For many years they did indeed deny that any such secret rules existed; and doubtless, they will now deny, that these are the real secret counsels by which their affairs are conducted. But about the middle of the last century, when the society was suppressed in Portugal for being accessory to the assassination of King Joseph I. and suddenly expelled from Spain for their complicated crimes; their constitutions and secret records fell into the hands of the public. And in the famous controversy before the great Chamber at Paris, between the merchants of Lyons and Marseilles and the French Jesuits, in the year 1761, about the immense losses in the Martinica trade, the court demanded, and in a luckless hour the Jesuits produced, their secret constitutions; thus falsifying all their former statements.
But it had been long certain, that what was now first admitted was really true. In the year 1624 the University of Paris, charged this order with being “governed by private laws, neither sanctioned by kings, nor registered by parliaments; and which they were afraid to communicate, having done all in their power to prevent their being seen by any other than those of the society.” (Hist. of the Jesuits p. 329 of vol. 1.) How perfectly does this accord with their own maxims, in their preface to the present work; let no one who knows our secrets, be allowed to join any other order, except the Carthusians who preserve strict retirement and perfect silence; which the See of Rome has confirmed? So that the allegation of the unknown libeller who the Jesuits would have us believe forged the Secreta Monita, is confirmed by the direct declaration of the University of Paris, and placed past doubt by the indirect confirmation of the Pope himself!
But I will produce one more witness,—Palaeox, Bishop of Angelopolis, in his famous letter to Pope Innocent X. dated Jan. 8, 1649, writing of this society, demands “what other Religion has a secret constitution, hidden privileges, and concealed laws of its own? And what other order has all those things which relate to its government involved in so much mystery? There is suspicion in mystery. The rules of all other orders are open to all; even the Rules and Canons of Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and the whole clergy; the privileges, instructions, and statutes, of other religious orders may be seen and consulted in almost every library; and the lowest novice in the Franciscan order may read at one view, what his duty would be, if he should ever become the General of his Order. But the Superiors of the Jesuits do not govern them by the rules of the Church, which are known to all, but by certain secret Rules, (Regles Cachees) which are only known to those Superiors.” (See p. 36, of the edition printed at Cologne, in 1666.)
VII. Such a system can of course be found nowhere else; for such another order, never was established amongst men. Indeed the only real ground for hesitation is the reluctance with which the heart allows itself to credit such things of this kind. If history were less replete with the crimes of this atrocious fraternity, if the irresistible evidence of the past, left us some room to question the utter and horrible depravity of this order; there might be some room left, to relapse into a grateful incredulity of such amazing sin. But there is not “a single hook on which to hang a doubt.” If every thing that is impartial in history, can be said to concur with irresistible light and power, upon one single point, it is that this society has been the most perfectly diabolical that ever was conceived. If there is in the wide compass of human thought, one expression, that in every dialect used amongst men, conjures up at once, all that is wicked, fearful and degraded; the supreme union of sin, activity and genius; the very essence of what is to be hated, feared, and shunned, that expression is, a Jesuit priest! Whence this universal execration? Whence this “unanimous consent,” of all countries and ages against them! The Infidel, the Catholic, the Protestant, and the very father of the faithful: Hume, De Thou, Mosheim, and Gongenilli, as specimens of all; Protestant England, Catholic Venice, Infidel France, Pagan China, as a committee of the universe; why have all, every where, denounced, abhored Jesuitism, as the sum of all evil! Reader, examine, ponder these secret counsels, and you will see the solution of this problem; and in that solution you cannot but find the fullest authority for asserting the genuineness and authenticity of the book itself.
Upon the whole, there cannot be a doubt on the mind of any candid man who will examine the subject, that this Secreta Monita, is no forgery; that it is no ingeniously deduced system; but that it is sustainable by proofs the most conclusive in its pretensions to be the real secret counsels of the society of Jesus, profanely so called; drawn up at a very early period of its existence; combining all its experience; revealing its grand purpose—and constantly followed by its leading spirits.
SECRETA MONITA SOCIETATIS JESU.
THE SECRET INSTRUCTIONS OF THE JESUITS.
PRÆFATIO.
Privata hæc monita custodiant diligenter et penes se servent superiores, paucisque ex professis ea tantum communicent, et aliqua de iis instruant non professos, quando nimirum et quanto cum fructu societati usui sit; illaque non nisi sub sigillo silentii, ne quidem ut scripta ab altero, sed ex professis horum secretorum sunt conscii, ideo vel ab initio cavit societas, ne ullus conscius horum posset ad alias religiones se conferre, excepta Carthusianorum, ob perpetuam vitæ abstractionem, et indelebile silentium; quod etiam sacra sedes confirmavit.