[81] History of England. By Rapin. Vol. VIII, pp. 217 to 232.
[82] Lingard, Vol. VI, p. 5.
JESUIT INFLUENCE IN INDIA.
The reader who shall intelligently trace the history of the Jesuit through their conspiracies against the peace of Europe, and especially their tireless efforts to eradicate everything that tended to freedom of conscience and the public enlightenment, will not wonder that, during the last century, it became necessary to the interests of society and the Church that one of the foremost of the popes should suppress and entirely abolish the order. And as that event was brought about, not alone on account of the odium they incurred by intermeddling with the temporal affairs of States, but because they pursued practices which shocked the whole Christian world, their society can not be thoroughly understood without becoming familiar with the history of their missionary enterprises. As they prosecuted these among ignorant and illiterate multitudes of peoples, where no watchful eye could observe them, they have mainly become their own historians; yet there is enough to be discovered to show that, at every stage of their development, they have been true to the injunction of their founder, to be "all things to all men."
Loyola considered his society superior to the ancient monastic orders. We have seen that he looked upon the latter as corrupted, and no longer worthy to be intrusted with the work of Christian missions, on which account he claimed for his society superior jurisdiction in the missionary field. There, among populations unable to detect imposture, his followers had their own way, made their own history, and executed their own purposes, without intelligent popular inspection. Consequently, when he realized the odium his society had encountered among European peoples, he considered it necessary to remove this by setting up for it exaggerated claims of merit in the missionary work. By this means he evidently hoped to be able to appeal successfully to the pope and the Church to protect the Jesuits from the rising indignation of such Christians as had resisted their introduction into France. Hence it became a fixed Jesuit habit, and yet is, to shield the society under pretense that it is a necessary part of the Church machinery, and that the Church can not exist without it. And out of that same necessity must have grown that multitude of miracles, said to have been performed in remote and unfrequented parts of the world, and in the manufacture of which the Jesuits have acquired the reputation of being thorough adepts. It was not a difficult matter in those days to impose upon superstitious people by the claim of miraculous powers. None understood this better than the Jesuits.
The first important mission of the Jesuits was to the East Indies, in charge of Francis Xavier, one of the most impressible of Loyola's converts. This mission is of chief importance, inasmuch as it was initiatory, and conspicuously displays the operations of the society whilst under the immediate personal charge of its founder. It indicates the methods of the Jesuit missionary system, and how they were made to conform to the main purpose of acquiring dominion, with but little regard to the means employed. There are very few of the present age who do not regard many of the recorded events as apocryphal—notwithstanding, the overcredulous have accepted them as true for many centuries. They are only important now because we learn from them the prominent characteristics of the Jesuits, and the real foundation of the reputation to which they so boastingly lay claim.
The Portuguese had, some years before, acquired the occupancy of territory in India, with a commercial capital and an episcopal see at Goa. By means of these influences a number of the natives had professed Christianity, and, along with all the Portuguese Christians, paid spiritual allegiance to the pope. But the condition of society was by no means favorable to the practice of the Christian virtues. On the contrary, it had become greatly demoralized, rivaling Rome and the principal cities of Europe in that respect. In "The Lives of the Saints"—a work of standard ecclesiastical authority in the Roman Church—the author represents "revenge, ambition, avarice, usury, and debauchery," as extensively prevailing at Goa. According to him, the Indians who had professed conversion were so influenced by the example of the Portuguese that they had "relapsed into their ancient manners and superstitions." Even those who professed to be Christians "lived in direct opposition to the gospel which they professed, and by their manners alienated the infidels from the faith."[83]