To conclude, we shall observe that the title of Society of Jesus is still one of the reproaches which the Jansenists cast on the Jesuits, as a too proud denomination; by which they seemed to attribute to themselves alone the quality of Christians: this is a pretty slight subject of quarrel, and proves only what we have already said, that hatred has formed weapons of every thing to attack them. The true crime of the society, we cannot repeat it too often, is not the being called the Company of Jesus, but the having been really a company of intriguers and fanaticks; the having endeavoured to oppress every thing which gave it umbrage; the having wanted to domineer in every thing; the having intermeddled in all affairs and all factions; the having sought, in a word, rather to render themselves necessary than useful.
The spirit of giddiness, which has occasioned the misfortune of the Jesuits in France, seems to announce to them a like fate in the rest of Europe. They have long been cried down in the territories of the king of Sardinia, and the republick of Venice; and the little existence they yet preserve there, may very possibly be shaken anew by the shocks which they have just felt elsewhere: their conduct in Silesia, during the last war, has not disposed favourably towards them a prince, in other respects an enemy to superstition and the monkish race: the house of Austria, which has so long protected them, begins to be tired of them, and to find out what they are; and they have all room to fear, lest the bomb, which has burst in Portugal and in France, should dart some of its splinters against them into all parts of Europe.
WE shall close this treatise with the queries, of which mention has been made above, respecting the oath which was required of the Jesuits: they are proposed in such a manner, that there seems to be no doubt, either as to the answer to be made to each, or consequently as to the part which these fathers should have taken. It appears, in the writings published on this subject by the Jansenists and the Jesuits, as if they had made it their business to deviate from the true point of view of the question. Instead of the idle declamations which have been printed on both sides, the author seems to have meant to substitute a little logick: this is the secret for abridging a number of controversies, which the rhetorick of lawyers and of mandates would perpetuate to eternity.
QUERIES.[22]
I.
