LETTER IV.
Ecce iterum Crispinus, et est mihi sæpe vocandus
In partes.
Juv. Sat. 4.
What! Laicus once more! And is he not then prostrate on the ground, gagged and muzzled beyond the possibility of barking? His ignorance, his falsehoods, his sophistry, have been sufficiently branded; yet, spider-like,
Destroy his slander and his fibs—in vain,
The creature's at its dirty work again.
Pope.
Undoubtedly he never deserved, and never would have received even a first answer, if it had not been apparent, that his venal pen was guided and paid by mischief-makers of deeper views: and hence arises the necessity of noticing this fourth effusion, to disable the retailers of
his falsehoods from vainly boasting, that slander unanswered is acknowledged truth. I write not to Laicus, but to his prompters, and to his readers, if there be any left.
They may observe, that the imputations in this fourth Letter are two—king-killing continually practised, and immoral doctrines continually taught by Jesuits: and to this is added a short summary of authorities, by which all this trash is upheld. It would be an easy, but now uninteresting task, to disprove these several imputations; and this has long since been victoriously done. It may suffice to know, that they were all advanced by party men, maddened by civil and religious rage: they are registered only in the murky pages of antiquated libels, and they are here reproduced for the dishonest purpose of blackening virtue, which triumphed over them, when they were fresh. Pamphlets of Hugonots, libels of loose catholics, declamations of rival teachers, who apprehended their own humiliation in the success of the Jesuits, Plaidoyers,
Requisitoires, and harangues of Pasquiers and Harlays, sworn enemies of the society, Arrêts of their courts of parliament, ever intent to curtail the spiritual authority of the church, and to abridge the power of the reigning monarch, in order to advance their own. Such are the men, such the passions, which invented accusations of regicide against the Jesuits in France during the horrid confusion of the Hugonotic wars. At the return of public tranquillity, they all sunk into oblivion during the period of one hundred and fifty years, until Jansenism and Deism renewed them, in 1760, and the ensuing years, as a powerful engine to accomplish the utter destruction of their known and common enemies. It is needless to disprove each imputed fact: I will only, for a sample, refute the first, which stands in Laicus's foul calendar. It is the assertion, that the Jesuit Varade was implicated in the guilt of the assassins of Henry IV, Barriere and Chatel. Now Varade was defended and cleared by an advocate, to whom no reply could be made: this was Henry IV himself, who, in his famous answer to the parliamentary president
Harlay, vindicated the honour and the innocence of that Jesuit and of all his associates, in a strain of eloquence, which Harlay and his coadjutors felt to be irresistible. The royal orator concluded his victorious defence of his friends, by advising all his hearers to forget the past excesses of civil discord, and not to exasperate smothered passions, by mutual reproaches, into new crimes. The employers of Laicus would do well to follow this advice.
Though Henry IV was not the model of a perfect king, I have always thought his conduct towards the Jesuits a strong proof, that his return to the religion of his forefathers was sincere. The parliament, which had opposed him, while he headed the Hugonot party, opposed him now from the motives above alleged, and determined to deprive him of the services of the Jesuits, on whom they knew that he greatly depended, for the re-establishment of the catholic religion. They drove the Jesuits from France with every mark of ignominy, before Henry was strong enough to support them. When
his power was consolidated, he restored them to their country, and he chose one of them for his preacher, confessor, and bosom friend. This was the celebrated father Cotton, whom Laicus impudently names in his list of Jesuit regicides. In such rage of faction, it is no wonder that the parliament erected a pillar to the infamy of the persecuted Jesuits. It was not quite so tall as the British monument, which still attests to the heavens, in the words of the lord mayor, Patience Ward, that the city of London was burnt by the malice of the catholics, in 1666. The difference is, that in calmer times the Gallic column, with all the calumnies of Harlay, was erased, but Patience Ward, who had been put into the pillory for perjury, still lies uncontradicted[[113]]. To the article of regicides I add, that
the attempt on the life of Louis XV, in 1757, was not imputed to Jesuits, either by parliaments, or by Jansenists. The calumny in the fourth Letter is, I imagine, the undisputed property of Laicus or his prompters[[114]].
On the second head of accusation—immoral doctrine—I wish to be short. The purity of the Jesuits' doctrine and morals was solemnly attested by the most qualified judges, a special assembly of fifty cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, of the Gallic church, convened by Louis XV; and their report was confirmed by many other prelates, who were not deputed to that assembly. A stronger proof of their innocence was the absolute inability of their enemies to convict a single Jesuit of four thousand, who were spread through France, of any immoral principle, doctrine, or practice. The parliament still pursued their beaten track. Il faut denigrer les Jesuites was their maxim. Envy, with her hundred jaundiced eyes, was every where on the watch to discover a flaw. Malice, with her hundred envenomed tongues, stood ready to echo it through the globe. Fruitless industry!
