CHAPTER III.
Of the Order of the Jesuits, with the prominent features of the Institute.
How many men are there, who never knew more of Jesuits than their name, that have, from the hideous caricatures, which have been drawn of them, imbibed such prejudices, and admitted such horrible impressions against the society, as to render it a wonder, and with some a scandal, that any person should dare to make the slightest attempt towards their vindication. On the perusal of this volume, I trust, that the wonder and the scandal will appear to be, that men should have so suffered their reason to be imposed upon, and their feelings betrayed, as to be tamely led into the views of the destroyers,
not only of this religious order, but of religion itself, and of social order. I will endeavour here to give a faithful miniature of the noble original, which, under distorted features, we have been invited to ridicule and to detest. I do not, however, pretend to offer to the reader a deep-reasoned discussion, but only a slight sketch of the much traduced institute of the Jesuits, and of the pursuits and past successes of the men, who devoted themselves to it.
Jesuits were never much known in this kingdom. They were never more than a small detachment of missionary priests, privately officiating to the scattered catholics, like other priests, sent from the English seminaries of Rome, Douay, Valladolid, and Lisbon. They were distinguished only by more pointed severity of the ancient penal statutes, which the wisdom and liberality of the legislature has considerably relaxed. This greater severity arose, not from their conduct, but from the general prejudice against their order; and, in England, this
prejudice kept pace with the esteem in which they were held in all catholic countries. Formerly, every enemy of catholic religion was their foe declared. Their perseverance and their successes still provoked new hostilities. It is the remark of Spondanus, that no set of men were ever so violently opposed, or ever so successfully triumphed over opposition. Their assiduity, in their multifarious relations to the public, in all countries, where they had settlements; in their schools and seminaries, in pulpits and confessionals, in hospitals and workhouses, in the cultivation of sciences, in national and foreign missions; all this professional business afforded them a large field for exertion, and enabled them to recommend themselves to kings, prelates, and magistrates, by signal services to the public, and thus to blunt the stings of envy and the shafts of malice. The small number, which frequented England for nearly two hundred years, in the face of the penal laws, had no such field of action. They were confined to administer the rites of religion to their brethren
in private houses; they were necessitated to live separate; they were forced to disguise their profession and character, and frequently their very names; they lived under the laws, and they were not protected by the laws; they knew, that the distorted character, drawn of them by their foreign enemies, obtained ready credit in this country, without inquiry or examination; and, as they could neither act nor speak in their own defence, it has happened, that the notion of a Jesuit is to this day vulgarly (I take the word in its full meaning) associated with the idea of every crime.
In foreign countries, the Jesuits formed a conspicuous body, to which no man was wholly indifferent. They could not be viewed with the eye of contempt. They were highly esteemed, and they were bitterly hated. In all catholic countries, the esteem and respect, which they enjoyed, were fully established. They were every where considered as pure and holy in their morals and conduct, eminently zealous for
religion, and highly serviceable to the public. Their enemies, at all times, were either open separatists from the catholic church, or secret enemies of it, who formed parties for its destruction; or they were rivals, who vied with them in some branches of the public administration of religion. From these sources proceeded, at different times, that undigested mass of criminations, unsubstantiated by proof, which are so inconsistently collected in the new conspiracy against the Jesuits. It is evidently folly to imagine, that a large body of men, connected with the public by a thousand links, surrounded by jealous enemies, could possibly be a band of unprincipled knaves, impostors, and miscreants. The universal favour of the bulk of so many polished nations forbids, at once, such an idea. Popes, kings, prelates, magistrates, everywhere protected and employed them. Bishops and their clergy everywhere regarded them as their most useful auxiliaries in the sacred ministry, because they professedly exercised every duty of it, except that of governing the church;
and this they renounced by vow. The people, in all towns, even in villages, felt their gratuitous services. A hundred years ago, if the public voice had been individually collected in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Poland, undoubtedly, they would rather have parted with any other, perhaps with most other religious bodies, than with the society of Jesuits alone. A hundred years ago, all the continental sovereigns in Europe would have concurred in the same sentiment. With them they advised in all concerns of religion; to them they listened as preachers; to them they intrusted the instruction of their children, their own consciences, their souls. In those days, not only kings, but ministers of kings, and the great bulk of their nobles and people, believed in religion. They were sons of men, who had fought hard battles in France and Germany, in defence of catholic unity, against confederate sects, who had conspired to overturn it. Voltaire had not yet appeared among them. Religion was not yet presented to them as an object of ridicule. They
deemed of religion with reverence and awe, and they believed it to be the firmest support of the state and of the throne. They venerated its ministers, and among them the Jesuits, because they knew, that their institute was well calculated to form its followers to the active service of the altars, which they respected.
