FRANCE.
We have seen the Jesuits executed in England as traitors. We beheld them in Portugal, as successful conspirators, dispose of a sceptre wrested from the hands of their benefactors. We shall now see them in France acting the part of traitors, conspirators, and regicides, and the principal cause of an indescribable evil. We have already mentioned the famous arrêt (decision) of 1554, by which the parliament of Paris refused to admit the Jesuits into the kingdom. From this time, down to the year 1562, the disciples of Loyola had repeatedly obtained from the French sovereign letters patent authorising their establishment; but the parliament by repeated arrêts refusing to register them, rendered these letters nugatory, and the contest went on, with no prospect of decision. The king, the Guises, and a party of the nobles, sided with the Jesuits. The parliament, the university, the Bishop of Paris and his clergy, were against them. The principal objection to the admission of the Jesuits which was advanced by their adversaries was, that they had obtained from the Court of Rome privileges[161] which made them independent of the ordinary and of every other ecclesiastical authority. To obviate this objection, the Jesuits, in 1560, determined to carry their point, presented a petition to the king, in which they renounced their privileges, and solemnly engaged to respect the laws of the realm and those of the Gallican Church, and to submit to the jurisdiction of the ordinaries.[162] The court now imperatively commanded the parliament to admit the Jesuits. The Archbishop de Belley, vanquished by “the urgency of the court, from which he expected the Cardinal’s hat,”[163] partly withdrew his opposition, and gave his consent, but under so many restrictions, that, as Crétineau says, it was rather a protest against them than anything else. The parliament, which till now had withheld its consent, leaning on the archbishop’s opposition, now registered the king’s letters patent, but under the same restrictions; adding, that the Jesuits might appeal to the next national council or assembly. At this very time a national council was convened at Poissy, to put an end, if possible, to religious dissension, and heal the wounds of the Church. Catherine de Medici, whose favourite maxim was, divide et imperia, shewed herself impartial in this contest, thinking to retain the obedience of one party by the fear it had of the other. She herself, therefore, along with the king and the whole court, assisted at the Council of Poissy. We shall not enter into the theological discussions of this assembly. We shall only say, that although a Roman Catholic cardinal presided over and directed it, and although the Roman Catholics had a large majority, yet the eloquence of the Calvinistic divines, and especially that of Beza, was so overpowering, that Lainez, after having had a thrust or two at the redoubted champion, declared it to be almost a mortal sin to admit Protestants to a discussion; and by his advice, the Council broke up without any result.
The assembly, before it broke up, after a great deal of debating, decided that the Jesuits should be admitted on the condition that they submitted to the laws of the nation and of the Gallican Church, that the ordinary bishops should have all authority over them, and that they should renounce all their privileges, and take another name than “The Society of Jesus,” or “Jesuits.” By this decision, the Jesuit question was at last settled. Now, to shew with what facility these wily monks can renounce their most approved doctrines, and invent a new principle for every contingency, that they may succeed in any of their undertakings, we shall set forth the principal points of doctrine of the Gallican Church, which were already received in France, and which were more solemnly sanctioned in 1662.
“The Pope is the chief of the Roman Catholic religion, but he can neither excommunicate the king, nor lay an interdict upon the kingdom; nor has he any jurisdiction over temporal matters; nor can he dismiss the bishops from their office, who hold their power from Christ as his successors, and who, when he ascended up into heaven, bade them go and preach the gospel to every creature. The Pope’s legate cannot exercise any authority in France, unless empowered by the king. An appeal from the sentence of the Pope is permitted to be made to a general council, which possesses a power superior to that of the Pope; but even the decrees of council are not received in France, when they attack the rights of the king, or those of the Gallican Church; for which reason the Council of Trent itself was received in France regarding articles of faith, but not regarding matters of discipline.”[164]
These were the principal points to which the Jesuits swore conformity. How despicable must be the man who is ready to take a special oath for every occasion, and to invoke the God of truth to witness his perjury and infamy!
