Alas for such gratitude! How many families have had cause to deplore it! How many children have been reduced to beggary by it! How many ancient and noble houses has it precipitated from the height of affluence and splendour into the depth of poverty and wretchedness! Who can number the crimes committed in the madness of despair occasioned by the loss of the family inheritance? That the parent may suffer a few years less of purgatory, the child has been too often condemned to misery in this life, and perhaps to eternal punishment in the next. But all this is of no consequence. The man who has been led thus to disregard one of his most sacred parental duties, in order to found a Jesuits’ college or endow a professorship, will be saved, because they promise him—“In every college of our Society, let masses be celebrated once a week for ever, for its founder and benefactor, whether dead or alive. At the beginning of every month, all the priests who are in the college ought to offer the same sacrifice for them; and a solemn mass, with a commemorative feast, shall be celebrated on the anniversary of the donation, and a wax candle offered to the donor or his descendants.” Besides this, “the donor shall have three masses while alive, and three masses after his death, by all the priests of the Society, with the prayers of all its members; so that he is made partaker of all the good works which are done, by the grace of God, not only in the college which he has endowed, but in the whole Society.”[37]
By such allurements do these crafty priests, with diabolical cunning, snatch princely fortunes from the credulous and superstitious believers. And so assiduous and successful were they even at the very beginning, that, only thirteen years after the establishment of the order, during Loyola’s lifetime, they already possessed upwards of a hundred colleges very largely and richly endowed.
Now, let not my Protestant readers wonder how sensible men can be induced, by such ephemeral and ill-founded hopes, to disinherit their families in order to enrich these hypocritical monks. They must remember that the Romish believer views these matters in quite a different light from that in which they see them. Masses and prayers are, in his belief, not only useful, but indispensable. For lack of them he would writhe for centuries amid the tormenting fires of purgatory, the purifying pains of which are described by his priest, with appalling eloquence, as being far more excruciating than those of hell. According to the doctrine of his Church, every soul (one in a million only excepted) who is not eternally damned, must, ere it enter heaven, pass a certain time in this abode of torture for the expiation of its sins. And let him not take comfort from the fact that his conscience does not reproach him with the commission of any heinous crime. The catalogue of sins by which he may be shut out from eternal blessedness is made artfully long, and detailed with great minuteness. The most upright and pious of men must condemn himself as a presumptuous sinner if he for an instant harbours the hope of escaping the purifying fire. So he becomes quite resigned to his fate, and all his care in this life is, how to appease the Divine anger, and shorten the period of his exclusion from heaven. This he is taught to do—not by trusting to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, with the true repentance which manifests itself through a holy life, but by accumulating on his head hundreds of masses and millions of days of indulgence. Hence the innumerable masses and prayers which he sends before him during his life, as if to forestall his future punishment, and bribe the Divine justice. And when the terrible moment arrives—that moment in which he is about to appear before the awful Judge, beneath whose searching eye his most secret thoughts lie bare—when, trembling at the strict account that is about to be demanded of him, his fears represent to his excited imagination the most trifling shortcomings as mortal sins—when, with the decline of bodily strength, his enfeebled mind becomes more easily worked upon—then does his Jesuit confessor, his generous master, his kind, disinterested friend, come to give him the last proof of his ever-growing affection. He seats himself at his bedside, and, serpent-like, under pretence of inducing him to repent of his sins, he draws him a fearful and impressive picture of the torments which await the damned. He descants to him with oily sanctity upon the enormity of offending the Divine Saviour, who shed his precious blood to redeem us. He terrifies him with the Almighty’s implacable vengeance; and when his victim, choked with heart-rending agony, distracted, despairing of his ultimate salvation, is ready to curse God, and set his power and anger at defiance—then, and not till then, does the Jesuit relent. Now he raises in the sufferer’s heart the faintest hope that the Divine justice may possibly be disarmed, and mercy obtained by means of masses and indulgences. The exhausted man, who feels as if he were already plunged amid the boiling sulphur and devouring flames, grasps with frantic eagerness at this anchor of salvation; and, did he possess tenfold more wealth than he does, he would willingly give it all up to save his soul. It may be that his heart, yearning with paternal affection, shrinks at the thought of condemning his helpless ones to beggary; but nevertheless, as if the welfare of his family were necessarily connected with his own perdition, and that of the Jesuits with eternal beatitude, the family is invariably sacrificed to the Jesuits.
It is notorious that the most diabolical tricks have been resorted to in the case of dying men whose better judgment and natural sense of duty have withstood such perfidious wiles.
Alas! the punishment of such criminal obstinacy was always near at hand; the sick-chamber has been suddenly filled with flames and sulphureous vapour as a warning to the impenitent sinner. And if he still resisted, the Evil Spirit himself, in his most frightful shape, has appeared to the dying man, as if waiting for his soul. Ah!—one’s hair stands on end while listening to such sacrilegious manœuvres. The immense wealth of the Jesuits has been bequeathed to them by wills made at the last hour!
In order that all classes of Jesuits may better attend to their peculiar occupations, Ignatius relieved them from the obligation, incumbent on all other religious communities, of performing the Church service at the canonical hours.
Jesuits of every class may be expelled from the order, either by the general congregation or by the all-powerful General. In such cases, however, it is enacted, that great care be taken to keep secret the deeds or crimes which necessitate the dismissal, in order that the ex-Jesuit may suffer the least possible disgrace; also, that he shall be assisted by the prayers of the community, together with something more substantial, to the end that he may harbour no resentment against the order.[38]
No Jesuit, without the consent of the General, is allowed to accept any ecclesiastical dignity or benefice; and the General is required to refuse such consent, unless the Pope command him in the name of holy obedience to grant it. By this rule Ignatius designed to avoid exciting the animosity and jealousy of the other monastic orders, and of the clergy in general. Besides, Ignatius knew well that any ecclesiastical dignity would confer lustre and power on the individual, but be detrimental to the order. A bishop or a cardinal would be less disposed than a poor priest, to obey the General, and to work for the Society. He himself most rigidly enforced it, and would permit neither Lainez nor Borgia to receive the cardinal’s hat, which the Pope offered them. Since his time, the Jesuits have very seldom broken this rule, and that most often only to undertake some bishopric in far distant countries where no one else would desire to go.
The dress of the Jesuits consists of a long black vest and cloak, and of a low-crowned broad-brimmed hat, all of the greatest simplicity, and of good but common material. In their houses and colleges there reigns the most perfect order, the most exemplary propriety. The banqueting, revelling, and licence which so disgrace the establishments of the other monastic orders, are strictly prohibited.[39] They are very frugal in their habits, and prudently avoid all display of wealth. It is said that the General occasionally relaxes the rules in favour of some of the most trusty of the professed and coadjutors, in order that, disguised as laymen, they may enjoy a few holidays as they please, in some distant place where they are not known.
We shall now proceed to examine that part of the Constitutions which concerns the hierarchy. Our readers must always bear in mind what we have already said, that the Constitutions were not finished till the year 1552, and it may perhaps be that some rules were added even after. The Society at first consisted only of professed members, and of scholastics or scholars, a sort of Jesuit aspirants who were trained up for the Society, into which they were admitted or not, according to the proofs which they had given of their fitness. In the year 1546, Paul III. approved of the introduction of the class of the Coadjutors, and in the year 1552 was erected at Lisbon the first house for the novices. We may further observe that, under the first three Generals, those Constitutions were scrupulously observed. And those were the heroic times of the Society. But from that moment, internal discord at first, and afterwards the more worldly and political character assumed by the Society, were its ruin, and the cause of its suppression as well as of its re-establishment. But let us not anticipate events.