An idea of the institute of the Jesuits cannot be formed without consulting the original code; and the first inspection of it shows the author to have been a man of profound thinking, and eminently animated with the spirit of religious zeal. Ad majorem Dei gloriam was the motto of Ignatius of Loyola, the main principle of all his conduct. He conceived, that a body of men, associated to promote God's greater glory, must profess to imitate, not one or two, but, universally, all the astonishing virtues of the Redeemer; and, in planning his institute, he compressed them all into one ruling motion of zeal, which, in his ideas, was the purest emanation of charity, the summit of
Christian perfection. He everywhere employs his first principle, as the universal bond, or link, that must unite his society with God, and with their neighbours; and every prescription of his institute is a direct consequence of it. The greater glory of God is the first object that occurs on opening the institute. It is the first thing, on which every candidate is questioned; and, if he be accepted, the first thing to which he is applied. This alone decides upon the admission and dismission of subjects; this regulates their advancement in virtue and letters, the preservation of their health, the improvement of their talents, the distribution and allotment of their employments. Masters must teach, and students must learn, only to advance the greater glory of God: this is the rule of superiors, who command; the motive of subjects, who obey: this alone is considered in the establishment of domestic discipline, in the formation of laws and rules: it is the bond, which connects all, the spring, which moves all; every impulse given to the society must
proceed from this; this alone must accelerate or slacken its progress; for this alone it must be maintained; every person in it, every thing in it, prayer and action, labour and rest, rules and exceptions, punishments and rewards, favours and refusals; in a word, every thing in the institute of Ignatius has one motive, one end, one common motto, The greater glory of God; with this it commences, with this it ends.
Whatever may be the sentiments of persons, of different religious persuasions, of this plan of sanctity, certain it is, that the idea of it presents something noble; and, in the principles of the catholic church, it embraces the height of sanctity. To men acting upon such a principle, no virtue could ever be foreign, because every virtue in its turn might be wanted to promote God's greater glory. The aim of Ignatius was, first, to form them into perfect Christians; and hence he prescribes and requires, in all his associates, the full practice of evangelical poverty, perfect purity, and intire obedience to lawful
authority; and these virtues must be sanctioned by vow. He requires, that all and each should emulate the other great evangelical counsels, such as mortification of the senses, refusal of dignities and honourable distinctions, perfect disinterestedness in their several functions, &c. He conceived, that God's glory would be procured by the practice of these exalted virtues; but, faithful to his principle, he judged that God's greater glory required the communication, the diffusion of them among his neighbours. He earnestly wished to bring all men to know and adore the Son of God; and, in forming his associates for this ministry, he was not content to teach them to be saints, he would make them apostles. To the other obligations, which he laid upon them, he added the solemn vow of missions, binding them, whenever required, to carry the name of God, in the primitive spirit, to the extremities of the globe.
It would be an extravagant exaggeration to assert, that all the followers of Ignatius
emulated such high gifts: but it has been allowed, in general, by the best judges in the catholic church, and, in great measure, by persons of other communions, that a large portion of the founder's original spirit was infused into the society, which he formed; and that Jesuits, cultivated by the mode of government and rules of life which he established, achieved feats in every country, which religion must revere, and sound policy commend. Their institute does not stop short of any perfection, which the author of it thought attainable by human weakness. He prescribes in it a variety of means, which his followers must employ, to yield service to all, who surround them; and, though all could not be performed by each, he strongly confided, that his order would never be destitute of men qualified to execute every thing that he prescribed. Some things are exacted of all and each, others are to be suited to the different talents of the men employed; and the common education, which he gives to all, qualifies each to succeed in his respective department. Every
person, conversant in the affairs of the catholic church, will allow, that, by the constant attention of the superiors, not any means of helping the public, which the founder had prescribed, was neglected by the body of Jesuits; and the general utility resulting from all this was precisely the thing, that distinguished this body in the catholic church, and won for it the protection of popes and bishops, the countenance of kings and princes, the respect and esteem of nations.
As St. Ignatius, in his pursuit of absolute perfection, thought no virtue foreign to his institute, so he judged no service, which churchmen could yield to the public, foreign to his society. Without pretending to enumerate the various duties and occupations, which he recommends to its members, I select only a few, upon which he enters into more detailed instructions, and to which he specially calls the attention of all superiors, the zeal of all their subjects. They are, good example; prayer; works of
charity to the poor, the imprisoned, the diseased; the writing of books of piety and religious instruction; the use of the sacrament of penance; preaching; pious congregations; spiritual retreats; national and foreign missions; and education of youth in public and gratuitous schools. In the catholic scheme of religion, each of these things is deemed important; and the united voice of all, who knew Jesuits, gives them the full credit of having, during their existence in a body, cultivated, with success, each of these several branches. Their preachers were heard and admired in every country; their tribunals of penance were crouded; the sick and dying were always secure of their attendance, when demanded; their books of devotion were everywhere read with confidence; the good example, resulting from the purity of their morals, secured them, even in the last fatal persecution, from inculpation, it disabled the malice of calumny. In the impossibility of criminating living Jesuits, their worst enemies could only revile the dead. Hospitals, workhouses, and lazarets, were the constant scenes
of their zeal; their attendance on them was reckoned an appropriate duty of their society. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the plague successively ravaged every country in Europe, many hundreds of Jesuits are recorded to have lost their lives in the service of the infected. Several perished, in the same exercise of charity, in the last century, at Marseilles and Messina; and, during the late retreat of the French army from Moscow, not less than ten Jesuits died of fatigue and sickness, contracted in the hospitals crouded with those French prisoners, who, a little before, had ejected them from their principal college, at Polosk, after having plundered it of every valuable. It would be tedious to insist upon every point; but something I must say on the articles of missions and public schools, the two principal scenes of their zeal.