The Jesuits had no sooner set their foot in France than they began to spread rapidly over the country, and soon after aspired to enter the university and monopolise the whole of the education of the youth. With part of the immense fortune bequeathed to them by the Bishop of Clermont, of which they at last got possession, notwithstanding the opposition of the parliament, they built a college in the Rue St Jacques, near the Sorbonne, and, pretending to obey the orders of the parliament, which enjoined them to renounce the name of the Society of Jesus, they inscribed on the front of it, “College of the Society of the Name of Jesus.” But the university would not admit them into its bosom, notwithstanding all the intrigues of the fathers and the orders of the Court. Of this protracted contest, which terminated in favour of the Jesuits in 1616, we shall only transcribe part of an apology addressed by the university to Pope Gregory XIII.—“We do not,” wrote the university, “vex either churches or private persons; we do not trouble the order of succession; we do not solicit testaments in prejudice of the heirs, or appropriate the profits to our own interest; we do not plot devices to seize upon the benefices of the monasteries, or of any other ecclesiastical establishment, to enrich ourselves with their property, without being subject to the conditions imposed by the founders; we do not make use of the name of Jesus to deceive the consciences of princes, affirming that no one remains longer than ten years in purgatory.”[165]
Our history is becoming too pregnant with grave events to allow us to relate matters of secondary importance. We shall therefore bring down our readers to the year 1577, when was formed the celebrated league which gave occasion to the bloody and protracted civil wars of France, and of which the Jesuits were the chief instigators.
Remorse for the massacre of St Bartholomew had deprived Charles IX. of his reason, and brought him to an early grave. His brother, Henry III., who succeeded him, either awed by the fate of Charles, or occupied only with his pleasures, allowed those same Protestants whom, as Duke of Anjou, he had defeated at Moncontour and other places, to live in peace. Henry’s indolence favoured the ambitious views of the Duke of Guise, who aspired at nothing less than the throne of France. He and his partisans, particularly the Jesuits, stirred up the fanaticism of the more bigoted of the citizens against the king, who, although a scrupulous observer of all those external practices in which the Popish religion chiefly consists, was considered by the Church party a bad Catholic. A remedy was to be found, lest France should become a Protestant country. An association was accordingly set on foot, which took the name of the League, or “Holy Union.” The vulgar saw in it the bulwark of the faith—Philip of Spain, indirectly the sovereignty of France—and Henry of Guise, the throne. The members of this association took the following oath:—“I swear to God, the Creator, and under penalty of anathema and eternal damnation, that I have entered into this Catholic Association, according to the form of the treaty which has just been read to me, loyally and sincerely either to command, or to obey and serve; and I promise with my life and my honour, to continue therein to the last drop of my blood, without resisting it or withdrawing from it, at any command, or any pretext, excuse, or occasion whatsoever.”[166] In 1577, Guise was declared chief of the League; and in 1584, he, a subject, had the audacity to enter publicly into a confederacy with Philip II. of Spain. The Articles of Alliance purported, “that a confederacy, offensive and defensive, was entered into betwixt the king and the Catholic princes in behalf of themselves and their descendants, for the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion in France as well as the Low Countries: and, on the death of Henry III., to take measures that Cardinal de Bourbon should be appointed his successor; the heretic and relapsed princes being for ever excluded from the right of succession.”[167]
Henry III.’s position became very precarious. The Guises were in possession of many of the chief towns, and Duke Henry was the idol of the people. The king, to avoid the impending danger, feigned to adhere to the League—declared himself its chief—waged war with the Protestants—and consented to give more towns and places of security into the hands of his enemies. Nevertheless the king’s opponents remitted nothing of their hostility, and filled the nation with hatred of his person, venting itself in curses and imprecations. In Paris, the stronghold of the League, the question was publicly discussed whether Henry should be deposed. The king advanced towards the capital with some troops. Guise hastened to it against the king’s express command. The people took up arms—barricades were erected—the royal army was defeated—and the king obliged to fly.