This statement, literally taken, does not stand examination, and Crétineau, who reports it, triumphantly exclaims, that this manner of writing history renders all discussion impossible.[287] No, certainly not; such infernal projects as to drive the king to extremities, and make the king’s head fall for the fulfilment of their designs, if formed, were neither publicly nor secretly discussed at the Court of Rome in the presence of eighteen Jesuits and a lord, and much less was the conclusion they came to, and their approval of the project, put in writing and freely distributed: we readily acquit them of such foolish contrivances. But, knowing as we do the arts of the Loyolan brotherhood, we repeat that we firmly believe that it is more than probable that the Jesuits did mix among the Roundheads and excite their fanaticism to frenzy. I have recorded (page 171) an almost similar fact which appeared under our own eyes in Rome. And I must further add, that all the more virulent men who, in the beginning of Pius IX.’s reign, were proposing the most daring and extravagant measures, were afterwards discovered to be either in the pay of the fathers, or to be the unconscious tools of their secret agency.
Discouraged a little under Cromwell, the Jesuits took heart again after the restoration of Charles II., and resorted to their usual arts and machinations. If we are to believe what they boast of, it seems that they had plunged into a more dangerous and extensive conspiracy against the Protestant religion and the English liberties than we are aware of. “A secret treaty,” says Crétineau, “had been signed between Louis XIV. and Charles II., to re-establish the Catholic religion in Great Britain. Fathers Annat and Ferrier, successively confessors to the French king, and the English Jesuits, had not been strangers to this negotiation; Colman did not ignore those details, and he spoke of them in his letters to Father Lachaise.”[288] We do not know how far we may credit this assertion; we know that Charles debased himself by asking and receiving money from the French monarch, to whom he betrayed the interests of his allies and of his own kingdom; but, as to having stipulated for the re-establishment of the Romish religion, we would not be bold enough to assert that it was so. However it be, this statement is connected with the famous Popish plot which, in 1678, threw Great Britain into such a state of alarm and excitement, and which, although it was at first the cause of many innocent victims beings sacrificed, ultimately produced an immense and glorious result—the Habeas Corpus Act.
Oates and Bedloe are two names which have come down to posterity abhorred and execrated by every honest man. These infamous and abandoned men accused the Jesuits, the Pope, the Kings of France and Spain, many English noblemen, and some scores of thousands of the English citizens, of a plot so absurd, as to make, in our days, every one ashamed of repeating it. And yet the generality of the common people, and the greater part of the higher classes, at the time believed in its reality. Nothing else was talked of, and all the cares of the government, the activity of the parliament, and the energy of the citizens, were exerted to protect the nation from an imaginary impending ruin. This ought to teach us how the passions and spirit of party deprive us of our right feeling and judgment, and how dangerous it is to give way to the impulse of the moment in times of great commotion. Many noblemen and citizens were arrested upon the deposition of these scoundrels. Many suffered the extreme penalty of the law. Father Ireland, on the deposition of Oates, for which the latter was afterwards condemned for perjury, was sentenced to death and executed; and soon after, the provincial and four other Jesuits met with the same fate upon the same absurd and unjust accusation.
We do not pretend to say, however, that the Jesuits at such an epoch had quite renounced their intrigues and treacherous projects, and were not to be looked after. No; their restless and enterprising spirit rendered, and does still render, them very dangerous, and their conduct in Protestant countries may be said, with justice, to be a permanent conspiracy against the welfare and the interests of all other communities; and they themselves, as we said, confess as much. But they were guiltless of the crime of which they were accused, and for which they suffered. How much more mischief they were the cause of in the reign of the despotic and bigoted James II.! It was at their instigation that this bigoted monarch annulled the test act, imprisoned many Protestant bishops, had as many as four Roman Catholic priests consecrated bishops at a time, and had formed a plan for converting England to the Popish idolatry. Yet all these arbitrary and foolish acts resulted also at last in the great advantage of the English nation. The Jesuits’ influence had grown so powerful under James’s reign, that Father Peter was admitted into the privy council, and we do not hesitate to say, that the favour James shewed to the members of the Company and to the Catholics in general, and the authority they exercised over him, was one of the most efficient causes of raising up the people of England’s feelings of indignation, and to bring them to resolve upon and achieve the glorious Revolution of 1688.
CHAPTER XIII.
1600-1753.
AMERICAN MISSIONS.
When we reflect that the Jesuits are our fellow-men, that their crimes and iniquities which we are compelled to stigmatise, are in some measure a stain upon the human species, we sincerely rejoice when we find some noble action to record, and when we may write a page of praise and eulogium. We think we have shewn this impartiality in our account of the Indian missions, when, while condemning with all our might the idolatrous practice of later times, we awarded to the first missionaries the praise that was due to their pure and generous intentions, and to their prodigious and unremitting activity. We are placed in much the same predicament in speaking of the American missions, when we find the evil inherent in the spirit of the sect, and in the religion they profess, united with noble and generous endeavours to make the happiness of a barbarous and savage population, by reducing it under benignant and humane laws, and by imparting to it the benefit of Christianity, at least in its effects upon the external conduct and mode of living. No doubt, a Christian Protestant—a man deeply imbued with the true spirit of the gospel, and who abhors any form of worship which consists in mere bodily service—will find much to blame in these missions. No doubt the Jesuits here, as in India, preached and taught superstitious practices and external observances, rather than the sincere devotion of the heart, and the faith to be reposed on the merits of Christ’s blood. No doubt they converted the spiritual and mystic religion of Christ into a sensual worship of material symbols. But, to be just, we think that these reproaches are due to Popery, to the Roman Catholic religion in general, and not to the Jesuits alone, and that we ought not to withhold from them the praise they deserve for any good quality or merits they possess, merely because they are Papists. This would be too invidious, and would render us guilty of capital injustice towards those Romanists or Jesuits who sincerely believe that theirs is the only true religion; and be assured that in all religions, there are some who think thus of their own. On the other hand, the Jesuits are accused of having undertaken these missions solely with a view to their private ends, to aggrandise and enrich the order, and not to advance the interests of religion and the glory of God. This we freely admit, and we have repeatedly said that the Order has always been the ultimate end of their conduct; but to refuse them the merit of having brought a savage population into the pale of civilisation, because they did so for their own private interest, would be the same as to apply the epithet of rogue to a landlord or manufacturer, who treats his dependants with unwonted kindness and humanity, because, by treating them in this manner, he himself receives immense advantage.
Our readers must not infer from what we have just said, that we do not find anything with which to reproach the Jesuits in their American missions. We shall have many things to censure in them, but, on the whole, their proceedings appear to us to be deserving of the greatest praise, and we feel obliged to defend them from the gross abuse which has been indiscriminately poured upon them on this score.