The poor parliament was reduced to spare the living Jesuits, not from any regard for truth, but because they knew, that their calumnies would not be believed. They therefore impeached the doctrine and morals of all deceased Jesuits, who had existed during two hundred years, and they intrusted the delicious task of blackening the dead to the impure pens of Jansenists, headed principally by Dom. Clemencet. From this man's foul laboratory proceeded the Extraits des Assertions, a monstrous compilation of forged and falsified texts, purporting to contain the uniform doctrine, taught invariably at all times by the whole society of Jesus, and to exhibit a fair picture of their morals. The parliament sanctioned, and addressed this abominable book to every bishop, and to every college in France. Every bishop in France felt himself and religion insulted by it; and almost every bishop condemned and forbade it to be kept or read. The celebrated archbishop of Paris, De Beaumont, in particular, demonstrated the forgeries and artful falsifications, which it contained, and it was moreover solidly refuted by La Reponse aux
Assertions. This laboured piece of Jansenistical malice seems to be unknown to Laicus and his associates, though he has copied and cited several of the vile libels, which were industriously circulated, to convey the indecent impurities of the book Des Assertions to every corner of France. In this point the shameless Laicus has faithfully imitated his models, or rather he has confined himself to one, whom he calls Coudrette; and, with his usual effrontery, he turns this obscure man into a repentant Jesuit, acknowledging and expiating his crimes by an unreserved confession of their foulness. His magic pen has already changed into Jesuits three such perfect disparates, as Louis XIV, the miserable Jacques Clement, and the weak English archpriest Blackwell. It has, upon motives equally invidious, transformed to Jesuits two churchmen of the first rate merit, the cardinals Allen and Barberini, because these two prelates were, at different periods, concerned in the religious affairs of England, and were thereby obnoxious to the then prevailing sects, though neither of them had any other connexion with Jesuits, than the
intercourse of friendship and esteem. But Coudrette a Jesuit! How can this be credited? New personages in comedies are introduced to excite new interest; and was Coudrette ever before named in this island? Indeed his name is so very obscure, that it is difficult to find, even a Frenchman, who ever heard it. It has however obtained a small niche in two French historical dictionaries, the first of which, par une societé des gens-de-lettres, though friendly to the Jansenists, styles Coudrette un ennemi acharné des Jesuits. The other, by the well known abbé Feller, a man of very general information, asserts, that Coudrette had been from his youth, de tres bonne heure, a violent partisan of Jansenism, closely connected with the abbé Boursier, one of the heroes of the sect. In 1735 and 1738, during the ministry of cardinal de Fleury, he was confined by a lettre de cachet first at Vincennes, then in the Bastille, for his intrigues, cabals, and libels against the church; and of course he was canonized as a saint in the Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques, the well known
Jansenistical gazette. When the parliaments denounced open war against the Jesuits, he came forward a volunteer in the cause, and printed his Histoire general des Jesuites in the course of 1761: but Coudrette and his history were perfectly forgotten in France before 1762. How could a copy of it have escaped into England? It has found its proper repository on the shelves of Laicus, or his employer[[115]].
I have done with Laicus and his authorities. He promises a commentary upon his own performance. It has not, I believe, yet appeared,
even in the Times. Mine shall be very short.
Though I have proved Laicus and his associates to be unprincipled impostors, I have said nothing of them and their assertions, but what every man of virtue and information knows to be true. Every prince, every observer knows, that the overthrow of the society of Jesus was the first link in the concatenation of causes, which produced the late horrible successes of rebellion and infidelity. They all know, that the Jesuits, when their body was intire, were among the most active supporters of religion, learning, good order, and subordination to established powers, though, perhaps, professing religious creeds different from their own. Above all, they know, that Jesuits were every where staunch and steady friends of monarchy. Who then will wonder, that the renowned Catherine of Russia protected them in their greatest distress, unbendingly maintaining the full integrity of their institute, even in the smallest points? Who will be
surprised, that the heroic Alexander continues to distinguish them by fresh favours? Who will cavil at Pius VII, in this new dawn of public tranquillity, for his endeavours to recover their services? Who will blame other princes for imitating his example? Possibly the good pontiff may conceive himself more bound than other princes, to make some compensation to the few remaining Jesuits, because he was a witness of the aggravated cruelties inflicted upon them and their superiors, at the time of the suppression by his predecessor Clement XIV. But the motives and the conduct of these princes present matter too ample to be treated at present by
CLERICUS.