[168] Maffei and Crétineau reproach the Duke of Guise for allowing him to escape uninjured. Henry, concealing his hatred, feigned again to submit, summoned a parliament to meet at Blois, and conferred upon Guise almost unlimited power over the kingdom. But in the very moment in which he saw within his grasp the prize which he so eagerly sought, he fell, along with his brother the cardinal, in the royal palace, a victim of the king’s revenge. Thus Guise perished, not, as he deserved, by the sword of justice, but by the poniard of an assassin. The deed cannot be excused. The League thundered anathemas against the king; the University of Paris excommunicated him; and the parliament declared that “the aforesaid Henry of Valois should be condemned to make honourable amends, dressed only in his shirt, with a rope about his neck, assisted by the executioner, and holding in his hand a lighted torch weighing thirty pounds; that from that moment he should be deposed, and declared unworthy of the crown of France; and that, renouncing all right to it, he should be afterwards banished and placed in a convent of the Hieromites, there to fast on bread and water for the rest of his days.”[169]
Priests and Jesuits from every pulpit poured out volleys of curses upon that tyrant, who deserved to be swept from the face of the earth. And while the king, now in league with Henry of Navarre, was marching towards Paris, Clement, a Dominican friar, stabbed him at St Cloud, on the first of August 1589.
Great was the consternation of the royalists, and greater the rejoicing of the adverse party, at this tragic event. The Council of Seize[170] met on the 6th of September, and addressed a letter to all the preachers, in which, among other things, was the following exhortation:—“You must justify Jacques Clement’s deed, because it is the same as that of Judith, which is so much commended in Holy Writ.”[171] Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, the legitimate heir, after the death of Henry III., assumed the title of king of France, and was supported by the less bigoted of the Roman Catholics and by all the Calvinists. The Cardinal de Bourbon, on the other hand, also took the title of king, and was supported by the fanatic Papists, headed by all the priests and monks in the kingdom. Philip of Spain, the life and guardian of the League, sent an army to its aid; and the Pope despatched Cardinal Cajetan, accompanied by two Jesuits, with large sums of money, to foment and maintain the revolt against the excommunicated Henry IV.
Sixtus V. at first shewed great zeal in opposing the right of the heretic Henry of Navarre.[172] He promised to send 18,000 infantry and 700 horse into France. He threatened the Venetians with excommunication for having acknowledged Henry IV. as king, and for once relaxed the reins of his well-known parsimony, by sending his legate a sum of money to continue the war in France. But, when he perceived what were the projects of Philip; when he learned that that monarch proposed to marry his daughter the Infanta to the young Duke of Guise, who was to assume the title of king; and when Les Seize, instigated by the Jesuits, renouncing every national feeling, went so far as to proclaim Philip king of France, Sixtus, afraid of the domineering spirit of Philip, and the absolute power he would acquire if successful in his design, relaxed in his enmity towards Henry—expressed regret for having excommunicated him—and gave other tokens of the change his opinion had undergone. The legate, however, disregarding the Pope’s intentions, carried out his first instructions with unremitting zeal.[173]
The civil war, with all its horrors, lasted for five years. To shorten it, Henry descended to an act which has tarnished his glory, and the fame of his virtue. He abjured the doctrines of Calvinism to enter into communion with the Church of Rome, which he despised, and excused himself by saying, “Paris vaut bien une messe”—Paris is well worth a mass.[174]
But his apostasy availed him little. The Parisians continued firm against him. The monks, and especially the Jesuits, encouraged them in their resistance. Priests and soldiers simultaneously, they passed from the pulpit to the besieged walls, replacing the sacerdotal robes by a coat of mail, the crucifix by a spear. Solemn processions crossed the town and called upon the people to be firm in defence of their faith, trusting in God to protect them and to bless their impious enterprise. The Pope’s legate, dressed in his pontifical robes, was foremost in these processions, and supported the fanaticism of the multitude, to whom he dispensed a thousand benisons. On the other hand, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, the same who, after the assassination of Henry, wrote to his master, “We must ascribe this happy event to the Almighty alone”—Mendoza, to divert the hunger of the deluded Parisians, distributed, in the name of his Most Catholic Majesty Philip, some Spanish coin to the populace, who, thus encouraged, raised the shout, “Long life to our king Philip!” It is painful to think of all the horrors which this misguided people endured while they listened to the persuasions of the priests to persist in their rebellion. At last hunger, all-powerful hunger, proved stronger than the king’s army. Famished Paris yielded, and Henry ascended the throne of his ancestors.