With respect to missions, the Jesuits might truly apply to themselves the verse,
Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Æn. lib. i.
Their perseverance in this field of zeal was universally admired; it secured success during more than two centuries; and the latest missionary expeditions of their society proved, that the original spirit was not decayed. Whoever had caught it from the institute of Ignatius was a scholar without pride; a man disengaged from his own conveniences; indifferent to his employment, to country, to climate; submissive to guidance; capable of living alone, and of edifying in public; happy in solitude, content in tumult; never misplaced. In a word, great purity of manners, cultivated minds, knowledge without pretensions, close study without recompence, obedience without reasoning though not without reason, love of labour, willingness to suffer, and, finally, fervor of zeal; such were the qualifications, which Ignatius's discernment directed his successors in government to seek, to select, or to form; and it is an acknowledged truth, that, at every period of the society, they always found men of this description to lead out their sacred expeditions to the four quarters of
the world. These men planted Christian faith in the extremities of the East, in Japan, in the Molucca islands; they announced it in China, in the hither and further India, in Ethiopia and Caffraria, &c. Others, in the opposite hemisphere, appeared on the snowy wastes of North America; and, presently, Hurons were civilized, Canada ceased to be peopled only by barbarians. Others, almost in our own days, nothing degenerate, succeeded to humanize new hard-featured tribes, even to assemble them in Christian churches, in the ungrateful soil of California, to which angry Nature seems to have denied almost every necessary for the subsistence of the human species. They were but a detachment from the body of their brethren, who, at the same time, were advancing, with rapid progress, through Cinaloa, among the unknown hordes of savages, who rove through the immense tracts to the north of Mexico, which have not yet been trodden by the steps of any evangelical herald. Others, again, in greater numbers, from the school of Ignatius, with the most inflexible
perseverance, amidst every species of opposition, continued to gather new nations into the church, to form new colonies of civilized cannibals, for the kings of Spain and Portugal, in the horrid wilds of Brazil, Maragnon, and Paraguay. Here truly flowed the milk and honey of religion and human happiness. Here was realized more than philosophy had dared to hope, more than Plato, in his republic, or the author of Utopia, had ever ventured to imagine. Here was given the demonstration, from experience, that pure religion, steadily practised, is the only source of human happiness. The new settlements, called Reductions, of Brazil and Paraguay, were real fruits of the zeal of the Jesuits. Solipsian empires, and gold mines to enrich the society, existed only in libels[[65]].
The Jesuits were advancing, with gigantic strides, to the very centre of South America, they were actually civilizing the Abiponian barbarians, when their glorious course was interrupted by the wretched policy of Lisbon and Madrid. The missionaries of South America were all seized like felons, and shipped off, as so many convicts, to the ports of old Spain, to be still farther transported to Corsica, and, finally, to the coasts of the pope's states. One of these venerable men, Martin Dobrizhoffer, who had spent eighteen years among the South American tribes, has given, in his Historia de Abiponibus, the best account, that exists, of the field of his arduous mission. His work is here mentioned, because it is not unknown in England, and his testimony[[66]] proves the persuasion of the best men at Buenos Ayres, in 1767, when the Jesuits were dismissed, that, if they had been at all times properly supported, by the courts of Lisbon and Madrid, especially
against the self interested European settlers, not a barbarian, not an infidel, would then have been left in the whole extent of South America. "This," says the author, "was boldly advanced from the pulpit at Buenos Ares, in the presence of the royal governor, and of a thronged auditory, and it was proved with a strength of argument, that subdued all doubt, and wrought universal conviction." The impression must have been strengthened by the subsequent dissolution of all the Reductions, in consequence of the inability of the royal officers to substitute other missionaries to those, whom they had ejected[[67]].
