Cruel scourging of Pierre Mauru on board the galleys. .... The faith and the patience of the saints. especially, my soul was fed with hidden manna, and I tasted of that joy which the world knows not of; and daily, with the holy apostles, my heart leaped with joy that I was counted worthy to suffer for my Saviour's sake, who poured such consolations into my soul that I was filled with holy transport, and, as it were, carried out of myself..... But this season of quiet was of short duration; for soon afterwards the galley was furnished with oars to exercise the new-comers; and then these inexorable haters of our blessed religion took the opportunity to beat me as often as they pleased, telling me it was in my power to avoid these torments. But when they held this language, my Saviour revealed to my soul the agonies he suffered to purchase my salvation, and that it became me thus to suffer with him. After this, we were ordered to sea, when the excessive toil of rowing, and the blows I received, often brought me to the brink of the grave. Whenever the chaplain saw me sinking with fatigue, he beset me with temptations; but my soul was bound for the heavenly shore, and he gained nothing from my answers. . . . . In every voyage there were many persons whose greatest amusement was to see me incessantly beaten, but particularly the captain's steward, who called it painting Calvin's back, and insultingly asked if Calvin gave me strength to work after being so finely bruised; and when he wished the beating to be repeated, he would ask if Calvin was not to have his portion again. When he saw me sinking from day to day under cruelties and fatigue, his happiness was complete. The officers, who were anxious to please him, had recourse to this inhuman sport for his entertainment, during which he was constantly convulsed with laughter. When he saw me raise my eyes to heaven, he said, 'God does not hear Calvinists when they pray. They must endure their tortures till they die, or change their religion.' . . . . In short, my very dear brother, there was not a single day, when we were at sea, and toiling at the oar, but I was brought into a dying state. The poor wretched creatures who were near me did everything in their power to help me, and to make me take a little nourishment. But in the depth of distress, which nature could hardly endure, my God left me not without support. In a short time all will be over, and I shall forget all my sorrows in the joy of being ever with the Lord. Indeed, whenever I was left in peace a little while, and was able to meditate on the words of eternal life, I was perfectly happy; and when I looked at my wounded body, I said, here are the glorious marks which St. Paul rejoiced to bear in his body. After every voyage I fell sick; and then, being free from hard labor and the fear of blows, I could meditate in quiet, and render thanks to God for sustaining me by his goodness, and strengthening me by his good Spirit." HERE IS THE FAITH AND THE PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS. Is it possible to conceive of suffering borne in a holier cause or in a more Christ-like spirit? § 39.-It would be an endless task to recount all the inventions of popish ingenuity to harass and to wear out these saints of the Fiendish cruelty to a mother and babe. The Pope's thanks to Louis for thus persecuting the heretics Most High. One which could not have been conceived anywhere else but in the bottomless pit and in the heart of a fiend, deserves to be mentioned. On January 23d, 1685, a woman had her sucking child snatched from her breasts, and put into the next room, which was only parted by a few boards from her's. These devils incarnate would not let the poor mother come to her child, unless she would renounce her religion and become a Roman Catholic. Her child cries and she cries; her bowels yearn upon the poor miserable infant; but the fear of God, and of losing her soul, keep her from apostasy. However she suffers a double martyrdom, one in her own person, the other in that of her sweet babe, who dies in her hearing with crying and famine before its poor mother. The heart sickens at the contemplation of such enormities. Human language cannot describe the sufferings of these oppressed victims of popish cruelty. It is only the Spirit of God who can mark the terrible lineaments, and he does so when he speaks of "wearing out the saints of the Most High," and of anti-Christ being "drunk with the blood of the saints," and of their blood crying from under the altar, "O Lord, holy and true, how long dost thou not judge and avenge our blood upon them that dwell on the earth?" and when he speaks of similar worthies as persons" who were stoned, were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy): they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth."* 66 § 40.-Let the reader carefully consider the above affecting and authentic instances of suffering for Christ's sake, and then let him read the following language of pope Innocent XI., in praise of the popish bigot, by whose orders they were inflicted. This Pontiff wrote a special letter to king Louis, expressly thanking him in the warmest and most glowing terms for the service he had rendered the church in this persecuting edict against the heretics of France. The Pope requests him to consider this letter a special testimony to his merits, and concludes it in the following words :-" The Catholic Church shall most assuredly record in her sacred annals a work of such devotion toward her, AND CELEBRATE YOUR NAME WITH NEVER-DYING PRAISES; but, above all, you may most assuredly promise to yourself AN AMPLE RETRIBUTION from the divine goodness for this most excellent undertaking, and may rest assured that we shall never cease to pour forth our most earnest prayers to that Divine goodness for this intent and purpose." Thus evident is it not only that the acknowledged head of the apostate church of Rome approved of the horrid barbarities inflicted upon the French protestants, but that he regarded their perpetrator as conferring a special favor upon that church, thus entitling himself to her lasting gratitude and her warmest thanks. * Lorimer's Protestant Church of France, chap. iv. BOOK IX. POPERY IN ITS DOTAGE. FROM THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANtes, a. d. 1685, TO THE PRESENT TIME, A. D. 1845. CHAPTER I. THE JESUITS.-THEIR MISSIONS. THEIR SUPPRESSION, REVIVAL, AND PRESENT POSITION. § 1. THE eighteenth century was chiefly distinguished by events connected with the history and proceedings of that crafty and dangerous order, the Jesuits; their missionary efforts to extend the dominion of the papacy in China and other oriental countries, and the disputes which arose relative to their practice of amalgamating heathen with Christian rites; their protracted and fierce contests with the rival sect of the Jansenists; their banishment from the various kingdoms of Europe, and the final suppression of the order by pope Clement XIV. in 1773. Before describing the controversy which arose in this century relative to the missionary operations of the Jesuits in China, it may be necessary briefly to refer to the origin of those missions. The missionary efforts of the Jesuits commenced immediately after the establishment of that order: in 1541, Francis Xavier, who appears to have been a man of fervent piety, free from the trickery and worldly policy that afterwards distinguished his order, and who by his zeal and success obtained the name of "the apostle of Indians," sailed for India, where he was successful in converting thousands to the Romish faith. In 1549, he visited Japan, where he laid the foundations of a branch of the Romish church, which in after years is said to have consisted of two or three hundred thousand members. From Japan, with a zeal and self-devotion worthy of a purer faith, Xavier sailed for China, but died when in sight of that populous empire, in 1552. Subsequently to his death, Matthew Ricci penetrated into China, recommended himself to the favor of the nobility and Emperor by his skill in mathematics, and succeeded in planting the Romish faith in Pekin, the capital, where he died in Policy of the Jesult missionaries. "All things to all men." Their shameful conformity to heathenism. 1610. Other Jesuit missionaries, in process of time, extended the spiritual dominion of the Pope and their order into Malabar, Abyssinia, and other countries, and especially into South America, where they succeeded in reducing whole nations of Indians to their sway. In 1622, was established at Rome, by pope Gregory XV., the Congregation for propagating the faith (De Propaganda Fide), a body of cardinals, priests, &c., whose special duty it is to devise means for propagating the Romish faith throughout the world; and in 1627, the College De Propaganda Fide, in which young men of all nations are educated as Romish missionaries; and in 1663, the kindred institution in France, called "the Congregation of the priests of foreign missions." From these institutions hundreds of Jesuits were sent forth to reduce the nations of the world to the obedience of the Pope. § 2. In accomplishing this object the Jesuits early adopted the principle that the end sanctifies the means, and scrupled at no measures to entrap the people to the nominal profession of Christianity. In the words of an eloquent living writer, "The motto and device in one of their earlier histories was well illustrated in their conduct. That device was a mirror, and the superscription was Omnia omnibus,' All things to all men. But what in Paul was Christian courtesy, leaning on inflexible