Thus ended the League. Let us now see what share the Jesuits had in it. Mezarai, speaking of the League, says, “The zealous Catholics were the chief instruments in it; the new monks (the Jesuits) the paranymphs and trumpeters; and the nobles of the kingdom the authors and chiefs.”[176] From its very beginning, the Jesuits were the most ardent promoters of the League. They ran from place to place, from country to country, to enlist new supporters, and to strengthen the tie of the holy union. Claude Matthieu, the Provincial, went several times from Paris to Rome, to obtain the Pope’s approval of the holy union.[177] He was called the messenger of the League; and Pasquier, in his old, quaint style, in speaking of another Jesuit, says, “As the Company of the Jesuits was composed of all sorts of people, les uns pour la plume, les autres pour le poil, so they had among them one Father Henry Sammier, a man inclined and adapted to all kinds of daring.[178] He was sent by the League in 1581 to various Catholic princes pour sonder le gué, to sound the ford; and, to speak the truth, they could not have chosen a fitter man, for he changed himself into as many different forms as the different affairs he had to undertake—sometimes dressed as a trooper, sometimes as a priest, sometimes as a simple beggar. He was acquainted with cards, dice, ... as well as with his canonical hours; and in doing this, he said that he could not sin, since it was to arrive at a good end.”[179] But, without referring to ancient authors, two lines from Crétineau will say more than we could. “It was at this epoch” (1584), says he, “that the League acquired all its consistency, and it is at the same epoch that you may see the Jesuits in Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, joining the insurrection and organising it.”[180] And of this insurrection, or civil war, Pasquier, an eye-witness, says,—“It was less a civil war than a coupe-gorge—a cut-throat. The colleges of the Jesuits were, as was notorious, the general rendezvous of persons hostile to the king. There were fabricated their gospels in cipher—se forgoient leurs Evangiles en chiffre—which they sent into foreign countries. There their apostles were distributed among the different provinces, some, to keep the troubles alive by their preaching, as did Father Commolet in Paris, and Father Rouillet at Bourges; others, to preach murder and assassination, as did Father Varade and the same Father Commolet.”[181] But we need not multiply quotations to prove that they had a great share in exciting these troubles. They themselves confess it with pride. In their Litteræ Annuæ of 1589, they represent the murder of the king as a miracle which happened the very day they were expelled from Bordeaux. When Clement’s mother came to Paris, the Jesuits called upon the people to worship her; the portrait of the assassin, now called a martyr, was exposed on the altars to public veneration, and they even proposed to erect a statue to him in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
We will, however, admit that all the Jesuits were not fanatic Leaguers; not because they disapproved of the League, but simply from good policy, or from interested motives. Auger, the king’s confessor, and who wished to be provincial, sided with his penitent; and the General Acquaviva, the ablest and most profound politician of his time, disapproved of the Society’s engaging so deeply with one party as to cause the ruin of the order if the other triumphed. He forbade the Jesuits who were in France to take part in the contest (which advice, however, they disregarded), and begged permission of the Pope to command his subordinate Father Matthieu to leave France, and betake himself to a distant country—which clearly proves, that the Jesuits in France acted under the Pope’s own authority. “But Sixtus V.,” says Crétineau, “was not so gentle as Gregory XIII.; when he met an enemy, he fought with him; accordingly he answered the General that the Leaguers acted very rightly, and only did their duty.”[182] Acquaviva, however, was as jealous of his authority as the imperious and terrible Sixtus. When Father Matthieu arrived at Loretto on his return to France, the General ordered him not to leave the town without his consent; and the poor messenger died a few months after, from sheer inactivity. Auger, for reasons unknown to us, was recalled. Another provincial, Father Pigenat, was sent to France—a man who, in the language of De Thou, “was a furious Leaguer, and as fanatic as a Corybante,” and who, according to Arnauld, “was the most cruel tiger that prowled through Paris.” In fact, after his arrival, the Jesuits became still more audacious, and engaged in more criminal proceedings.