Different was the providence of the superiors
in the old society, to perpetuate the race and regular succession of those wonderful men. If they had sent out from Europe subjects already formed to every virtue and every science, their virtues and their learning would have been almost useless, without the knowledge and practical use of the barbarous idioms of the Indian tribes. Every young Jesuit in Europe was first trained, during two full years of noviciate, to the exact practice of religious virtues. He was next applied, during five years, still in strict domestic discipline, to the several studies of poetry, rhetoric, logic, physics, metaphysics, natural history, and mathematics. Seven years of preparation qualified these proficients to commence schoolmasters, during five or six succeeding years, in the several colleges of their respective provinces. It was generally at this
period of their religious career, that several young Jesuits, instead of being employed to teach schools, were detached from the several European provinces, to the Asiatic colleges of Goa, or Macao, or to the American colleges of Mexico, Buenos Ayres, or Cordova in Tucumaw, where, in expectation of priesthood, they made a close study of the barbarous languages, which they were afterwards to speak in their missions. These were usually selected from the number of those, who had spontaneously solicited such a destination; and the number of these pious volunteers being always considerable, the succession of missionaries in the society of Jesuits could never fail. But it is time to say something of their schools.
The education of youth in schools is one of the prominent features of the Jesuits' institute. Their founder saw, that the disorders of the world, which he wished to correct, spring chiefly from neglect of education. He perceived, that the fruits of the other spiritual functions of
his society would be only temporary, unless he could perpetuate them through every rising generation, as it came forward in succession. Every professed Jesuit was bound by a special vow, to attend to the instruction of youth; and this duty was the peculiar function, the first important mission, of the younger members, who were preparing themselves for profession. Even the two years of noviciate mainly contributed to the same purpose. They were not lost to the sciences, since novices were carefully taught the science upon which they all depend. The religious exercises of that first period tended to give them that steadiness of character and virtue, without which no good is achieved in schools. They then acquired a fondness for retirement, a love of regularity, a habit of labour, a disgust of dissipation, a custom of serious reflection, docility to advice, a sentiment of honour and self-respect, with a fixed love of virtue; every thing requisite to support and advance the cultivation of letters and of science in future years. It has been already observed,
that the serious studies, which filled five years after the noviciate, were calculated, in conjunction with strict religious discipline, to form them for the serious business of conducting a school of boys during the five or six years, which were to succeed: and, in the discharge of this duty, they were bound to know and to follow, under the direction of a prefect of studies in every college, the excellent documents prescribed in the institute for masters.
It is not possible in a short compass to enumerate these instructions; but the mention of a few may suffice to prove, that nothing was forgotten. The object of Ignatius, in charging his society with the management of boys and youths, as it is announced in various parts of the institute, was to form and perfect their will, their conscience, their morals, their manners, their memory, imagination, and reason. Docility is the first virtue required in a child: and, to subdue stiff tempers, the remedies prescribed in the Jesuits' institute are, impartiality in the
master, honourable distinctions, and mortifying humiliations, applied with judgment and discretion: then, steady attention to maintain the established discipline and economy of the school, which is a constant, and therefore a powerful check upon the unruly. To secure it, says the text, hope of reward and fear of disgrace are more powerful than blows; and, if the latter become unavoidable, punishment must never be inflicted with that precipitation, which gives to justice an air of violence. In inquiring into trespasses, too nice and minute investigation must be avoided, because it inspires mistrust. The art of dissembling small faults is often a safe means to prevent great ones. Gentle means must always be first employed; and, if ever fear and repentance must be impressed, the hand of some indifferent person must be called into action; the hand of the master must be used only to impress gratitude and respect. If his hand is never to be the instrument of pain, his voice must never be the organ of invective. He must employ
instruction, exhortation, friendly reproach, but never contumelious language, haughtiness, and affronts: he must never utter words to boys, which would degrade them in the eyes of their companions, or demean them in their own. In the distribution of rewards, no distinction must be known, but that of merit. The very suspicion of partiality to character, fortune, or rank, would frustrate the effect of the rewards bestowed, and provoke indocility, jealousy, and disgust, in those who received none. Nothing so quickly overturns authority, and withers the fruit of zealous labours, even in virtuous masters, as the appearance of undue favour. The masters's equal attention is due to all; he must interest himself equally for the progress of all; he must never check the activity of any by indifference, much less irritate their self-love by contempt.
It were easy to multiply, from the institute, instructions prescribed to masters, to insure success in this first part of education, the
bridling of the rebel will of youth; but Ignatius knew, that these things would never be enforced by young masters, who had not learned the art of bridling their own. Discipline might bind boys to outward respect, but only religion and virtue can make them love the yoke; and no yoke is ever carried with perseverance unless it be borne with pleasure. Religion is the most engaging and most powerful restraint upon rising and growing passions; and to imprint it deeply in the heart was the main business of the Jesuit schools. The rest was accessory and subordinate. The principles of religion were there instilled, while the elements of learning were unfolded. Maxims of the Gospel were taught together with profane truths; the pride of science was tempered by the modesty of piety; the master's labour was directed, as much to form the conscience, as to improve the memory, and regulate the imagination of his disciples. The institute directed him to instil a profound respect for God; to begin and end his lessons by prayer; to cherish the
piety of the devout; to avail himself of it as a means to attract the thoughtless to imitation; and, by a special rule, he was charged to instruct his scholars in all duties of religion by weekly catechisms, carefully adapted to their capacity. The ecclesiastical historian, Fleury, remarks, in the preface to his historical catechism, that, if the youth of his age was incomparably better instructed than the youth of past ages, the obligation was owing principally to the catechisms of the Jesuits' school. He had heard them during the six years of his education in Clermont college.
