By means of their Christianizing establishments in Paraguay and Uruguay, the Jesuits ruled the natives with despotic power, and acquired an immense amount of wealth. In 1750, Spain having by a commercial treaty ceded to Portugal seven districts of these domains, the monks at the head of an army of fourteen thousand men, compelled the contracting nations to annul the treaty; but an attempt being afterwards made to assassinate the King of Portugal, the government declared the order of the Jesuits to be a treasonable organization, and confiscated all their possessions in the dominion. The order of the Catholic Knights, incorporated for the defense and propagation of the true faith, by the force of arms, like the monks, rapaciously acquired an incredible amount of riches while under the solemnest obligation to maintain a perpetual condition of absolute poverty. These holy organizations were exclusively military; the sword was the only argument they used. The Knights of St. John, with the vow of poverty on their lips, but with the sword of conquest in their hand, amassed such extensive domains, that they gave their chief an annual salary of one million guilders. The Knights Templars, while they vowed absolute poverty, acquired by arms, forced loans, donations, bequests and other means, such a prodigious amount of wealth that they erected nine thousand vast and princely palaces, each enriched with extensive territory, and all powerful enough to maintain immunity from the jurisdiction of the sovereign in whose kingdom they were located. The Teutonic Knights, while they abjured the rights of property, and swore never, to allow its possession to tarnish their sanctity, wrung from Sweden all the territory that extends from the Oder along its banks to the Gulf of Finland. It is reported by travellers that the Shaggians, a barbarous tribe of Egypt, when meeting a foe, will exclaim: "Peace be with you," and thrust a lance in his heart. The wild mockery of these uncouth savages at avowed principles has been far exceeded by the conduct and profession of the monachal and military orders of the Catholic Church, whose vows were meant for imposition, and whose life was a scene of perjury.
By the aid of magnificent revenues, the various orders of the religious paupers were enabled successfully to negotiate for the most lucrative dignities of the church, and enjoyed the fairest prospects of becoming either bishops, cardinals or popes, and of obtaining the luxurious indolence, idolatrous reverence, and impious adulation they secured. The hypocritical devices of the ancient and modern Brahmins, of the Hindoo and Mohammedan monks, and of the priests and prophets of ancient Pagan nations have, in Christian countries, where no prejudice pleads in their favor, and where their origin and claims are candidly investigated, been justly exposed to the scoffs and contempt of common sense; and it is possible that under the same circumstances, the monks, priests, ceremonies and dogmas of Catholicism, which resemble them as nearly as a type can its prototype, would sink to the same level.
When we calmly reflect on the monastic institution, and observe the financial principles on which it is organized, the variety and prodigious traffic which has distinguished its career, the immense treasure and domains it has acquired by fraud and artifice, it seems like some gigantic financial corporation, projected for speculating in land, and for making money by the tricks of trade. When we call to mind the avarice by which it has been actuated, the duplicity it has practised, and the impositions of which it has been guilty, it appears to be a corporation organized to make money, regardless of every maxim of justice, and every principle of honor. When we consider how basely it has prostituted its privileges and immunities; becoming superior to law to violate the principles of rectitude; professing absolute indigence to demand, like a highwayman, a tribute of every one it chanced to meet, if not with a pistol in its hand, yet with an anathema at its disposal more dreaded by the superstitious than thousands of pistols, it looms up before the imagination as a corporation of outlaws, whose right is might, whose object is money, and whose profession is to plunder. When we reflect on its pretention of vending for gold the pardon of sin, the favor of God, immunity for guilt, and protection against the future retribution of heaven, it appears like a corporation of fiends which arrogates the prerogatives of deity, traffic in the hearts and souls of men, sport with their hopes and fears, and merchandise heaven and hell, time and eternity. And when we remember that the Roman Catholic Church has incorporated these infamous religious orders in her constitution, and has officially pronounced them to be her most useful members, and has thus sanctioned and made her own, all their duplicity, all their rapacity, all their swindling operations, all their highway robbery, and all their profanity, immorality and blasphemy, she seems like some black and midnight monster, dripping with human gore, an embodiment of every deformity, an incarnation of every loathsome, hideous and unsightly demon, and a just representation of the character and principles of the arch-fiend.
