelligence of the capture of
Martinico by the British; and, dreading a storm of public indignation,
resolved to divert the exasperated feelings of the nation, by yielding
the Jesuits to their impending fate. On the sixth of August, 1762, their
institute was condemned by the parliament, as contrary to the laws of
the state, to the obedience due to the sovereign, and to the welfare of
the kingdom. The order was dissolved, and their effects alienated. But
in certain quarters, where the provincial parliaments had not decided
against them, Jesuits still subsisted; and a royal edict was afterward
promulgated, which formally abolished the society in France, but
permitted its members to reside within the kingdom under certain
restrictions.
In Spain, where they conceived their establishment to be perfectly
secure, they experienced an overthrow equally complete, and much more
unexpected. The necessary measures were concerted under the direction of
De Choiseul, by the Marquis D'Ossun, the French ambassador at Madrid,
with Charles III., king of Spain, and his prime minister, the Count
D'Aranda. The execution of their purposes was as sudden as their plans
had been secret. At midnight, March 31st, 1767, large bodies of military
surrounded the six colleges of the Jesuits in Madrid, forced the gates,
secured the bells, collected the fathers in the refectory, and read to
them the king’s order for their instant transportation. They were
immediately put into carriages previously placed at proper stations; and
were on their way to Carthagena before the inhabitants of the city had
any intelligence of the transaction. Three days afterward, the same
measures were adopted with regard to every other college of the order in
the kingdom; and, ships having been provided at the different sea ports,
they were all embarked for the ecclesiastical states in Italy. All their
property was confiscated, and a small pension assigned to each
individual as long as he should reside in a place appointed, and satisfy
the Spanish court as to his peaceable demeanour. All correspondence with
the Jesuits was prohibited, and the strictest silence on the subject of
their expulsion was enjoined under penalties of high treason. A similar
seizure and deportation took place in the Indies, and an immense
property was acquired by the government. Many crimes and plots were laid
to the charge of the order; but whatever may have been their demerit,
the punishment was too summary to admit of justification; and many
innocent individuals were subjected to sufferings beyond the deserts
even of the guilty. Pope Clement III. prohibited their landing in his
dominions; and, after enduring extreme miseries in crowded transports,
the survivors, to the number of two thousand three hundred, were put
ashore on Corsica. The example of the king of Spain was immediately
followed by Ferdinand VI. of Naples, and soon after by the prince of
Parma. They had been expelled from England in 1604; from Venice in 1606;
and from Portugal in 1759, upon the charge of having instigated the
families of Tavora and D'Aveiro to assassinate King Joseph I. Frederick
the Great, of Prussia, was the only monarch who showed a disposition to
afford them protection; but in 1773 the order was entirely suppressed by
Pope Clement XIV., who is supposed to have fallen a victim to their
vengeance. In 1801 the society was restored in Russia by the Emperor
Paul; and in 1804, by King Ferdinand, in Sardinia. In August, 1814, a
bull was issued by Pope Pius VII., restoring the order to all their
former privileges, and calling upon all Catholic princes to afford them
protection and encouragement. This act of their revival is expressed in
all the solemnity of papal authority; and even affirmed to be above the
recall or revision of any judge, with whatever power he may be clothed;
but to every enlightened mind it cannot fail to appear as a measure
altogether incapable of justification, from any thing either in the
history of Jesuitism, or in the character of the present times.
3. It would be in vain to deny that many considerable advantages were
derived by mankind from the labours of the Jesuits. Their ardour in the
study of ancient literature, and their labours in the instruction of
youth, greatly contributed to the progress of polite learning. They have
produced a greater number of ingenious authors than all the other
religious fraternities taken together; and though there never was known
among their order one person who could be said to possess an enlarged
philosophical mind, they can boast of many eminent masters in the
separate branches of science, many distinguished mathematicians,
antiquarians, critics, and even some orators of high reputation. They
were in general, also, as individuals, superior in decency, and even
purity of manners, to any other class of regular clergy in the church of
Rome. But all these benefits by no means counterbalanced the pernicious
effects of their influence and intrigues on the best interests of
society.
The essential principles of the institution, namely, that their order is
to be maintained at the expense of the society at large, and that the
end sanctifies the means, are utterly incompatible with the welfare of
any community of men. Their system of lax and pliant morality,
justifying every vice, and authorizing every atrocity, has left deep and
lasting ravages on the face of the moral world. Their zeal to extend the
jurisdiction of the court of Rome over every civil government, gave
currency to tenets respecting the duty of opposing princes who were
hostile to the Catholic faith, which shook the basis of all political
allegiance, and loosened the obligations of every human law. Their
indefatigable industry, and countless artifices in resisting the
progress of reformed religion, perpetuated the most pernicious errors of
Popery, and postponed the triumph of tolerant and Christian principles.
Whence, then, it may well be asked, whence the recent restoration? What
long latent proof has been discovered of the excellence, or even the
expedience, of such an institution? The sentence of their abolition was
passed by the senates, and monarchs, and statesmen, and divines, of all
religions, and of almost every civilized country in the world. Almost
every land has been stained and torn by their crimes; and almost every
land bears on its public records the most solemn protests against their
existence.