After Henry IV. had abjured the Protestant faith, and when he was at Melun, a man was arrested on suspicion of having come thither to make an attempt upon his life. Barrière—such was the assassin’s name—to escape the torture, acknowledged his guilt. He confessed that having consulted with Aubrey, a curate of Paris, regarding his project, he was highly commended, and sent to Varade, the rector of the Jesuits, who confirmed him in his praiseworthy resolution, and gave him his benediction; that next morning he confessed to another Jesuit, and received the communion. Barrière repeated on the scaffold the declaration he had already made; and Pasquier, who was at Melun at the time, declares that he had examined the culprit, had read the informations and depositions, and even handled the knife with which the crime was to have been perpetrated.[183] Mezarai confirms the testimony of Pasquier in the most unequivocal manner. “When the king,” says he, “had reduced Paris to submission, he gave a safe-conduct to the Cardinal of Plaisance, who had acted with so much energy against him, and granted him permission to take with him Aubrey, curate of St André des Arcs, and the Jesuit Varade, although culpable of participating in the horrible assassination of Barrière.”[184]
Barrière was executed, but his fate did not deter other fanatics from making similar attempts, nor the Jesuits from giving them encouragement. A few months after Henry had made his entrance into Paris, a youth of nineteen, named John Chastel, raised an impious hand against the king. The blow was aimed at his throat, but happening to bend his head at the instant to salute one of his courtiers, it only wounded his lips. Chastel was a student of philosophy in the Jesuits’ College under Father Gueret. He confessed that “in the Jesuits’ house, he had been often in the chamber of meditation, into which the Jesuits introduced the greatest sinners, where they were shewn the pictures of devils and other frightful figures to induce them to lead a better life, and, by working upon their spirits, to induce them by these admonitions to perform some extraordinary deed.” He further confessed that he had heard the Jesuits say “that it was lawful to kill the king, since he was out of the Church; and that no one ought to obey him, or acknowledge him as king, till he should be approved of by the Pope.”[185] The murderer, on his examination, boldly maintained this last proposition; and “this avowal,” says Mezarai, “joined to the injurious libels against Henry III. and the reigning king; joined to the ardour which the Jesuits had shewn for the interests of Spain, and to the doctrines their preachers had propounded against the security of the king, and against the ancient law of the kingdom; joined also to the opinion held of them, that by means of their colleges and auricular confession, they directed the minds of the youth and timid consciences to whatever they pleased, gave an opportunity to the parliament to involve the Society in his punishment.”[186] In fact, the parliament, by the same arrêt (29th Dec. 1594), by which Chastel was condemned to the punishment of the parricide, enacted that “the priests and scholars of Clermont College, and all others of the so-called Society of Jesus, as corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, enemies to the king and the state, shall, three days after the present intimation, be obliged to leave Paris and other towns and places where they have colleges, and, within a fortnight after, the kingdom; under the penalty, if found in France after that time, of being punished for high treason. Their property, movable and immovable, shall be employed for charitable purposes, and all the king’s subjects, under the same penalty, are forbidden to send pupils to the colleges of the Society which are beyond the territories of the kingdom.”[187]
All the Jesuits, except Fathers Gueret and Guinard, who were arrested, were expelled from France. Gueret, against whom no substantial proofs of being an accomplice with Chastel, could be produced, was soon after liberated from prison and banished. This is a striking proof of the justice and rectitude of the parliament. Guinard, in whose possession were found most abominable writings, subversive of every principle of justice and morality,[188] was condemned and executed; in conformity with a proclamation issued some months before by the king, in which it was ordered that all books and writings referring to the past troubles should be burned, under pain of death. Crétineau confesses the fact, but exculpates the man, by saying that these writings were composed in the time of the League in the year 1589. But this assertion is contradicted by the quotation we have given in the note, which shews that some of them at least were composed after Henry’s abjuration, which occurred four years later, in 1593. And again, if they had been written at the time specified, why did he not burn them, in obedience to the king’s commandment?