CHAPTER VII. MONASTIC VOW OF CELIBACY
Nature has organized man for the conjugal union. She has endowed him with powers adapted to its requirements; with passions that aspire after its pleasures and benefits, and with sensibilities that can be gratified only by the performance of its obligations. By the reciprocal relations, and the amiable intercourse which it establishes between the sexes, it furnishes an attractive means of mutual improvement, refining the grossness of the sensual propensities, and developing the noblest graces of the human character. By blending masculine boldness with feminine delicacy, it takes rudeness from the one, and imparts energy to the other; and thus contributes, in an eminent degree, to the formation of that equanimity of character which is the happy medium between extremes, and of that agreeable association of strength and urbanity which is best fitted to cope with the difficulties incident to life.
By an alliance of mutual affection and interests for life, it secures their highest development, and the most complete and undisturbed enjoyment of their benefits. It identifies the honor and interests of parents and children, securing affectionate protectors for helpless infancy, faithful guardians for inexperienced youth, and interested tutors for fitting the rising generation for the useful and noble stations of society; and while it thus provides for children, it rewards the solicitude of parents with a shelter in adversity, a support in declining age, and a name in posterity.
But while such are the inducements of marriage, yet a regard to personal interest and happiness might deter a considerate person from assuming its obligations, when either a suitable companion has not been found, or pecuniary resources are insufficient to meet the domestic demands in a satisfactory manner. Pecuniary competency and similarity of taste and disposition are requisites indispensable to connubial felicity. Without them marriage would be a source of privation, difficulty and alienation; and family a painful encumbrance. When, therefore, fortune has withheld these essentials of conjugal happiness, celibacy, in either sex, is more honorable than matrimony.
But to stifle the instincts that prompt to this union, and ungraciously to spurn the incalculable benefits it proffers, unrestrained by any prudential consideration, is to violate, without motive, the laws of human happiness, and neglect the fulfilment of the most important design of the organism of man. An act so unnatural is, perhaps, seldom contemplated, except under extreme mental depression, or under the singular delusions of which religious fanaticism is so prolific. Disappointed love, reverses of fortune, or the hope of becoming insensible to the wants of humanity by acquiring supernatural perfection, has sometimes induced the weak and superstitious to assume the monastic vow of perpetual celibacy. The motive of such conduct has always originated in emotion; and though emotion is always sincere, it is always fluctuating. A cloud that obscures the sun and casts a gloom over earth, soon passes away, leaving the former in its natural brightness, and the latter in its usual attractiveness. Not less ephemeral is the mental gloom which adversity or superstition may throw over the human mind. When the energies of acquisitiveness have been prostrated by repeated pecuniary misfortunes; when the warmth of ambition has been chilled by the wounds of reputation; when the currents of love have been frozen by the cold breath of disappointment; the desolated heart may feel that its struggle for subsistence is vain, that its hopes of distinction have perished, and that its ties of love are broken forever. But these despondent sensations are ephemeral; they are the results of a temporary repose of passions which are rooted in the constitution of our nature, and which can be destroyed only with our being. Though despair may for a time throw a wintry gloom over the mind, yet hope will again bud and bloom, avarice will again sigh for wealth, ambition will again thirst for distinction, love will again yearn for companionship, and every passion resuming its natural energy will again create the emotions for which it was organized, and compel us to seek its appropriate gratification in the social, conjugal, or political relations which subsist in society.
This revulsion is inevitable. It is as certain as the subsidence of a tempestuous torrent after having exhausted its energy, into its ordinary peaceful roll. As all emotions are ephemeral, so must be all the vows and resolutions which they generate. Each day brings with it new and unexpected events, which abrogate or modify the emotions and resolves which the circumstances of the preceding day had suggested; nay, more, the antithetical emotions thus created are always proportionally strong to those which they supplant. Hence vows assumed by any person under extraordinary mental excitement, will be repudiated when he is under extraordinary mental depression; and obligations assumed under either of these conditions of mind, will be found inconsistent with the ordinary obligations of life, when that usual current of thought and emotion shall set in, which always flows in harmony with human reason, philosophy and happiness, and the regular course of things. If when this condition shall supervene; if when hope shall succeed to despair, and reason and reflection to impulse and fanaticism, and when all the passions and powers of our nature shall resume their natural operation—if then, we shall have placed ourselves by any mistake, however innocently committed, in a situation where we cannot respond to the demands of our nature, we will find that we have doomed ourselves to perpetual misery.