the middle ages, constituted the legis. lature of the Catholic Church. The Council of Trent was the first general council in which Jesuits were present to take a part; and they so availed themselves of the privilege indulged to them, that the church was never afterwards able to assemble another.

It is sometimes not less instructive than surprising, to observe the principle on which premises and conclusions become paired together. An instance in point presents itself, in comparing the systems of the Reformers and the Jesuits-or, it may be said, of Loyola and Luther. The latter must be regarded as a champion of individual freedom-the former the chosen defender of absolute authority. According to Ignatius, there was to be but one active and efficient volition upon earth-all human faculties and powers were to bow in unresisting subservience to the Papal will: in Luther's system there was a provision for that right of private judgment which is utterly incompatible with Papal rule, and which has been described as inseparable from, if not constituting the very essence of, Protestantism. Such is the contrast exhibited by the two systems-the one representing liberty as a right, which it is a religious duty to guard inviolate: the other maintaining as its first and greatest commandment, a servitude and submission, which, to render its nature unequivocal, is designated by the name of a "blind obedience." Such are the contrasted systems-a despotism and a democracy: and the freedom of thought, and act, and speech vindicated by the Reformers is found to co-exist with a religious dogma which condemns as a most pestilent error, the idea that the will of man can be free, while the servility enforced by the Jesuit is rendered the more conspicuous by the doctrine from which it is extorted, the doctrine which constitutes the central principle of the Jesuit religion—namely, that which asserts the unrestricted freedom of human will.

This is, the doctrine which the Jesuit party has ever employed as its main argument against the Reformersspontaneous consciousnesses of the human heart became its allies in the controversy, and wherever it prevailed, it required that the emancipated will, free in the light of reason, by the providence of God, should be

prostrated, so as to lie still, or to move, only at the command of a human being, invested with (what must ever be regarded as a) superhuman autho rity. Thus did the policy of this subtle order convert the very preju dices of the human heart, in favour of liberty, into agencies by which liberty was abolished; and thus did it insure for itself the services of devoted adherents, in whom the passive and unscrupulous submission of a slave is reconciled with the enterprize and enthusiasm of the free.

The interests of Jesuitism were very materially served, by a rule which might seem, to the unobservant, prejudicial to the order which could enforce it. A Jesuit could not accept ecclesiastical promotion. The dignities of the church glittered for him in vain. He must lay down his ambitions at his entrance into the order. A two-fold advantage was derived from this self-denying ordinance. constrained every member of the body to identify himself with his order. "He was, as an eloquent writer ob"walled up in it”—

serves,

"Nactus es Spartam, exorna,"

It

was, as it were, oracularly proclaimed to every votary; and it is not rash to affirm, that every votary, with few exceptions indeed, to the utmost of his abilities obeyed the injunction. He could not entertain an ambitious dream, without comprehending his order in the vision. To become illustrious, he must have fame in his society, and must contribute to the exaltation of the body with which he is associated for life. The rule had another good effect. It facilitated the access of Jesuits to the confidence of the great. In choosing a confessor, it was something to feel assured, that the reward of spiritual direction was not to be a mitre or a cardinal's hat; that a rival, or an enemy, or even the court of Rome itself, could not employ such bribes in purchasing secrets of the confessional; and that the self-denying son of Loyola could not be an encroacher, at least in his own person, upon his penitent's ecclesiastical patronage. Thus was the order doubly benefited: fortified within, by securing the devoted attachment of its membersfacilitated in its enterprizes by the

ready access it achieved for its chosen ministers into "the chambers of princes."

It is not, perhaps, matter of surprise, that such a society, in all its difficulties, should have found protectors; that when persecuted in one direction, it should be befriended in another. Such was its fortune. It won and wearied out, successively, the friendship of every Roman Catholic state or people; and when it had exhausted the benevolence of all, and had seen Rome herself yield to the indignant remonstrances of all Roman Catholic Europe, it sought shelter, and found it, for a time, from the despot of Prussia-from the autocrat of Russia-escaping from the condemnation of the faithful, and the censure and sentence of the Infallible, to the tainted mercies of a schismatic and an atheist. Russia, to be sure, soon saw reason to repent of her hospitality, and by a very summary process, chased her intriguing guests away. Prussia was more tardy in awakening to a sense of her imprudence. shall not enlarge upon what it has already cost her, or on the amount of evil she may yet have to suffer from her too haughty and unreflecting confidence.

