not only of this religious order, but of religion itself, and of social order. I will endeavour here to give a faithful miniature of the noble original, which, under distorted features, we have been invited to ridicule and to detest. I do not, however, pretend to offer to the reader a deep-reasoned discussion, but only a slight sketch of the much traduced institute of the Jesuits, and of the pursuits and past successes of the men, who devoted themselves to it.
Jesuits were never much known in this kingdom. They were never more than a small detachment of missionary priests, privately officiating to the scattered catholics, like other priests, sent from the English seminaries of Rome, Douay, Valladolid, and Lisbon. They were distinguished only by more pointed severity of the ancient penal statutes, which the wisdom and liberality of the legislature has considerably relaxed. This greater severity arose, not from their conduct, but from the general prejudice against their order; and, in England, this
prejudice kept pace with the esteem in which they were held in all catholic countries. Formerly, every enemy of catholic religion was their foe declared. Their perseverance and their successes still provoked new hostilities. It is the remark of Spondanus, that no set of men were ever so violently opposed, or ever so successfully triumphed over opposition. Their assiduity, in their multifarious relations to the public, in all countries, where they had settlements; in their schools and seminaries, in pulpits and confessionals, in hospitals and workhouses, in the cultivation of sciences, in national and foreign missions; all this professional business afforded them a large field for exertion, and enabled them to recommend themselves to kings, prelates, and magistrates, by signal services to the public, and thus to blunt the stings of envy and the shafts of malice. The small number, which frequented England for nearly two hundred years, in the face of the penal laws, had no such field of action. They were confined to administer the rites of religion to their brethren
in private houses; they were necessitated to live separate; they were forced to disguise their profession and character, and frequently their very names; they lived under the laws, and they were not protected by the laws; they knew, that the distorted character, drawn of them by their foreign enemies, obtained ready credit in this country, without inquiry or examination; and, as they could neither act nor speak in their own defence, it has happened, that the notion of a Jesuit is to this day vulgarly (I take the word in its full meaning) associated with the idea of every crime.
In foreign countries, the Jesuits formed a conspicuous body, to which no man was wholly indifferent. They could not be viewed with the eye of contempt. They were highly esteemed, and they were bitterly hated. In all catholic countries, the esteem and respect, which they enjoyed, were fully established. They were every where considered as pure and holy in their morals and conduct, eminently zealous for
religion, and highly serviceable to the public. Their enemies, at all times, were either open separatists from the catholic church, or secret enemies of it, who formed parties for its destruction; or they were rivals, who vied with them in some branches of the public administration of religion. From these sources proceeded, at different times, that undigested mass of criminations, unsubstantiated by proof, which are so inconsistently collected in the new conspiracy against the Jesuits. It is evidently folly to imagine, that a large body of men, connected with the public by a thousand links, surrounded by jealous enemies, could possibly be a band of unprincipled knaves, impostors, and miscreants. The universal favour of the bulk of so many polished nations forbids, at once, such an idea. Popes, kings, prelates, magistrates, everywhere protected and employed them. Bishops and their clergy everywhere regarded them as their most useful auxiliaries in the sacred ministry, because they professedly exercised every duty of it, except that of governing the church;
and this they renounced by vow. The people, in all towns, even in villages, felt their gratuitous services. A hundred years ago, if the public voice had been individually collected in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Poland, undoubtedly, they would rather have parted with any other, perhaps with most other religious bodies, than with the society of Jesuits alone. A hundred years ago, all the continental sovereigns in Europe would have concurred in the same sentiment. With them they advised in all concerns of religion; to them they listened as preachers; to them they intrusted the instruction of their children, their own consciences, their souls. In those days, not only kings, but ministers of kings, and the great bulk of their nobles and people, believed in religion. They were sons of men, who had fought hard battles in France and Germany, in defence of catholic unity, against confederate sects, who had conspired to overturn it. Voltaire had not yet appeared among them. Religion was not yet presented to them as an object of ridicule. They
deemed of religion with reverence and awe, and they believed it to be the firmest support of the state and of the throne. They venerated its ministers, and among them the Jesuits, because they knew, that their institute was well calculated to form its followers to the active service of the altars, which they respected.
An idea of the institute of the Jesuits cannot be formed without consulting the original code; and the first inspection of it shows the author to have been a man of profound thinking, and eminently animated with the spirit of religious zeal. Ad majorem Dei gloriam was the motto of Ignatius of Loyola, the main principle of all his conduct. He conceived, that a body of men, associated to promote God's greater glory, must profess to imitate, not one or two, but, universally, all the astonishing virtues of the Redeemer; and, in planning his institute, he compressed them all into one ruling motion of zeal, which, in his ideas, was the purest emanation of charity, the summit of
Christian perfection. He everywhere employs his first principle, as the universal bond, or link, that must unite his society with God, and with their neighbours; and every prescription of his institute is a direct consequence of it. The greater glory of God is the first object that occurs on opening the institute. It is the first thing, on which every candidate is questioned; and, if he be accepted, the first thing to which he is applied. This alone decides upon the admission and dismission of subjects; this regulates their advancement in virtue and letters, the preservation of their health, the improvement of their talents, the distribution and allotment of their employments. Masters must teach, and students must learn, only to advance the greater glory of God: this is the rule of superiors, who command; the motive of subjects, who obey: this alone is considered in the establishment of domestic discipline, in the formation of laws and rules: it is the bond, which connects all, the spring, which moves all; every impulse given to the society must