Ignatius places herein the capital point of education: and he well knew, that where the grand motives of religion are not employed, an assembly of men will commonly be a collection of vice, especially in unexperienced youth, when growing passions always seek communication, in order to authorise themselves by example. To this point, then, he directs the rules of his subjects employed in education; to
this he calls the attention of every professor, the vigilance of every prefect of studies, of every master, the solicitude of every rector, the inspection of every provincial. The wise framers of the Ratio Studiorum, which is adopted into the institute, explaining his ideas still farther, require every master to study the temper and character of his pupils; to distract their passions by application; to fire their little hearts with laudable emulation. For this, they must encourage the diffident and modest, curb the forward and presumptuous: for this they must assign to merit alone those scholastic appellations of dignity, those titles of emperor and prætor, puerile indeed in themselves, but not less important to boys than are the sounds of titles, and colours of ribbands to men. On the same principle, in much frequented colleges, each class was divided into two rival classes, usually distinguished by the opposite banners of Rome and Carthage, which mutually dreaded, provoked, and defied each other, in classical duels, or in general trials of skill, each whetting his
memory on the edge of that of his rival; and then would often flow those precious tears of emulation, which watered rising genius, expanding it to fertility. Hence, again, are prescribed those public and solemn annual rewards, distributed with pomp and show, which reduced the self-love of youth to the love of virtue; which enamoured them of study by the prospect of success, and, by raising a desire of pleasing, really taught them how to please.
The institute proceeds to remove from youth every species of bad example. It directs the prefect and the master how to dissolve growing friendships, that might be dangerous; it forbids the public explanation of books, or of single passages, which might mislead active imaginations; it ordains a scrutiny of all books, that come into the pupil's use; it charges the master to watch every trespass against the rules of civility and good manners. Falsehood and detraction, swearing, and foul words, are to be quickly corrected, or not tolerated within the
college. It is, again, the master's particular duty to form the manners of his pupils to decency, modesty, and politeness; to correct their errors in language, their faults in pronunciation, their awkwardness in gestures, their coarseness in behaviour, not less than to cultivate their memory and regulate their imagination. For this purpose the institute, without neglecting modern languages, prescribes, for the justest reasons, the study of Latin and Greek, in the purest models of Athens and ancient Rome. It joins to these the study of history, and its concomitants, geography, chronology, and mythology; and all this must precede the introduction of youth into the regions of eloquence and poetry, where sportive imagination may amuse and feed itself for a while with brilliant images and expressive language: but the institute teaches how to reduce all this to the standard of reason and sound judgment, by the succeeding study of philosophy and mathematics; and these, in their turn, are the preparation for the deeper discussions of theology, which lifts the
soul out of the narrow sphere of human science, and enables the mind, and, still more, the heart, to make excursions into the immensity of God.
The short sketch, which is here presented, of education among the Jesuits, is enough to convince us, that no system was ever more solid, more calculated to produce eminent men, in every department of civil and ecclesiastical life. Undoubtedly it did produce a succession of them during two hundred years; and it thus verified the decisive sentence of Bacon, Ad pædagogicam quod attinet, brevissimum foret dictu. Consule scholas Jesuitarum[[68]]. Perhaps the real value of the system is still better proved by the miserable state of degradation, into which public education and public morals have sunk in catholic countries, since its utter suppression.
But the founder of the Jesuits is not satisfied with suggesting what is right; he provides, what is still more necessary, proper masters to enforce it. He gives them two years of only spiritual, and five others of spiritual and literary education, to train them to their important task. With this he trusts, that their conduct will be irreproachable, that they will be worthy to be trusted with the grand interests of letters and of morals. He expects them to be docile, modest, and willing to be guided by their elders, who have successfully completed their course. They must be young enough to gain the confidence of children, and firm enough to command respect. To animate them to assiduity in duty, they must be provided with all necessary books; they must be stimulated to zeal by the prospect of God's greater glory; they must, therefore, be perfectly weaned from self-interest; they are required to yield continual service to persons, from whom they must receive none; they must impart virtue and knowledge, but never sell
either; they must inspire gratitude, and never profit by it; they must prove themselves deserving of every thing, and accept nothing[[69]].
