It is not, therefore, only in the peculiar circumstances of his death, that Chatham resembles Cato, with whom he has therein been frequently compared.
It will be remembered that after Cato’s return from Carthage (the inveterate enemy and most powerful rival of Rome), Cato, then in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and the last year of his life, never spoke in the Senate without expressing his conviction of the dangerous power of Carthage, and concluding with the celebrated words “Delenda est Carthago.” Chatham, when peace with America was proposed on terms which he thought dishonourable to his country, expended his last strength in opposing it, and fell, to survive but a few days, senseless on the floor of the House of Lords.
Those who attribute to the founder of the Jesuits the characteristics of that powerful Order, both over-estimate and calumniate the man, Ignatius Loyola. He foresaw none of the power and eminence which his successors would attain; he contemplated neither their conquests, their influence, wealth, nor extensive domination.
The wounded soldier on his miserable pallet devising conquests over Satan, composing his Spiritual Exercises, and framing his celebrated Constitutions, contemplated for himself and his followers a scene of action wholly different from that into which they were finally—accidentally or Providentially, who shall say?—determined. His ambition contemplated no worldly fame; he sought not riches nor the applause of men. He proposed only to carry the Christian warfare into the country of the infidel, and in poverty and “perfect obedience to the Holy See” to rescue souls from perdition. The original object of his Order was the noble one of preaching the Gospel among the Mahometans, especially in the Holy Land; and for this specific object, his Spiritual Exercises and his Constitutions were composed, and his Order founded. It was for this purpose that the Pope sanctioned the formation of the Society, and its members were on the point of departure for Asia when war broke out between the Turks and the Christians.
This unexpected event rendered their journey physically impossible, and compelled the newly-sworn aspirants to fulfil their vows of perfect obedience in some other direction, to be enjoined by the Head of the Church. Thenceforth they remained in Europe, where the Reformation afforded ample scope for their exertions, and where they only too successfully combated with the new heresy instead of with the old apostacy. The mind of Ignatius Loyola was swayed by none of the characteristics of Jesuitism. His character was open, direct, fearless. Physically active and wonderfully energetic, to conceive was to determine; to determine was to act.
When his broken leg was set awry he only said, “Break it again and set it straight;” still the bone protruded and threatened to spoil the shape of his boot: “Cut off the projection and stretch the limb in an iron jack,” was a command which showed the unflinching determination of the man.
Confined to his bed, the “Lives of the Saints” is brought to him for his amusement. He is struck with their sufferings for the faith, and, on the instant, determines to do likewise. Thenceforth his whole soul has but one ambition, to suffer for the faith; and this ambition actuated the remainder of his life. To run through the life of Ignatius, to pourtray his fearful sufferings; his degrading servitude in misery, in beggary, and rags; his unwearying perseverance in acquiring a knowledge of language and divinity; his journeyings; his rebuffs; his trials; his successes—would be to exhibit what can be effected by mere perseverance and physical energy, without the gift of great mental powers.
But the peculiarly remarkable physical bias of Ignatius’s mind is still more strikingly developed in his writings. Other men have been equally active and persevering—other men have equalled him in mere bodily activity and suffering; but to Ignatius alone belongs the discovery of exercising the mind by converting his thoughts into actual realities, and rendering the creations of the imagination true existences.
Herein appears the peculiarly physical tone of his mind, which could not rest content with mere spiritual contemplation, but must actually, as it were, see, feel, smell, taste, and hear the objects contemplated. The Spiritual Exercises enjoin that the exercitant must, in his gloomiest hours, not only think upon, but actually behold, the vast conflagration of Hell; he must hear its wailings, shrieks, and blasphemies; he must smell its smoky brimstone, and the horrid stench of its filth and rottenness; he must taste the saltness of the tears of penitence, and the bitterness of the rancour of the heart, and the loathsomeness of the worm of conscience; and he must touch the very fire by which the souls of the reprobate are scorched. Thus each meditation must be, not mere thinking-on, or contemplation, but must be instinct with life—must be continued until the senses seem actually to see, taste, and feel the objects contemplated.
So, in contemplating the passion of our Lord, the horrors of his death must be visibly present; we must hear his last words; we must listen to the shoutings of the populace; we must watch the agony of the virgin-mother beholding the infamy of her blessed son; we must see his quivering limbs, his death-like paleness, his tottering weakness under the burden of the cross, his bleeding side and pierced extremities. Merely to see these things in contemplation is trivial and inessential; we must, with certain interior senses, actually see, hear, taste, and smell, not only the personages and scenes on which the mind is dwelling, but the emotions which the scenes are calculated to excite. So again, we must taste and relish the suavity and lusciousness of the pious soul, and by a like internal sense of touch we must actually feel and kiss the very garments, places, and footsteps of the personages whose acts our minds dwell upon.