Great horror was now felt throughout France at these repeated acts of regicide, with an abhorrence of the Jesuits, as the well-known instigators of such nefarious deeds. The parliament, the interpreter here of the public opinion (Henry having gained over to him many of his former opponents by his clemency and generosity), by another arrêt, January 10, 1595, ordered that Chastel’s house should be destroyed, and a pyramid be erected in its stead, to perpetuate the memory of his infamy and that of his associates. In consequence, four inscriptions were engraved on the four faces of this pyramid, in all of which, the name of Chastel was coupled with that of the Jesuits. In the first inscription, the assassin was described as impelled to the commission of the crime “by the pestilential heresy of that new sect (the Jesuits), which, concealing under the garb of piety the most atrocious crimes, had of late taught that it was lawful to kill the king.” In the second was the arrêt of parliament, condemning Chastel and the Jesuits, part of which we have already given. In the third, the senate and the people of Paris congratulate the king on his having exterminated “that pestilential sect” (the Jesuits). And the fourth inscription was, “A house once stood here, which was destroyed for the guilt of one of its inhabitants, who had been instructed in a school of impiety by perverse masters.”[189] In 1605, the Jesuits were again powerful enough in France, to get the pyramid demolished; and in 1606 a fountain was erected in its place.
And this seems to us to be the proper place to lay before our readers the political creed of the Jesuits. Observe, the following extracts are taken from none but their most approved authors, and such as are held in high estimation among their brethren.
Emmanuel Sa. Aphorismi Confessariorum. (Venet. 1595. Coloniæ, 1616. Ed. Coll. Sion).—“The rebellion of an ecclesiastic against the king is not a crime of high treason, because he is not subject to the king.”
“He who tyrannically governs an empire, which he has justly obtained, cannot be deprived of it without a public trial; but when sentence has been passed, every man may become an executor of it; and he may be deposed by the people, even although perpetual obedience were sworn to him, if, after admonition given, he will not be corrected.”
John Bridgewater. Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ in Anglia adversus Calvino-Papistas. (Augustæ Trevirorum, 1594.)—“If the kings be the first to break their solemn league and oath, and violate the faith which they have pledged to God, the people are not only permitted, but they are required, and their duty demands, that, at the mandate of the Vicar of Christ, who is the sovereign pastor of all the nations of the earth, the fidelity which they previously owed or promised to such princes should not be kept.”
Robert Bellarmine. Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adversus hujus temporis Hæreticos, tom. I. (Ingolstadii, 1596. Parisiis, 1608. Ed. Mus. Brit.)—“The spiritual power, as a spiritual prince, may change kingdoms, and transfer them from one sovereign to another, if it should be necessary for the salvation of souls.”
“Christians may not tolerate an infidel or heretic king, if he endeavours to draw his subjects to his heresy or infidelity. But it is the province of the sovereign Pontiff, to whom the care of religion has been intrusted, to decide whether the king draws them to heresy or not. It is therefore for the Pontiff to determine whether the king is to be deposed or not.”