principle; and what in Loyola himself was probably wisdom, but slightly tinged with unwarrantable policy, became, in some of his disciples, the laxest casuistry, chameleon-like, shifting its hues to every varying shade of interest or fashion. "The gospel is to be presented with no needless offence given to the prejudices and habits of the heathen, but the gospel itself is never to be mutilated or disguised; nor is the ministry ever to stoop to compliances in themselves sinful. The Jesuit mistook or forgot this. From a very early period, the order were famed for the art with which they studied to accommodate themselves and their religion to the tastes of the nation they would evangelize. Ricci, on entering China, found the bonzes, the priests of the nation; and to secure respect, himself and his associates adopted the habits and dress of the bonzes. But a short acquaintance with the empire taught him, that the whole class of the priesthood was in China a despised one, and that he had been only attracting gratuitous odium in assuming their garb. He therefore relinquished it again, to take that of the men of letters. In India, some of their number adopted the Brahminical dress, and others conformed to the disgusting habits of the Fakeer and the Yogee, the hermits and penitents of the Mohammedan and Hindoo superstition. Swartz met a Catholic missionary, arrayed in the style of the pagan priests, wearing their yellow robe, and having like them a drum beaten before him. It would seem, upon such principle of action, as if their next step ought to have been the creation of a Christian Juggernaut; or to have arranged the Christian suttee, where the widow might burn Worshipping the crucifix upon the altar of Confucius. Decrees of pope Clement. The Jansenista. according to the forms of the Romish breviary; or to have organized a band of Romanist Thugs, strangling in the name of the virgin, as did their Hindoo brethren for the honor of Kalee. "In South America, one of the zealous Jesuit fathers, finding that the Payernes, as the sorcerers and priests of the tribe were called, were accustomed to dance and sing in giving their religious instructions, put his preachments into metre, and copied the movements of these Pagan priests, that he might win the savage by the forms to which he had been accustomed. In China, again, they found the worship of deceased ancestors generally prevailing. Failing to supplant the practice, they proceeded to legitimate it. They even allowed worship to be paid to Confucius, the atheistical philosopher of China, provided their converts would, in offering the worship, conceal upon the altar a crucifix to which their homage should be secretly directed. Finding the adoration of a crucified Saviour unpopular among that self-sufficient people, they are accused by their own Romanist brethren of having suppressed in their teachings the mystery of the cross, and preached Christ glorified, but not Christ in his humiliation, his agony and his death. A more arrogant act than this, the wisdom of this world has seldom perpetrated, when it has undertaken to modify and adorn the gospel of the crucified Nazarene."* About the commencement of the eighteenth century, the question arose in the Romish church whether this amalgamation of heathenism with Christianity in the missionary operations of the Jesuits was a lawful method of multiplying converts. This was decided by pope Clement XI., in the year 1704, against the Jesuits, and the Chinese converts were forbidden by a solemn edict any longer to practise the idolatrous rites of their nation in connection with their professed Christian worship. This edict, however, so displeased the Jesuit missionaries, that the same Pope, dreading the consequences of exasperating so powerful an order, deemed it politic to issue another edict a few years later, which in effect nullified the provisions of the former. This latter decree which was dated in 1715, allowed the heathen ceremonies referred to, upon condition that they should be regarded, not as religious but civil institutions; a distinction which might serve to satisfy the conscience of the Pope in thus authorizing the ceremonies of heathenism, but would have not the slightest effect on the feelings of the Chinese devotee in mingling in the same act of devotion, the worship of Confucius and of Christ. 3.-Among the most persevering and able of the opponents of the Jesuits and their methods of converting the heathen, the Jansenists were the most conspicuous and celebrated. They were so called from Cornelius Jansenius, a celebrated Roman Catholic *See an able and learned article on "the Jesuits as a Missionary Order," from the pen of Rev. Wm. R. Williams, D.D., in the Christian Review, for June, 1841. + Bower's Lives of the Popes, vol. vii., page 494; Mosheim, vi., 3. |