[94] A writer in the Times, cited in the Quarterly Review of Oct. 1811, p. 302.
[95] The Jansenistical apostate monk, Le Courayer, alleges a powerful motive to enforce this doctrine: it is this; "By destroying the credit and reputation of the Jesuits, Rome must be subverted: and when this is once effected, Religion will reform itself."—Hist. du Conc. de Trente, ed. d'Amsterdam, 1751, p. 63.
[96] That the ministers Pombal, Choiseul, Aranda, Tanucci, &c. should have adopted this summary mode of execution at Lisbon, Paris, Madrid, Naples, &c. creates now little surprise, devoted as they were to the views of the philosophers.
[97] It will be readily allowed, that the form of limited monarchy is best calculated to insure the happiness of subjects. Besides this general advantage, many other features of the Jesuits' institute strongly conspired to produce union of minds and hearts among the members. One main cause of it, however, was accidental, and extrinsic to their government and statutes. This was the unceasing pressure of unmerited outward hostility, which, of course, closed them into a more compact phalanx. In the last persecution, a thousand stratagems were devised to create disunion among them, and to engage them to solicit their own dissolution. Their enemies were everywhere disappointed and enraged. They were reduced to assassinate the body, which they could not decompose. In every country, they employed merciless soldiers, and still more unfeeling lawyers, to tear off the Jesuits' cassocks; and everywhere they found the country watered with the Jesuits' tears. Jesuits were everywhere fond of their profession. Can this be a crime?
[98] After some search I have discovered, that Jerom Zarowicz, or Zarowich, was the name of the discharged Polish Jesuit, who forged and published the Monita Secreta in 1616. Subsequent editions, as might be expected, were swelled with fresh matter. Henry a Sancto Ignatio, a Flemish Carmelite friar, and an avowed partisan of the Jansenists Arnaud and Quesnel, trumpeted forth the Monita in his Tuba Magna, a violent invective against the Jesuits, which he printed at Strasburg in 1713, and again in 1717, just at the period when Quesnel was condemned by the famous bull Unigenitus.
While the minister Pombal was persecuting the Jesuits in Portugal, Almada, his agent at Rome, filled that capital and all Italy with outrageous libels against the suffering victims, composed and distributed chiefly by a knot of friars of different orders, who were in his pay, and printed at the press of Nicolas Pagliarini. Some of the former were banished, and the latter was condemned to the galleys. His punishment was remitted by the meek pontiff Clement XIII, and the culprit escaped to Lisbon, where he was employed, honoured, and rewarded by Pombal. I have before me two of these libels, printed in 1760, of which, one is an Italian translation of the Monita Secreta, preceded by a preface of 137 pages, and followed by a long appendix. The performance, like that of Laicus, is a wild, incoherent assemblage of impostures and insults, all written, as the author acknowledges, con uno stile basso e andante, because he professes to write for the lower classes of readers, per illuminare il minuto populo. In fact, his manner and language are almost as low and groveling as those of that eminent adept in the stile basso e andante, Laicus of the Times.
[99] Not having elsewhere met with this monstrous calumny, I incautiously ascribed the invention of it to Laicus. But in one of the Italian libels, mentioned in the last note, the writer, having informed the minuto populo of Italy, that the Jesuits are professed poisoners, gives the proof in these words: "Perhaps pope Innocent XIII was snatched from us by Jesuitical barbarity. There would be no doubt of it, if only the surgeon of that pope, who is still alive (in 1760), would be pleased to declare, that the Jesuits had infused poison through the sore in the old pontiff's leg. But he is silent, through dread of the Jesuits' vengeance." This is called illuminating the minuto populo. Laicus catches the ray, and reflects it, with lustre improved, upon our minuto populo, when he assures them, that Innocent XIII was UNIVERSALLY UNDERSTOOD to have been murdered by the Jesuits. Such is the progress of genius.
[100] See Letter II.
[101] Ibid.
[102] See Letter II.