CLERICUS TO LAICUS.
LETTER I.
Jesuitæ, qui se maxime nobis opponunt, aut necandi, aut si hoc commodè fieri non potest, ejiciendi, aut certe mendaciis et calumniis opp imendi sunt.—Calv. Axiom.—Vide Becan. tom. i, opusc. xvii, aphor. 15[[95]].
In God's name, Laicus, who are you, and what is your aim? The order of Jesuits, you tell us, has been totally abolished. Every person
of moderate information knows, that to accomplish that abolition, which was not total, all the artifices of calumny were exhausted. Neither Calvin, nor Le Courayer, nor even Laicus, could have added a mite to the torrent of abuse of Jesuits, which inundated Europe about fifty years ago, when the complete overthrow of that order was finally planned and determined. The Jesuits fell; and within a few years Rome was sacked and pillaged; two successive pontiffs were lodged in dungeons; every French infidel, every fanatical gospeller throughout Europe, exulted in the discomfiture of the scarlet whore; the papacy was, on every side, pronounced to be extinct. But, behold, by the unerring operation of Providence, the papacy is again seated on the seven hills, and its old champions, the Jesuits, are once more called forth to sustain the assaults of calumny. But what inept calumny, what
falsehoods, what inconsistencies, what contradictions, have you, Laicus, raked together, to stifle the new life, which they are only beginning to enjoy! Thus in days of old conspired the Jewish pharisees to murder Lazarus, as soon as the Son of God had raised him from the tomb.—John xii, 10. Consider, Sir—you need not be so precipitate. Many years must yet pass, many powers must concur, to recruit, to drill, to marshal a new body of Jesuits, capable of achieving the mischief, which your virulent declamation imputes to their predecessors. I have spent some years of my life in foreign countries; I there read every libel against the Jesuits, that came in my way; but I never found one so perfectly contemptible as your two tottering columns in the Times, newspaper, of January the 27th. They will not support either themselves, or the credit of the publication which has received them. And yet this infamous trash must be noticed, because it is calculated to do harm. I say again, who are you? Tell me, if you dare. If you have written truth, why should you skulk
from the light? But, alas! Omnis, qui male agit, odit lucem.—John iii, 20.
I need not ask again, what is your aim? Your two columns plainly tell it. It is not to convey information to discerning men; it is to poison the minds of the undiscriminating vulgar; it is to raise a popular cry, which, in this country, has more than once either intimidated virtuous ministers, or favoured the projects of bad ones. There is, you know it, even in this enlightened nation, a mass of fanaticism and bigotry, which may easily be called into action. If you are forty-five years old, you may remember, that, in 1780, one extravagant religionist made the streets stream with blood, and nearly wrapped the capital in flames. If you have read history, you know that the projectors of the exclusion bill found the profligacy of Titus Oates quite sufficient to raise an enormous ferment throughout the nation, and to procure the legal murder of twenty harmless Jesuits, gentlemen and priests. You distinctly disclaim the
merit of novelty. Right: you dare not deviate an inch from the old beaten track of inflammatory calumny and defamation. Your whole tale has been long prepared and fashioned to your hands. Nothing in it is yours, but the inconsistencies, contradictions, and scurrilous language, with which you have pieced it together. It is copied from one or more of the ten thousand libels, which overspread Europe fifty years ago, when the confederate ministers of the catholic courts, the Pombals, the Choiseuls, the Arandas, the Tanuccis, the Caunitzes, the Spinellis, the Marefoschis, &c. had finally determined to assassinate the whole body of the Jesuits. I have read almost every word of your two flimsy columns in the old Requisitoires, Comptes Rendus, and Arrêts of the French parliaments, from which I traced it to the Jansenists, to the Calvinists, to the Tuba Magna, to Scioppius, to Hospinian, to the Monarchia Solipsorum, and to the lying Monita Secreta: yet this last is the only one of your foul sources, that you have the hardiness to cite, probably because you know it to be