The society, in every period of its existence, possessed, in every country, many excellent and distinguished professors and masters, in every science which it professed to teach; and the
uniformity and steadiness of their education raised the bulk of its masters much above the rate of decent mediocrity. It is apparent, that, in the conducting of public education throughout a large kingdom, a body of men, well compacted together, and properly trained to the work, must possess superior advantages; and the world has long since agreed, that no other body of men ever did, or could furnish so many able and useful teachers, as the society of Jesuits constantly presented for the public service. There were, no doubt, elsewhere, masters, able to balance, perhaps to eclipse, the reputation of those of the society; but these men were seldom found, except in the first chairs of great universities; they did not diffuse learning throughout a kingdom, and the succession of them was not uniformly continued. The Jesuits were universally spread throughout a country, and every town had a chance of enjoying their best masters. Even in the first universities it has been allowed, that the Jesuits' schools were of use to the other colleges, and reciprocally
received great advantages from them. The spirit of laudable emulation stimulated both to generous exertions, and the general interests of learning were thereby promoted.
During the five or six years which the Jesuits employed in teaching, many of them obtained renown, and all, it may be presumed, had acquired the ready use of the Latin language; had discovered the bent of their talents; and had attained maturity of judgment and love of application. At the end of their course these masters, aged from twenty-five to thirty years, were now once more remanded to the benches, and applied, during four years, to the study of theology, under able professors, in the principal city and college of their province; thus forming a perpetual colony of forty or fifty mature and improved students, such as rival colleges could seldom equal. "At Paris," says cardinal de Maury, "the great college of the Jesuits was a central point, which attracted the attention of all the best writers, and of persons
of distinction in every rank. It was a kind of permanent literary tribunal, which the celebrated Piron, in his emphatic language, used to style La chambre ardente des reputations literaires; always dreaded by men of letters, as the principal source and focus of public opinion in the capital[[70]]." What the cardinal asserts of Paris, was equally true of Rome, Vienna, Lisbon, and other great cities, which possessed the colleges of higher studies of the society. I conclude with remarking, that, if any part of what is prescribed in the institute had been retrenched from the education of Jesuits, their society would not have deserved such commendations from Piron and cardinal de Maury[[71]].
If the outlines of education, which have been
here traced from the book of the Jesuits' institute[[72]], do not win approbation, they may be presented to the reader, at least, as an object of curiosity. Serious men will, perhaps, think them more deserving of attention than are many of the ephemeral vagaries, which modern adventurers in the art of training youth daily obtrude upon the public. The Jesuits' system is recommended by the experimental success of two centuries; and, whether the plan was originally conceived, or only adopted and methodised, by Ignatius and his followers, certain it is, that, from the close of the council of Trent to the opening of the Gallic revolution, the main principles, on which it rests, even the practical details of it, with little variation, pervaded the education of the catholic clergy in all distinguished seminaries, whether directed by Jesuits or by others; and they may, therefore, be regarded as
the source of all the virtue and learning which adorned the catholic church in that period, and which the Gallic revolutioners were sworn to destroy. If these antichristian conspirators first doomed the Jesuits to annihilation, it was because their schools were widely diffused through Europe, and were marked by them as hotbeds of every thing which they chose to term fanaticism, bigotry, and superstition; that is to say, zeal, faith, and devotion. These were to be extirpated, to make room for fanaticism, bigotry, and superstition of another kind; those of equality, reason, and philosophy. And mark with what avidity they seized upon the spurious maxim, which had been attributed to the Jesuits, "that it was lawful to do evil, that their expected good might come:" falsehood, forgery, blasphemy, false witness, murder, regicide; every crime that a bad heart could suggest, a perverted head direct, or a venal arm perpetrate, was resorted to, to attain that summum bonum, jacobinism. They had before them the Monita Secreta and the Institute, and they chose the
former for the basis of their constitutions. I need not repeat the infamous doctrines collected in that forgery, which was published at the end of the pamphlet, that induced me to undertake to write these pages, and of which Clericus has given us an account in the following Letters; suffice it to say, by way of contrast, that horrors are there piled high one upon another, and said to be the secret code of regulations of men, who profess to take the institute of Ignatius for their guide, a code replete with piety and virtue. I have already said enough to silence the remark, that men may profess only and not act, for I have shown, that, if ever men acted up to their professions, the Jesuits have; but it will be an agreeable task to put some of the points of the institute, which have been distorted, into the view in which truth requires they should be seen.
First, let us glance an eye over the contents of this institute. It contains, not only what the founder wrote, but likewise all the papal
bulls and briefs granted to the society; all the decrees and canons of the several congregations, which form laws in the society; several instructions, precepts, and ordinations, issued by different generals, and adopted by general congregations, for universal practice; the general Ratio Studiorum; the privileges granted to the society by the holy see; the particular rules prescribed for every office in the society, and for every class of men in it, as priests, missionaries, preachers, students, &c. The groundwork of all this is what the founder himself wrote; viz. an Examen Generale to be proposed to candidates for admittance; Constitutiones Societatis Jesu; an epistle De Virtute Obedientiæ; a book of Spiritual Exercises; and, finally, many of the particular rules of offices. The Prague edition of the Institute, anno 1757, two small folio volumes, lies before me, and I have taken a good deal of fruitless trouble to find out some propositions denounced by the enemies of the Jesuits, without reference to the page or chapter. I have found nothing but what reflects
honour on the code. The objects of it are the glory of God, the general good of man, and the preservation of the society. In pursuance of the first of these, the members make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; they mortify their senses, renounce worldly honours, and preach the Gospel. The means they use for the second consist of example, prayer, works of charity, pious publications, preaching, educating youth, and sending forth missions. For the third object, their preservation, they have appropriate rules of union, discipline, reputation, freedom from party, and moderation[[73]].
