jurisdictions, as well ecclesiastical as civil; and from all tithes, and imposts on them and their property.'

So singular being the origin of this institution, which appears to have owed its birth to the wild and enterprizing genius of an ambitious fanatic, it becomes interesting to reflect on its rapid march to wealth and influence; and to trace, from beginnings apparently so insufficient, the secrets of its gigantic growth. The visions of the enthusiast, unless aided by very peculiar circumstances, seldom terminate otherwise than in the entire abortion of his designs; - what the peculiar circumstances in this instance were, which lent their assistance so opportunely to this rising establishment, it is easy to perceive. In the first class of them, we should be disposed to reckon the protection which it received from the Holy See. "The order of Jesuits," says Hume, "was erected when the court of Rome perceived that the lazy monks and mendicant friars, who sufficed in times of ignorance, were no longer able to defend the ramparts of the church, assailed on every side; and that the inquisitive spirit of the age required a society more active and more learned, to oppose its dangerous progress." This we apprehend to be the principal secret with regard to the rapidity with which the objects of the institution, and the schemes of its founder, were brought to maturity. It rose with the Reformation, its rival and opponent in all its views, doctrines, and interests; and whatever served to weaken the cause of the former, and to impede its progress, tended in a similar ratio to strengthen the pillars of the papal throne. It became, therefore, the manifest interest of the court of Rome to throw as large a portion of influence as it could into the hands of a society so favourable to its views and interests, and so formidable to those of its adversaries. combat the industry, to weary the patience, and to restrain the influence of the early reformers, the feeble efforts of the Catholic priests were found wholly insufficient; and the labours of men confined within the precincts of the monastery, or the cells of the cloister, were of little avail in counteracting the energies of minds deeply impressed with a conviction of the truth, and zealous in maintaining and diffusing it. For this radical defect, which threatened the total extinction of the papal authority, the new society proposed a remedy. Its members were to be men of the world; active, busy, and enterprizing; trained up from their youth in habits of industry, and early accustomed to the management of worldly affairs and the duties of their future station. For the peculiar adaptation of its laws and constitution to the increase

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of

of its power and influence, the Society is indebted not so much to its founder himself as to his earliest disciples. The minds of Lainez and Aquaviva appear to have been particularly suited to this important task; and to the subtle forethought and crafty policy of these men, we may perhaps fairly refer the exact and well contrived arrangement of all the internal regulations of the establishment: while the military genius of Loyola may be supposed to have given birth to that uniformity of discipline and subordination, under which its members have invariably acted.

A short space of time was sufficient to convince the sovereign Pontiff of the wisdom of sanctioning the institution; and no farther evidences of its utility appeared requisite than such as were now daily exhibited to the eyes of that monarch, in the zeal and readiness with which his cause was espoused, and the means of deliverance which the Society seemed to have afforded to the Christian church from the dangers of heresy and rebellion. We find, accordingly, that the Jesuits soon became the greatest favourites at the court of Rome. Lainez and Salmeron were commissioned to appear at the Council of Trent as the advocates of the papal cause: those who were sent on foreign missions, to prosecute the objects of the Order in distant countries, carried with them the authority and the influence of the Papal sanction; - others, finding their way with considerable address into the several courts of Europe, were received there with every kind of attention and regard, as the lawful ministers of a master to whom kings themselves owed allegiance; - and every monarch, who, at that time, from either political or religious considerations, paid court to the see of Rome, rivalled his fellow-sovereigns in granting them his patronage and advancing their pretensions. "In less than half a century," says Robertson, (whose account of the order is principally taken from Monclar's Compte rendu au Parlement de Provence,) the Society obtained establishments in every country that adhered to the Roman Catholic church; its power and wealth increased amazingly; the number of its members became great; their character as well as accomplishments were still greater; and the Jesuits were celebrated by the friends and dreaded by the enemies of the Romish faith, as the most able and enterprizing order in the church."

It has, however, been often thought and asserted that these offers of friendship and service from the Society, which were at first view so flattering and apparently so advantageous, were in reality little else than the treacherous exertions of one who seeks to raise himself on the ruins of his REV. JULY, 1817.

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rival;

rival; and that self-interest and self-aggrandizement were the primary as well as the ultimate object of all the proceedings and designs of the Order. This is indeed a point of some consequence, which the author of the History before us appears particularly anxious to establish. He endeavours to prove that the boasted missions of the Society into foreign countries, instead of tending to diffuse the doctrines or the spirit of Christianity among rude and unenlightened nations, have in reality been productive of a contrary effect; that, jealous of all authority except their own, the Jesuits have proved themselves, by precept and example, absolutely hostile both to piety and episcopacy; and that, while they have boasted of being the friends and supporters of both, they have in fact discouraged the culture of the one and resisted the establishment of the other.

Urban Serry, Secretary to the Congregation de propaganda Fide, thus exposed to Pope Innocent XI. the state of Christianity throughout the world: "The Holy Apostolic See" (says he) "resolved, in order to promote religion in China, Cochin China, Camboya, Tonquin, and other kingdoms, to send them bishops to instruct the natives, and ordain priests, it being impossible to send labourers from Europe in sufficient numbers." After stating that this was what Pope Alexander VII. had done, in appointing Palu bishop of Heliopolis, Lambert bishop of Beryta, and Corolandi bishop of Metellopolis, as his Vicars-Apostolic in those countries, Serry continues: "The Congregation is well aware what serious opposition they experienced from the Jesuits on their arrival in India: they could not endure to submit to these VicarsApostolic; they seemed to have lost a large portion of their reputation, although they had once been directors of the people, and arbiters of their inclinations a people who had known how superior these bishops were to the Jesuits in probity and integrity. It was on this account that the Jesuits began to decry them in public meetings, and even in the churches: they proclaimed in circular letters that they would neither acknowledge nor obey them; thus occasioning a grievous schism: they caused it to be believed, by their address, that the bishops were intruders and heretics; and that all the sacraments administered by them, or their priests, were invalid and sacrilegious; and reasoning from this principle, they maintained in their sermons, that it would be better to die without the sacraments than to receive them at their hands. Such was the pretext for the opposition and persecution of the Jesuits: they caused some to be carried to the Inquisition at Goa; and made use of the Heathen rulers for banishing others." The remainder of the letter enters into a detail, as affecting as it is interesting, of the violence, the artifices, and the revolts of the Jesuits, not only against the bishops, but against the Popes who had given to the General of the Jesuits the most strict orders to compel the mem

