It is not without sorrow that I thus express my unreserved opinion of a man of superior talent—mind lofty, soul intense; a man in the sequel profoundly sad himself, although haughty in his very fall. One cannot read in their stormy succession the numerous writings of the Abbé de la Mennais without recognizing in them traces, I will not say of his intellectual perplexities—his pride did not feel them—but of the sufferings of his soul, whether for good or for evil. A noble nature, but full of exaggeration in his opinions, of fanatical arrogance, and of angry asperity in his polemics. One title to our gratitude remains to the Abbé de la Mennais—he thundered to purpose against the gross and vulgar forgetfulness of the great moral interests of humanity. His essay on indifference in religious questions inflicted a rude blow upon that vice of the time, and recalled men's souls to regions above. And thus it was that he, too, rendered service to the great movement and awakening of Christians in the nineteenth century, and that he merits his place in that movement although he deserted it. [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: The principal works of the Abbé de la Mennais are:
1. L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, avec la défense de l'Essai. 5 vols. 8vo. The first volume appeared in 1817.
2. De la Religion considérée dans ses rapports avec l'ordre civil et politique. 1 vol. 8vo. 1825.
3. Les Paroles d'un Croyant. 8vo. 1834.
4. Les Affaires de Rome. 8vo. 1836.
5. Esquisse d'une philosophic. 4 vols. 8vo. 1841-1846. All his works, including numerous pamphlets and articles published in religious and political journals, have been collected in two editions: one in 12 vols. 8vo., 1836-1837; the other in 11 vols. 8vo., 1844 and following years. Besides the above, there are his Posthumous Works, 2 vols. 8vo., 1856, and his Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo., 1858.]
At the same time that great minds were thus at work in order to restore to the belief in Christianity and the belief in Catholicism its honor and its authority, another influence was operating in the same direction, with less notoriety but no less effect. The Jesuits were re-establishing themselves in France—were founding houses of education and noviciates for their order—were opening chapels, preaching, teaching, careless of the existence in France of laws proscribing them; occupying themselves solely with fulfilling what they regarded as a duty, and a duty, too, springing from a right believed by them to be superior to the laws. That duty for them was to uphold the Church of Rome; that right was the right of preaching and teaching, according to the faith of the Church. The Jesuits have also been considered and represented as politicians in the garb of monks, rather than genuine members of the monastic orders. Often, in effect, in their acts and in their words, they have appeared as politicians, and politicians, too, with a certain indulgence for the world and the world's masters; but, at bottom, they have been and they are essentially monastic—an order perhaps the most ardent of all, for they are of all orders the order most completely devoted to the cause of religious authority.
There are commonplaces that have to be continually repeated, so apt are men to forget them. In religions society, as well as in civil society, there are two great moral forces—Authority and Liberty; these coexist of necessity—have dominion turn by turn, and have alternately their heroes and their martyrs. Regarded either with respect to its political or religious constitution, society cannot long dispense with either Authority or with Liberty; and each of these two forces is liable to abuse its influence, and to lose it by the very abuse.