John Mariana. De Rege et Regis Institutione libri tres. (Moguntiæ, 1605.... 1640. Ed. Mus. Brit.)—“It is necessary to consider attentively what course should be pursued in deposing a prince, lest sin be added to sin, and one crime be punished by the commission of another. This is the shortest and the safest way;—to deliberate, in a public meeting, if it can be held, upon what should be determined by the common consent, and to consider as firmly fixed and established whatever may be resolved by the general opinion. In which case, the following course must be pursued. First of all, the prince must be admonished and brought back to his senses. If he does not amend, begin by refusing to obey him; ... and, if necessary, destroy with the sword that prince who has been declared a public enemy. But you will ask what is to be done if a public meeting cannot be held, which may very frequently happen. In my opinion, a similar judgment must be formed; for when the state is oppressed by the tyranny of any of the princes, and the people are deprived of the power of assembling, the will to abolish the tyranny is not wanting, or to avenge the manifest and intolerable crimes of the prince, and to restrain his mischievous efforts: I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, would attempt to kill him!”
Gabriel Vasquez. Comment. et Disput. in primam Partem, et primam secundæ Summæ, S. Th. Aquinatis, tom. II. (Ingolstadii, 1615. Antverpiæ, 1621. Ed. Coll. Sion.):—“If all the members of the royal family are heretics, a new election to the throne devolves on the state. For all his (the king’s) successors could be justly deprived of the kingdom by the Pope; because the preservation of the faith, which is of greater importance, requires that it should be so. But if the kingdom were thus polluted, the Pope, as supreme judge in the matters of the faith, might appoint a Catholic king for the good of the whole realm, and might place him over it by force of arms if it were necessary. For, the good of the faith and of religion, requires that the supreme head of the Church should provide a king for the state.”
Busembaum and Lacroix. Theologia Moralis, nunc pluribus partibus aucta à R. P. Claudo Lacroix, Societatis Jesu. (Coloniæ, 1757. Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1733. Ed. Mus. Brit.);—“A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope may be killed anywhere, as Fillincius, Escobar, and Deaux teach; because the Pope has at least an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things, as far as may be necessary for the administration of spiritual affairs, as all the Catholics maintain, and as Suarez proves against the King of England.”
Such were the principles and such the acts of the so-called soldiers of Christ, and such the just punishment inflicted on their crimes. We hardly find in history a sect, bearing the Christian name, convicted of so many and such atrocious crimes—so publicly stigmatised and held up to the just hatred of posterity. For if, in moments of feverish exaltation, political or religious fanatics of every denomination have perpetrated iniquitous and barbarous crimes, no other party has subsequently, in calmer times, accepted the responsibility of these crimes, and praised them as virtuous or meritorious actions. But there is no Jesuit, that I know of, who has ever impugned or disclaimed the doctrines I have just pointed out. My English readers ought seriously to meditate upon this fact, and upon those doctrines, to which the Jesuits still firmly adhere. Queen Victoria is in their eyes as much a heretic as Henry of Navarre, and I have no doubt that they wish her to meet with the same fate. I am an advocate for toleration, and abhor the very idea of persecution; but, most assuredly, without persecuting those priests and Jesuits, the most inveterate enemies of the Protestant religion, I would not countenance them, or encourage and support them by grants of public money. Theirs is not a religion of tolerance. They do not look upon other Christians as brethren, holding different forms of belief, or as, at worst, persons who have been misled by ignorance. No! in their view, every one who is not a Roman Catholic is an accursed heretic, condemned already, and, if he die in this condition, doomed to everlasting damnation. They are not content to be received to the rights of citizenship on terms of equality—they aspire to domination. What rights and privileges can they reasonably claim from persons towards whom they cherish such sentiments? Surely those Papists who would maintain their religion by persecution and tyranny, ought to be thankful, if they are suffered to live at peace and unmolested, in a Protestant country.