Such is the code which has been so misrepresented. It is impossible, within the bounds of a pamphlet, and, indeed, I have already stretched into the latitude of a book, to give an adequate notion of it, and to combat the opinions which have gone abroad against it. These opinions
are so many adopted prejudices, the refutation of which is completely given in the Apologie de l'Institut, to which I must refer the reader, who will find in it many extracts from the institute itself; and I shall here briefly notice the vow of obedience, and the imputed despotism of the general, about which so much has been said.
"Their blind obedience! To be as unresisting as a dead body, or as tractable as a stick in the hands of an old man![[74]]." This language, taken disjointedly, is among the bugbears held up by the new conspirators against the Jesuits. It must surely be allowed, that obedience is necessary in every institution, where training the mind is an object, and the institute is not reprehensible for excluding wilful argumentation, while it allows every one the use of his reason. Blind obedience is not required for the commission of a crime, but in duties known to be pious
and moral, in actions evidently laudable. Nor is the expression of the text cæca obedientia, but cæca quadam obedientia[[75]]. The rule is for the better training of the young and the inexperienced; and what school does not proceed upon it to the extent required by the institute, which excepts whatever is criminal, or morally wrong? It literally prescribes, that this kind of blind obedience shall, nevertheless, be conformable to justice and to charity; omnibus in rebus ad quas potest cum charitate se obedientia extendere[[76]]. Nay, the order of the superior is not only to be examined, to see that it is free from a capital sin, but from any sin whatever; in omnibus quæ a superiore disponuntur ubi definiri non possit (quemadmodum dictum est) aliquod peccati genus intercedere[[77]]. In a word, discussion is not forbidden by the institute, but in cases where it is evident that there is no sin;
ubi non cerneretur peccatum[[78]]; a doctrine continually repeated on this head, quemadmodum dictum est, that is, in quibus nullum manifestum est peccatum[[79]]. Where now is the horror of this obedience? It will seem a paradox to say, that the rigour of it arises from the mildness of the Jesuit government: but it is not less the fact; for, as all violent measures and corporal punishments are excluded from the society, a prompt moral obedience is absolutely necessary to its existence. It thus becomes an amiable, as well as an indispensable law.
But the despotism of the general? The obedience, which the Jesuits owe their general, is the same as that which they pay to their ordinary superiors. It flows from the same source, and tends to the same end. Having demonstrated the slavery of it to be a chimera, the despotism of the general naturally vanishes with
it. The nature of the society required, that it should be under a single chief: to have given to separate houses independent chiefs would have destroyed the great objects depending upon a union of councils. It was no cenobitical order devoted chiefly to working out their own salvation; but one, whose members were to be spread over the whole world, to promote the glory of God and the good of man. The institute, however, takes great care, that the chief should not be a despot: it gives him no slaves, nor even subjects, but friends, children, and counsellors[[80]]; mildness is the sceptre it bestows upon him, and charity the throne[[81]]; it
equally prohibits the superior to govern by violence and the inferior to obey through fear[[82]]. The general is elected by the whole society, who first swear to choose only him, whom they believe to be the most worthy of the office[[83]]. There is nothing arbitrary or changeable in the
authority of the general: it is subjected by the institute to stable and invariable laws, and his duties are minutely prescribed. If he deviates from them, it provides for his removal[[84]]. Far from being a despot, he is not even exempted from the superintendance of a monitor chosen by the society, who observes his conduct, tells him of his faults, points out his duties, and is consequently compelled not to excuse him in any point[[85]]. In spiritual affairs, the general is subject to the pope; in temporal matters, to the government under which he lives; and, in what
concerns himself personally, or the society solely, to a general meeting of the order[[86]]. Though elected for life, he may be deposed for several reasons stated in the institute; and the same hands that clothed him with power may strip him of it[[87]]. It has been said, that the motive for appointing a single chief was the facility it offers for promoting more certainly the ends of ambition. The institute strongly condemns ambition in individuals, and still more strongly in the general[[88]]. One great
charge against the power of the general is, that his authority may injure that of sovereigns, by withdrawing their subjects from their obedience: on the contrary, he is expressly forbidden, by the institute, to take from a state any Jesuit whatever, without the knowledge of the sovereign[[89]]. The annulling of contracts is another source of abuse, founded on a mistaken passage in the institute, where it is said; "Although the general, by his open letters to particular superiors, confers on them an ample power in that respect, yet that power may be restricted and limited by private letters." This passage has no reference to contracts, and relates only to the power given openly to local superiors to dismiss improper persons; and there can be no objection to the private limiting of that power. But the most obnoxious charge of all is, that the general of the Jesuits maintains spies everywhere, for the purpose of diving into the secrets of courts, and into the
affairs of private families. The institute contains a rule directly the reverse of this assertion, a rule by which he is expressly prohibited from meddling in affairs that do not concern the society, even under any pretext of piety or religion[[90]].