We

In Russia, however, during the days of their dispersion, the Jesuits had their most honourable abode; and it is a curious coincidence, that the protection and hospitality offered at the time when they were condemned and dissolved by a papal bull, was withdrawn, when, perhaps, it was no longer needed, in the year after that in which the order was restored by Pius VII., at the desire, as his bull expressed it, of all the churches.

It is not to be imagined that the bull of Pius VII. preceded the formation of that order of Jesuits which seems now to aim at universal dominion. Clement XIV. had "scotched the snake, not killed it." His bull had the effect of rusticating the order; of sending it, as it were, into temporary retreat; but Jesuitism was of a character far too audacious and self-dependent to yield to the command of any being, however exalted, an obedience by which its interests would be preju

diced, and to which no absolute necessity constrained it.

A history of the Jesuits, during the forty years eclipse of the order, in the interval between the publication of the bulls of Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) and Pius VII., would have an interest not less deep and lively, than that of the most prosperous period of the order; nor would it be less instructive. We dare not enter upon it in our present number, but we only postpone an intention which we hope hereafter that we may be enabled to execute. It may be truly affirmed, that in their most disastrous days the Jesuits never abandoned the purpose, or the expectation, of again attaining power, and that since the date of their formal restoration, they have devoted themselves to the prosecution of every enterprize which held out to them a prospect of advancement. They have not laboured or hazarded in vain, but, on the contrary, through their own exertions, and owing to the supineness. of those who ought to have counteracted them, they are now, perhaps, if not the most powerful body, the body most to be feared, in the civilized world.

There is not, at this moment, a country in Europe in which the Jesuits have not acquired power to direct and govern the policy of the Church of Rome. Pius VII. engaged them to row in the bark of the church: through their own arts and energies they have possessed themselves of the helm also. "In Austria, Silesia, in Prussia, in Hanover, in Holland, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in France, they are carrying on their projects with success. "'* "They are active in Portugal, and keep alive the fast-dyingout embers of popery in that and the Spanish kingdom."+ Are they less enterprising or less to be feared in Great Britain?

But it may be asked-why are the Jesuits to be dreaded? Does any man in this age fear that they will employ assassins-that they will canonize the murderers of kings-or that they will vitiate the minds of young persons entrusted to their care by profligate practices or maxims? The age, it may be said, forbids a recur

rence to the iniquities of less enlightened times; it protects all reasonable men against the apprehension of them. We are well aware that arguments of this character have their weight with many-but, we are not ashamed to confess, they have no weight with us. We admit willingly that no body of men, prudent as the Jesuits are said to be, will daringly affront public opinion; but we believe public opinion may be influenced and altered; and so long as we see an order declaring itself to be religious, calling itself by the name of the blessed Saviour, exerting itself by every artifice and endeavour to acquire a control over education, and at the same time renouncing no one of those abominable principles which caused it to be regarded, in the day of its strength, as the common enemy of man-we are little assured by its abstinence from crimes which the law would punish, that it may not become again equally injurious in its effects upon society, as it was when it provoked the resentment of every country in Europe. So long as Jesuitism teaches the doctrine of equivocation, and professes to abase the spirit of man into blind obedience to any earthly ruler-so long as it thus exalts the interests of an order above the instincts of the human heart and the plainest principles of moral conduct, we must condemn it-and wherever it acquires power, we must continue to fear that its power will be exercised for evil.

We must conclude-and for a conclusion will borrow the words in which

M. Michelet warns the people of France, and through them, we may add, warns every country where free institutions and habits of confidence and generous credulity can be turned to evil account, by those who avail themselves of liberty to establish despotism:

"You have," writes M. Michelet, addressing the Jesuits of France, "forty thousand pulpits, which you cause to speak either willingly or per force. You have a hundred thousand confessionals, whence you influence entire families. You influencing spirit of the family (and of the hold within your grasp that which is the world!), you hold the mother-the child is but an accessory. What choice is left to the father when she rushes in distractedly, when she flings herself into his arms, crying out, I am damned!' You are certain that the following day he will yield up his son to you. Twenty thousand children in your seminaries; two hundred thousand just now in the schools which you direct; millions of women who act only as you will.

"And we, what are we as opposed to this great power? A voice, and nothing more a voice to cry out to France. She is now warned, let her do as she will; she sees and feels the net in which it was thought to take her while she slumbered. One farewell word to all loyal hearts to all, laymen or priests (and may those latter, from the depths of their bondage, hearken to a free voice!) -let them aid us with brave words or silent sympathy; and let all united bestow a blessing from their hearts and from their altars on the holy crusade we are beginning for God and for liberty!"