When Authority has had a long dominion, and its abuse too has been long, a reaction occurs: Liberty has her revenge; but in her turn is prone to compromise her interests by abuses and by excess. It is the history of all human society; facts prove it quite as much as common sense foretells it. In the bosom of this general fact it is the peculiar character, as it is the glory, of Christianity that it has fully accepted these two rival forces; and the one in the face of the other—authority and liberty—both of divine origin. Christianity has constantly accounted them for such as they are—the one the revealed law of God, the other the innate right of man, whom God created free and responsible. The history of the Jews is only that of the intimate and continued relations between God as sovereign and man as free agent; God uttering and giving the law, man using his liberty at one time to fulfill, at another to reject, the law of God. When the great day of humanity dawned and Jesus came, it was in liberty's name, and in claiming the right of the soul to obey the divine law according to its convictions, that Christianity engaged in its primitive struggle of three centuries. Under this banner, too, it conquered, and under it religious society and civil society combined without becoming identical. The tempestuous and painful fecundity of the middle ages succeeded to the tyrannical unity of the Roman empire, so sterile in result. Hence principles the most inconsistent, issues the most contradictory—the power of religion and the power of the state—popes and kings now supporting, now combating each other's ambitious purposes, and thwarting each other's measures, without any regard to law or right; liberty sometimes suffering cruelly by their alliance, sometimes happily profiting by their dissensions; on some occasions popes, on others monarchs protecting liberty against their reciprocal pretensions and excesses. Spiritual and temporal princes still wavered in their maxims and in their policy, and did not during the middle ages systematically and on all occasions form coalitions, of which liberty was to pay the cost. Liberty, on the contrary, continued to subsist and to grow in the midst of their rivalries and of her own sufferings. But these rivalries and these sufferings produced a chaos which recurred incessantly, and became ever more and more intolerable, precisely on account of the progress still made, and which no effort could stifle. The great body of Christians at last demanded some issue from this chaos; then those who wielded the religious power and the civil power, now separately, now in concert, endeavored to satisfy the craving of the world; and by their councils, pragmatic sanctions, encyclical letters and concordats, sought to reform the abuses and the grievances which, as men loudly proclaimed, existed, if not in the Church itself, at least in the relations of the Church with the State. Whether from want of wisdom, virtue, courage, or sagacity in their authors, or from their measures being too superficial, or meeting with too much opposition, those attempts failed; and the reform that was to have proceeded from Authority herself remained without accomplishment. Then came the reform by insurrection, in the name of Faith and Liberty; and as happens in similar crises, whether of the Church or the State, the supreme authority of Romanism was attacked, not only in its abuses and its vices, but in its principle and its very existence. Rome then committed the fault almost always committed by Power when seriously menaced—it defended itself by pushing its principle and its right to the extreme, without holding account of any other principle or of any other right. In the name of Unity and Infallibility in matters of faith, the supreme power in the Church of Rome allied itself with the absolute power in the State, and supported the latter in its resistance to liberty. Under the inspiration of their founder and hero, Loyola, whose genius was that of a fanatic and a mystic, but who was adroit in organizing and realizing his design, the order of the Jesuits sprung into existence. This order was born of this war and for this war—a chosen troop, charged in the name of the faith to be the uncompromising defenders of authority in Church and in State.
Since that epoch three centuries have passed, and the fourth is in its turn sweeping by us; neither times nor chances have been wanting to causes to produce their effects, nor to men to accomplish their designs; principles and events have received their development over a vast space; and in the light of heaven the different systems have been put to the test of successes and of reverses. Absolutism has had its triumphs and its victories; more than once the faults of its adversaries have played into its hands, and it has found able and glorious champions. It has not succeeded in arresting the course of a civilization full of liberty and yet still greedy to have more. It has taken its place in the midst of liberty as a temporary necessity, never as a preponderating tendency. More than this, even in the epochs when its influence was its height, and its splendor the greatest, Absolutism has often served the cause hostile to its own. Louis XIV. seconded the movement of mind and the people's progress; Napoleon sowed in every direction the germs of social advancement or innovation. And now, even there, where liberty does not exist, Absolutism does not avow itself; it furls its banner, and admits institutions contrary to its principles, reserving to itself the right to elude, or to render them powerless. Experience has pronounced its judgment; whatever the problems that the future will have to solve, or the trials which the future will have to encounter, the cause of Absolutism is a lost cause throughout Christendom.
At the commencement of this century, the Jesuits, unfortunately for them, and yet very naturally, were regarded as devoted to that cause. After having served it in the eighteenth century, they had been the first victims of its decline; the papal and the monarchical sovereignty had sacrificed them to the new opinions, just as mariners in a tempest throw overboard their heavy ordnance. When the nineteenth century opened, all was greatly changed; the Revolution was not only victorious, but earnestly engaged in conciliating parties by disavowing and making amends for its excesses. After the commission of so many follies and crimes in the pursuit of liberty, France submitted once more with the greatest satisfaction to the voice of authority.