After all, then, the general of the Jesuits is not such a monster as he has been painted, and it is absurd to suppose, that a learned and sensible old man, who, about to give an account of his ministry to God, has but a few years to fill the office, should consider it as the spring of every kind of crime; it is absurd to suppose, that the brethren of the order, who have sacrificed every thing on earth to the hope of finding under the empire of the institute the greatest perfection of the Christian character, should believe, that they are obliged, by virtue of that very institute, to commit the greatest sins man is capable of; and it is absurd to
suppose, that, if a general were mad enough to abuse his power, there would not be found a pope wise enough, or Jesuits virtuous enough to depose him, conformably to the laws of the church and of the institute.
Formerly, when the Jesuits had powerful protectors, the practice was to turn them into ridicule; now, that they have powerful enemies, the object is to stigmatize them with every vice. Nothing is more difficult, or more delicate, than to parry ridicule; but, to refute abuse, one has only to expose it.
In the present state of the continental powers, it seems hardly possible, that the society of Jesuits should recover its ancient importance, but their destruction must ever be lamented; and, since their unrelenting enemies have tempted the public curiosity to inquire into their history, this chapter shall be closed with a brief account of the final catastrophe of that small portion of their body, which for two
hundred years was connected with England, by the common bonds of country, language, and blood.
About the year 1590, the English Jesuits obtained, from the liberality of Philip II of Spain, the foundation of their principal college at St. Omer; and, soon after, the bishop of that city conferred upon them an ancient abbey, with its demesnes, situated in the neighbouring small town of Watten. A few years later, they acquired the foundation of their college at Liege, from Maximilian the elector of Bavaria, and likewise a smaller settlement in the city of Ghent. In these several houses, they applied themselves to the education of British catholic youth, and to the formation of missionaries. In 1762, the two first-mentioned of these establishments were subjected to confiscation by the unsparing arrêts of the parliament of Paris. The inhabitants could obtain no mercy, on the consideration of being foreigners admitted on the public faith; they were all ejected,
without the smallest allowance for their support, or even for their return to their native soil. They presented themselves to the Austrian government of the Netherlands, at Bruxelles; they were admitted under an octroi, the most solemn act of that government, and they established themselves in the city of Bruges. In 1773, on the appearance of pope Clement XIV's destructive brief, they were once more unmercifully pillaged, in despite of the public faith, pledged in the octroi; and here the fangs of fiscal avarice were sharpened to an uncommon edge, because it was the persuasion of that despotic government, that, being Jesuits, they deserved no pity, and, being English, they must be rich. At the same period, their large college at Liege was stript of all its income, by the two courts of Munich and Rome, and the inmates of the house were also here turned adrift, without any allowance for their personal subsistence. In this utter distress, a few of these persecuted men, who remained at Liege, not quite dispirited by their calamities, were encouraged by the prince
bishop of Liege, to form, within the old college, a school and a seminary of priests. The plan was sanctioned by a brief of pope Pius VI; they found friends, and unremitting labour and industry during twenty years advanced their work to a degree of consistency, which merited the approbation and confidence of the public. But all this was of no avail. Utter destruction was to be their doom. In 1794, when the French armies, by one general sweep, overturned, in the Low Countries, every thing that related to the religion of Jesus Christ, they were finally dislodged and scattered; their house and all their valuables were left to the disposal of those outrageous freebooters; waggon-loads of their best books were converted into wadding for the cannon; their mathematical and optical cabinet was pillaged; they retired in sorrow, each to seek a refuge, with hardly a hope of seeing better days. Thus terminated the English province of the society of Jesus. A few of these ancient men, who have weathered the whole storm, are still alive,
comforting their old age with the late public testimony of the head of the church, that they deserved a better fate. Having availed themselves of the indulgence of the British government, on leaving the Netherlands they sought an asylum in their own country. They here subsist, in the security of conscious innocence, fearless of the prejudices and malice of a few unprovoked foes, who know not how to harrass them but by the old weapons of misrepresentation and slander. They have pledged their allegiance to their king and country, in the comprehensive oath of 1791; they meddle not with general or county politics; they seek no offices of state, that remaining stumbling block in the way of the catholic nobility and gentry; they attend solely to their own professional concerns; and, as peaceable and loyal subjects, they may justly expect protection for their persons and for their property. Friends of the government and of the country, friends of monarchy, friends of public tranquillity, friends of order and
subordination, friends of religion, friends of morality, friends of letters, shall they not be protected? Ignorance, prejudice, and passion, shall not prevail against such men.