bers

bers of the Society to acknowledge and submit to the authority of these bishops; but all to no purpose. *

For more than two hundred years, in which those bishops, and others after them, were sent into India to establish the Catholic faith, the Jesuits did not cease to revolt against them and the Pope.

The secretary of the Congregation, established upon the subject of the Vicars-Apostolic in China, expresses himself thus, in a memorial presented to that congregation, on the 6th December, 1677: "Your Excellencies will have learnt from statements and letters transmitted by confidential hands, and from the last accounts on the subject, of which you have already received a copy, that the Jesuits' persecutions of the Vicars-Apostolic and their missionaries have always continued from the commencement to this hour; that the Jesuits have never ceased to thwart and obstruct the mission in the kingdoms of Tonquin, Cochin China, Camboya, and Siam ; in a word, in every place where these Fathers resided. The Jesuits have not contented themselves with persecuting the Missionaries of the Holy See in the East: they have done the same in Europe; at the court of France, and that of Spain; at the court of Portugal; in Flanders; and even at Rome: so that this persecution is not the work of individuals alone, but of the whole Society, and there is little doubt that the General of the Society had his share in it. They have not been content with exciting persecution in India, but have rendered it general in all parts of the Christian world." The memorial then details the facts in proof of this statement, and the means employed by the Jesuits in fomenting and maintaining so many persecutions, calumnies, and intrigues; of which it observes, their Excellencies had the proofs in their possession; and the persecution is traced to three motives of policy- "The first is, that the Jesuits will endure neither superior nor equal wherever they may be, and that their privileges were useless to them when the ApostolicVicars arrived: the second, a desire to conceal from Europe their proceedings in those countries; above all, the commerce which they have always carried on, and wish to continue, in spite of the Papal prohibitions, of which they were apprised: and the third, a resolution to prevent the ordination of native clerks and priests, in order that they might always remain at the head of those churches." +

Such a design could only have originated in pride and avarice, which desire to have neither superior nor equal, and to be at

* See the whole extract in La Morale Pratique, Vol. iii. chap. 23. sect. 17.'

+ See, in the Memorial itself, those facts which shew the privity of the General of the order. The Jesuits who were accused produced the orders of their General, to which, in fact, they had done no more than conform themselves.'

See this memorial at the beginning of the 7th Vol. of Anecdotes sur les Affaires de la Chine.

liberty to amass, without judges, witnesses, or opponents, immense riches, by means of commerce, which is forbidden to ecclesiastics, and, above all, to the religious orders. The Jesuits have not scrupled, in furtherance of their views, to oppose and persecute bishops and others; and, when it answered their purpose, to destroy them. The Society has persecuted, in the East Indies, Palu and Marin, both bishops of Heliopolis; Lambert and Aleonissa, both bishops of Beryta; Didier, bishop of Auran; Bourges, bishop of Ascala; Maigrot, bishop of Conon; Lionne, bishop of Rosalie; Ciçé, bishop of Sabula; Visdelon, a Jesuit, the bishop of Claudiopolis; Fouquet, also a Jesuit, and bishop of Eleuteropolis; La Beaume, bishop of Halicarnassus; and several Vicars-Apostolic, sent out by the see of Rome, to govern the churches in India. The Pope's legates, Cardinals de Tournon and Mezzabarba, were not spared; but they actually murdered the former; and Fabre, the superintendant of the mission to Cochin China, received the most injurious treatment at their hands.*

In the year 1643, the Jesuits claimed to be admitted as masters of arts into the University of Paris: but that University naturally refused her honours to persons not educated under her auspices; and the Jesuits persisting in their claim, as a privilege to which the Order was intitled, an appeal was made to the regal authority: when the University published in her defence some severe animadversions on the Society in two treatises, An Apology for its own Body, and Observations on the Memorial of the Jesuits to the King and Council. These productions are quoted in the volumes before us, as evidence of the immorality and casuistry of the Jesuits; and some curious and singular particulars are here detailed, though the charge may perhaps be in some degree overstrained:

In the Observations, (after threatening to publish a statement of the doctrines and practices of the Jesuits, already prepared,) they declare themselves ready to prove, that "there is no article in religion which the Jesuits have not corrupted, and do not daily corrupt, by erroneous novelties: that the scholastic theology has been depraved, by the dangerous opinions of their writers, who have had the approbation, or at least the connivance, of the whole Society; that Christian morality had become a body of problematical opinions, since their Society had undertaken, by a general understanding, to accommodate it to the luxury of the age; that the laws of God had been sophisticated by their unheard-of subtleties; that there was no longer any difference between vice

*All the above facts are abundantly supported in the Accounts of the foreign Missions, Les Anecdotes sur les Affaires de la Chine, Fabre's Letters, and a variety of publications upon China: a very good abridgment of these several persecutions may be found in Les Jesuites Marchands.'