CLEMENT XIII.
I should not have thought of enrolling a pope among the authorities in favour of the Jesuits, it being natural to suppose, that every pope was a friend to the society, had I not found a list of them arrayed against them by sir John Hippisley, on the authority of Ganganelli's rescript. Now, that the sovereign pontiffs interfered in the proceedings and writings of the members of the society; that they blamed them for the dissentions in which their zeal involved them with their enemies in all parts of the world; and that they have condemned some of the fanatical (for this is a term as appropriate to catholic as puritan zealots), I say some of the fanatical maxims formerly preached by individuals is not denied, and has
been already noticed in these pages; and this is all that can be gathered from the rescript; but that this renders the popes impugners of the order is far from being the fact, and for this reason it is I have been induced to cite this pontiff, as well as his successor, in the catalogue of authorities. By the word impugner, I presume, that sir John means assailant; now, that the disapproval of some casuists, and the blaming of untimely or misplaced zeal of some of the society was no assailing of the order, the following words of Clement XIII, addressed to the archbishops and bishops of France, will, I think, sufficiently prove: "But the thing, which gives the deepest wound to the public weal, and to the faithful, which is the greatest insult to the apostolic see and to you, is the persecution they have raised against the society of Jesus, which has ever supplied the church with many able champions, and now, by the credit of a prevailing faction, is oppressed and dissipated. Its institute, that institute, which the Roman catholic church,
assembled in the council of Trent, approved of; that institute upon which our predecessors have bestowed so many solemn encomiums; which has hitherto found protection and received the most signal marks of favour from the kings of France; that institute, which you yourselves, not so much out of gratitude as from a principle of equity, have celebrated and publicly declared, that it was of very singular service to you in your respective dioceses, is now loaded with antiquated and groundless calumnies, is treated as a pest, which had crept into the church, and is publicly burned with all the marks of infamy[[49]]."
GANGANELLI.
Enough has been said of Clement XIV, in the foregoing pages, to entitle me to place him among the authorities in favour of the Jesuits,
though the solemn act, by which he extirpated the order, may be said to involve him among their assailants. The motives and grounds of that act are clear, and his private opinion of the order is no less manifest. Men, who approve of this act of Clement, are not aware that they are approving of a corrupt maxim, with which the enemies of the Jesuits calumniate the society. Besides, the destruction of the order was a certain evil, and the good to arise from it, the security and inviolability of the holy see, was far from being a certain consequence; the contrary has been proved by subsequent events. The growth of one generation sufficed to strip the tiara of the veneration due to it, and to threaten every crown in Europe with ruin. Philosophical universities and academies were every where, on the continent, substituted for the colleges of the Jesuits; religion and reason no longer went hand in hand in education; the latter, with all her spurious offspring, was held up as the grand object and distinguishing character of man; the former was neglected,
or ridiculed, and soon lost even its name in that of superstition. In 1773, Clement XIV abolished the order: in 1793, a king of France was beheaded; Reason was deified, and altars erected to her in various countries; anarchy followed impiety; demons were chosen to rule, or rather to confound all order. A successor of Ganganelli was torn from Rome, to die in captivity; and others have, since, been degraded into tools of the most absolute and heathenish tyranny that ever existed on the earth. It is very evident, therefore, that the preservation of the power of Rome did not depend upon the destruction of the order of the Jesuits, but, rather, that the rescript of 1773 was a warrant for the imprisonment, if not the death, of Pius VI, and the subsequent overthrow of the holy see. That rescript was, therefore, the result of a short-sighted policy. It is impossible to read Ganganelli's Letters, and deny that he was highly intellectual, virtuous, religious, and amiable; nor would I confound the philosophy which he cultivated, with that which is
destructive of religious hope and political order; but his whole conduct, in the affair of the Jesuits, proves, that his soul was not formed to the honours of martyrdom, as he was ready to act against his own conviction, and to sacrifice principle to convenience; a maxim peculiarly impugned by Jesuits, and by catholics in general.
In addition to the proofs of his good opinion of the society already given, I will here insert a passage to be found in the twelfth volume of the Annual Register. In addressing the courts of Paris, Madrid, and Naples, after his elevation to the pontificate, he states, that, "in regard to the Jesuits, he could neither blame nor annihilate an institute, which had been applauded and confirmed by nineteen of his predecessors; that he could the less do it, because it had been authentically confirmed by the council of Trent; and that, by the French maxims, the general council was above the