First, let us glance an eye over the contents of this institute. It contains, not only what the founder wrote, but likewise all the papal

bulls and briefs granted to the society; all the decrees and canons of the several congregations, which form laws in the society; several instructions, precepts, and ordinations, issued by different generals, and adopted by general congregations, for universal practice; the general Ratio Studiorum; the privileges granted to the society by the holy see; the particular rules prescribed for every office in the society, and for every class of men in it, as priests, missionaries, preachers, students, &c. The groundwork of all this is what the founder himself wrote; viz. an Examen Generale to be proposed to candidates for admittance; Constitutiones Societatis Jesu; an epistle De Virtute Obedientiæ; a book of Spiritual Exercises; and, finally, many of the particular rules of offices. The Prague edition of the Institute, anno 1757, two small folio volumes, lies before me, and I have taken a good deal of fruitless trouble to find out some propositions denounced by the enemies of the Jesuits, without reference to the page or chapter. I have found nothing but what reflects

honour on the code. The objects of it are the glory of God, the general good of man, and the preservation of the society. In pursuance of the first of these, the members make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; they mortify their senses, renounce worldly honours, and preach the Gospel. The means they use for the second consist of example, prayer, works of charity, pious publications, preaching, educating youth, and sending forth missions. For the third object, their preservation, they have appropriate rules of union, discipline, reputation, freedom from party, and moderation[[73]].

Such is the code which has been so misrepresented. It is impossible, within the bounds of a pamphlet, and, indeed, I have already stretched into the latitude of a book, to give an adequate notion of it, and to combat the opinions which have gone abroad against it. These opinions

are so many adopted prejudices, the refutation of which is completely given in the Apologie de l'Institut, to which I must refer the reader, who will find in it many extracts from the institute itself; and I shall here briefly notice the vow of obedience, and the imputed despotism of the general, about which so much has been said.

"Their blind obedience! To be as unresisting as a dead body, or as tractable as a stick in the hands of an old man![[74]]." This language, taken disjointedly, is among the bugbears held up by the new conspirators against the Jesuits. It must surely be allowed, that obedience is necessary in every institution, where training the mind is an object, and the institute is not reprehensible for excluding wilful argumentation, while it allows every one the use of his reason. Blind obedience is not required for the commission of a crime, but in duties known to be pious

and moral, in actions evidently laudable. Nor is the expression of the text cæca obedientia, but cæca quadam obedientia[[75]]. The rule is for the better training of the young and the inexperienced; and what school does not proceed upon it to the extent required by the institute, which excepts whatever is criminal, or morally wrong? It literally prescribes, that this kind of blind obedience shall, nevertheless, be conformable to justice and to charity; omnibus in rebus ad quas potest cum charitate se obedientia extendere[[76]]. Nay, the order of the superior is not only to be examined, to see that it is free from a capital sin, but from any sin whatever; in omnibus quæ a superiore disponuntur ubi definiri non possit (quemadmodum dictum est) aliquod peccati genus intercedere[[77]]. In a word, discussion is not forbidden by the institute, but in cases where it is evident that there is no sin;

ubi non cerneretur peccatum[[78]]; a doctrine continually repeated on this head, quemadmodum dictum est, that is, in quibus nullum manifestum est peccatum[[79]]. Where now is the horror of this obedience? It will seem a paradox to say, that the rigour of it arises from the mildness of the Jesuit government: but it is not less the fact; for, as all violent measures and corporal punishments are excluded from the society, a prompt moral obedience is absolutely necessary to its existence. It thus becomes an amiable, as well as an indispensable law.

But the despotism of the general? The obedience, which the Jesuits owe their general, is the same as that which they pay to their ordinary superiors. It flows from the same source, and tends to the same end. Having demonstrated the slavery of it to be a chimera, the despotism of the general naturally vanishes with

it. The nature of the society required, that it should be under a single chief: to have given to separate houses independent chiefs would have destroyed the great objects depending upon a union of councils. It was no cenobitical order devoted chiefly to working out their own salvation; but one, whose members were to be spread over the whole world, to promote the glory of God and the good of man. The institute, however, takes great care, that the chief should not be a despot: it gives him no slaves, nor even subjects, but friends, children, and counsellors[[80]]; mildness is the sceptre it bestows upon him, and charity the throne[[81]]; it