ESUITS is the popular name of a Society more properly entitled “The Society of Jesus”—of all the Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic Church the most important. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554 by Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was wounded in battle; was by his wounds, which impaired the use of one of his legs, deprived of his military ambition, and during his long confinement found employment and relief in reading a Life of Christ, and Lives of the Saints. This enkindled a new ambition for a life of religious glory and religious conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military spirit of austerity and self-devotion into his religious career; exchanged his rich dress for a beggar’s rags; lived upon alms; practiced austerities which weakened his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which characterized this period of his [♦]extraordinary career.
[♦] ‘extraordinay’ replaced with ‘extraordinary’
He possessed none of the intellectual requirements which seemed necessary for the new leadership which he proposed to himself. The age despised learning, and left it to the priests; and this Spanish cavalier, at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than read and write. He commenced at once, with enthusiasm, the acquisition of those elements of knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before that age. He entered the lowest class of the College of Barcelona, where he was persecuted and derided by the rich ecclesiastics, to whose luxury his self-denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at last from their machinations to Paris, where he continued his studies under more favorable auspices. Prominent among his associates here was Francis Xavier, a brilliant scholar, who at first shrunk from the ill-educated soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its possessor. Several other Spaniards were drawn around the ascetic. At length, in 1534, Loyola, and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris, pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn rites made sacred their mutual pledges to each other and to God.
Loyola introduced into the new order of which he was the founder, the principle of absolute obedience which he had acquired in his military career. The name given to its chief was the military title of “General.” The organization was not perfected, so as to receive the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. Its motto was Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam—“To the greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, but also a pledge on the part of every member to go as missionary to any country which the Pope might designate. Loyola was himself the first General of the new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is practically that of an Absolute Monarchy. The General is elected by a General Congregation, selected for the purpose by the whole body of professed members in the various Provinces. He holds his office for life. A Council of Assistants aid him, but he is not bound by their vote. He may not alter the Constitution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition in certain contingencies; but no instance of the deposition of a General has ever occurred. Practically his will is absolute law, from which there is no appeal.
The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular dress or peculiar practices. They are permitted to mingle with the world, and to conform to its habits, if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, where, as laymen, they have attained the highest political positions without exciting any suspicion of their connection with the Society of Jesus; and in education they have been employed as teachers, in which position they have exercised an incalculable influence over the Church.... It should be added that the enemies of the Order allege that, in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of the Society, there is a secret code, called Monita Secreta—“Secret Instructions”—which is reserved exclusively for the private guidance of the more advanced members. But as this Secret Code is disavowed by the Society—and since its authority is at least doubtful—it is not necessary to describe it here in detail.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.[¹]
(FROM “OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS.”)
[¹] Copyright, Harper & Bros.