An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France

by Jean Le Rond d' Alembert

It must also be observed, that most of those Jesuits, who were so severe in their writings, or in their sermons, were less so towards their penitents. It has been said of Bourdaloue himself, that if he required too much in the pulpit, he abated it in the confessional chair: a new stroke of policy, well understood on the part of the Jesuits, in as much as speculative severity suits persons of rigid morals, and practical condescension attracts the multitude.

In China they employed still other methods: they rendered light to the people the yoke which they came to impose on them, by permitting them to mingle with the practical duties of Christianity, some ceremonies of the religion of the country; to which the multitude, every where superstitious and tumultuous, was too firmly attached.

This philosophy, so purely human, which sees in the zeal of the Jesuits, and of many others, to go and preach religion at the extremities of the earth, nothing more than a means which they make use of for becoming of consequence and powerful, regards, as the most dexterous of their missionaries, those who know how best to arrive at that end. We must not then be astonished, if the society is a little surprised at the number of invectives and clamours, of which these fathers have been the object, on account of the Chinese superstitions which they permitted to their new converts. In that, as well as in the rest of their conduct, to the very time of their destruction, they have proved, we repeat it, that they knew mankind better than their adversaries did: they perceived that they were not to frighten or disgust their new converts, by prohibiting them a few national practices which were dear to them, and which they still have it in their power to interpret as they please. Pope Gregory, who is called the Great, and who was certainly a man of good sense, seems, if we may believe the Jesuits, to have set them, in that respect, the example: they have, at least, pretended to the authority of it. Augustine the monk, whom this pope had sent into England, to convert the people who were yet barbarous, consulted him on some remains of ceremonies, partly civilized, partly Pagan, which the new converts were unwilling to renounce: he demanded of Gregory, whether he might permit them those ceremonies. “There is no taking away,” replied that pope, “from rugged minds, all their habits at once: we ascend not a steep rock by leaping on it, but by clambering up step by step.” We see here the principle on which the Jesuits pretend to have conducted themselves in China. They were persuaded, that without this condescension, the religion which they preached would not have been even heard there. I have no doubt, but artful as they are, (or rather as they were) they have still further palliated and mitigated matters with respect to other points: and it cannot be denied, that they have done well, relatively to their own views; since, after all, it was neither God nor Christianity that they wanted to reign there; it was the society under those respectable names.

Furthermore, neither the severe morality of religion, nor the doctrines of grace which they were accused of misrepresenting, are delivered in so exclusive a manner in scripture, as that we do not meet there also with several passages favourable to the most moderate opinions: and we may easily believe, that the Jesuits availed themselves of those passages, after the example of so many sects which have found in the Bible, and in the fathers, matter to support their opinions, while their adversaries found there in like manner wherewith to combat them. The scriptures are, if I may use the expression, common arsenals, to which every one goes, in order to arm himself from head to foot, and just as he pleases. Accordingly it is not without reason that the catholic church has decided, that it belonged to her alone to give to infidels the true sense of the scriptures, and of the fathers: a truth from which we cannot deviate, without exposing ourselves to a dangerous Pyrrhonism in matter of doctrine.

What is very singular, and must appear more strange still to the proselytes, whom they went to make at five thousand leagues distance from our continent of Europe, is, that while the Jesuits preached Christianity after their manner, other missionaries, their enemies, monks and seculars, preached it quite differently to the same people; warning them, at the same time, under pain of damnation, not to believe in the catechism of the Jesuits. We may judge of the effect which these contests would produce. “Indeed, gentlemen,” said the emperor of China to them, “you take a great deal of trouble in coming so far to preach to us contradictory opinions, concerning which you are ready to cut one another’s throats.” After having made them this representation, he left them to preach as long as they would, persuaded that such apostles could not have any great success. He availed himself besides, for the good of his country, of the residence of the Jesuits, who talked much more at court of astronomy and natural philosophy, than of the Trinity and religion, and who succeeded at last in rendering the other missionaries either suspected or contemptible.

It is not that they were not very ready to expose themselves to the greatest dangers, and even to death, for the sake of that religion which they burlesqued in their manner of preaching it, and which served only as an instrument to their ambition. When the emperor of Japan judged it proper (for reasons which appeared to him indispensible) to exterminate Christianity from his territories, the Jesuits had there their martyrs as well as others, and even in greater numbers. The reader will not be surprised at it, when he knows what was told me by a person extremely worthy of credit. He was particularly acquainted with a Jesuit, who had been employed twenty years in the missions of Canada; and who, while he did not believe a God, as he owned privately to this friend, had faced death twenty times for the sake of the religion which he preached with success to the savages. This friend represented to the Jesuit the inconsistency of his zeal: “Ah!” replied the missionary, “you have no idea of the pleasure which is felt in commanding the attention of twenty thousand people, and in persuading them to what we believe not ourselves.”

Such is the spirit of the method which the Jesuits have followed, for teaching with success to mankind what they called religion and Christian morality. Such was the moderate doctrine which they preached at the court of Louis XIV. and by means of which they succeeded in rendering themselves so agreeable. Accordingly it was principally under the reign of that prince that the power, the credit, and opulence of the Jesuits received in France such prodigious aggrandizements: it was under this reign that they succeeded in rendering the clergy dependent on them (we may even say their slaves) by the disposal of benefices, with which the fathers la Chaize and le Tellier, the king’s confessors, were successively entrusted: it was in this reign that they succeeded, in consequence of the need which the bishops stood in of them, in extorting, even while they braved them, their confidence, or the appearance of their confidence, and in obtaining the direction of several seminaries; in which the youth, destined to the church, were brought up in their doctrines, and in the hatred of their enemies: it was under this reign that they succeeded, by decrying or vilifying the other orders and the secular ecclesiasticks, in invading a great number of colleges, or at least in obtaining permission for establishing new ones: it was under this reign that they succeeded so far, through the confidence and consideration which Louis XIV. gave them, as to draw all the court to their college of Clermont. We remember still the mark of flattery which they bestowed on that monarch, by divesting that college of the name which it bore of the Society of Jesus, in order to call it the college of Louis the Great; and nobody is ignorant of the Latin distich which was made on that occasion, and in which the society was reproached “with acknowledging no other God but the king.” Thus they represented them at once as idolaters of despotism, in order to render them vile, and as preachers of regicide, in order to render them odious: these two accusations might appear a little contradictory, but the business was not to speak the exact truth; it was to say of the Jesuits as much ill as possible.

Lastly, what completed the power and glory of the society was, that under Louis XIV. the Jesuits succeeded in destroying, or at least in oppressing in France the Protestants and the Jansenists, their eternal enemies; the Protestants, by contributing to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, that source of depopulation and of evils to this kingdom; the Jansenists, by depriving them of the ecclesiastical dignities, by arming the bishops against them, by forcing them to go and preach, and write in foreign countries, where even these unfortunate people still found persecution.