We have seen what success the Jesuits had the art to procure themselves at the court of France: their progress was nearly the same in almost all the other courts: at the beginning of the present century there was not in Europe a catholic prince, of whose conscience they were not the directors, and from whom they had not obtained the most signal favours; in all parts their enemies raged, and in all parts they made a jest of their enemies.
They confined not their ambition to Europe; perpetually full of the project of governing, and of governing by religion, they sent to the Indies, and to China, missionaries, who carried thither christianity for the people, and the profane sciences for the princes, for the grandees, and for the more enlightened persons, whom by these means they might render favourable to them.
Let us stop here a moment, and examine more particularly, by what kind of learning and doctrine the Jesuits were able to make such great progress among the Christians, and among those who were not so.
The religion which we profess turns upon two points; its tenets and its morality. Among its tenets are the Trinity, the Redemption, the Real Presence, &c. which, in appearing to confound the human understanding, present to its belief only truths that are speculative in themselves: these sorts of truths, how obscure soever they seem to reason, and how much submission soever they require from it, are not those which meet with the most opposition from the multitude: naturally inclined to the marvellous, they are disposed to adopt blindly the most absurd errors in this kind, and much more the truths which are only incomprehensible, provided they oppose not their inclinations. The Jesuits therefore preached those truths in all their exactness; they knew well that they risked not much. But there are other tenets, as those of Predestination and of Grace, which border on practical religion, and which, preached in all their rigour to minds that are unprepared, would be little adapted to make proselytes. We must take great care, said the wise and pious Fleury, not to propose at once to infidels, those articles of our belief, which might shock them too much. Suppose a missionary should come and say abruptly to savages, “My children, I make known to you a God, whom you cannot serve worthily, without his special grace, which he has resolved from all eternity to give, or to refuse you.” “Very well,” the savages would say to him, “we will wait for that grace, and till it come we will remain in our present faith.” What success would the Jesuits have had, had they proceeded in this manner? Let us suppose that a Jansenist had been in their place, to preach his incomprehensible doctrine (which he calls nevertheless modestly the doctrine of St. Augustine and St. Paul) he would soon have been either abandoned as a madman, or driven away by the people with stones. The Jesuits conducted themselves much more dexterously; they proved, according to the saying of their enemies, the truth of that maxim of scripture, that the children of darkness act with more prudence in their affairs than the children of light: they preached to the people they wanted to convert that Pelagianism of which they make profession, and which is much more accommodated to the weakness and vanity of human nature; but they not only preached in a manner better suited to humanity than the Jansenists would have done; they preached also more artfully than would Pelagius himself. The heresy of that monk did not meet with the success it might have had, because it stuck half way. Pelagius, while he restored to freedom her rights, imposed on her severe ties, by the morality which he recommended to practice: this morality was that of the Christian religion in all its austerity, the renouncing of one’s-self, a penitence the most rigorous, and an eternal warfare against the passions. The Jesuits perceived that these painful duties were not made for the common run of mankind, and it was the multitude they wanted to attract to them. After having softened what the doctrines of Predestination and Grace have too harsh in appearance, they did the same with what the ties imposed by Christianity have too difficult. Great personages, for the most part, are, by the fault of their education, superstitious, ignorant, and given up to their passions. The Jesuits permitted them to have mistresses, provided they displayed a zeal for religion, and an attachment to its outward forms, which are no more than a kind of amusement when the passions are satisfied, and which serve besides, to consciences that are but ill enlightened, by way of a quieter, or, if you will, a palliative in their hours of remorse. They followed pretty nearly the same plan with regard to all those whom they directed, and succeeded in making, by these means, a great number of partisans. The Jesuitical spirit, in the manner of teaching religion, is pretty well described in the definition which the Abbé Boileau gave of these fathers: “They are (said he) a people who lengthen the creed, and shorten the decalogue.”
I cannot help remarking, on this occasion, one singular contradiction of the human mind in matters of religion. The Jansenists are at once what it seems impossible to be at the same time, Predestinarians in opinion, and Rigorists in morality: they say to man, “You have great duties to fulfill, but you can do nothing of yourself; and whatever you do, what human virtues soever you practise, every one of your actions will be A NEW CRIME; at least unless God sanctify you by his grace, which you will not obtain if you are not predestined to it gratuitously and before the foreknowledge of your merits.” It must be confessed, that this doctrine is mild, adapted to consolation, and above all consistent! But in these sorts of matters, the business is not to be consistent and reasonable; it is the temper of the person who dogmatises, and not logic, that dictates to him what he is to preach. The Jansenist, unpitying in his nature, is equally so, both in his doctrines and in the morality which he teaches; he is little embarrassed that the one is contrary to the other: the nature of the God that he preaches (and who, happily for us, is only his own) is to be harsh as himself, both in what he would have us do, and in what he wills that we should believe. What would be thought of a monarch, who should say to one of his subjects, “You have irons on your legs, and you have not the power to take them off; however I now inform you, that if you walk not presently, both for a long time, and very upright, on the brink of the precipice on which you now stand, you shall be condemned to eternal punishment[9]?” Such is the God of the Jansenists; such is their theology in its original and primitive purity. Pelagius, in his error, was more reasonable. He said to man, “You can do every thing; but you have a great deal to do.” This doctrine was less shocking to reason; but, however, very incommodious and irksome. The Jesuits have, if we may say so, beat down Pelagius’s price: they have said to Christians, “You can do every thing, and God requires but little of you.” This is the way in which we must speak to carnal people; and especially to the great of the age, whenever we would have them listen to us.
These are not the only cautions which they have taken; for they have thought of every thing. They have had (indeed in small number) severe casuists and directors; compared with the small number of those, who thro’ temper or scruple wanted to impose, in all its rigour, the yoke of the gospel. By this means, making themselves, to use the expression, “all to all,” according to a saying of scripture (the sense of which indeed they wrested a little) on one side they procured to themselves friends of every kind; and on the other they refuted, or thought they refuted, before-hand, the objection which might be made to them, of teaching universally looseness of morals, and of having made it the uniform doctrine of their society. This kind of complete assortment, designed to satisfy all tastes, is pretty well described in the following well-known lines of Despréaux:
Si Bourdaloue un peu sévère
Nous dit, craignez la volupté,
Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,
Nous la permet pour la santé.