Si Bourdaloue un peu sévèreNous dit, craignez la volupté,Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,Nous la permet pour la santé.
Si Bourdaloue un peu sévèreNous dit, craignez la volupté,Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,Nous la permet pour la santé.
Si Bourdaloue un peu sévère
Nous dit, craignez la volupté,
Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,
Nous la permet pour la santé.
It must also be observed, that most of those Jesuits, who were so severe in their writings, or in their sermons, were less so towards their penitents. It has been said of Bourdaloue himself, that if he required too muchin the pulpit, he abated it in the confessional chair: a new stroke of policy, well understood on the part of the Jesuits, in as much as speculative severity suits persons of rigid morals, and practical condescension attracts the multitude.
In China they employed still other methods: they rendered light to the people the yoke which they came to impose on them, by permitting them to mingle with the practical duties of Christianity, some ceremonies of the religion of the country; to which the multitude, every where superstitious and tumultuous, was too firmly attached.
This philosophy, so purely human, which sees in the zeal of the Jesuits, and of many others, to go and preach religion at the extremitiesof the earth, nothing more than a means which they make use of for becoming of consequence and powerful, regards, as the most dexterous of their missionaries, those who know how best to arrive at that end. We must not then be astonished, if the society is a little surprised at the number of invectives and clamours, of which these fathers have been the object, on account of the Chinese superstitions which they permitted to their new converts. In that, as well as in the rest of their conduct, to the very time of their destruction, they have proved, we repeat it, that they knew mankind better than their adversaries did: they perceived that they were not to frighten or disgust their new converts, by prohibiting them a few national practices which weredear to them, and which they still have it in their power to interpret as they please. Pope Gregory, who is called the Great, and who was certainly a man of good sense, seems, if we may believe the Jesuits, to have set them, in that respect, the example: they have, at least, pretended to the authority of it. Augustine the monk, whom this pope had sent into England, to convert the people who were yet barbarous, consulted him on some remains of ceremonies, partly civilized, partly Pagan, which the new converts were unwilling to renounce: he demanded of Gregory, whether he might permit them those ceremonies. “There is no taking away,” replied that pope, “from rugged minds, all their habits at once:we ascend not a steep rock by leaping on it, but by clambering up step by step.” We see here the principle on which the Jesuits pretend to have conducted themselves in China. They were persuaded, that without this condescension, the religion which they preached would not have been even heard there. I have no doubt, but artful as they are, (or rather as they were) they have still further palliated and mitigated matters with respect to other points: and it cannot be denied, that they have done well, relatively to their own views; since, after all, it was neither God nor Christianity that they wanted to reign there; it was the society under those respectable names.
Furthermore, neither the severe morality of religion, nor the doctrines of grace which they were accused of misrepresenting, are delivered in so exclusive a manner in scripture, as that we do not meet there also with several passages favourable to the most moderate opinions: and we may easily believe, that the Jesuits availed themselves of those passages, after the example of so many sects which have found in the Bible, and in the fathers, matter to support their opinions, while their adversaries found there in like manner wherewith to combat them. The scriptures are, if I may use the expression, common arsenals, to which every one goes, in order to arm himself from head to foot, and just as he pleases. Accordingly it is not without reason that the catholicchurch has decided, that it belonged to her alone to give to infidels the true sense of the scriptures, and of the fathers: a truth from which we cannot deviate, without exposing ourselves to a dangerous Pyrrhonism in matter of doctrine.
What is very singular, and must appear more strange still to the proselytes, whom they went to make at five thousand leagues distance from our continent of Europe, is, that while the Jesuits preached Christianity after their manner, other missionaries, their enemies, monks and seculars, preached it quite differently to the same people; warning them, at the same time, under pain of damnation, not to believe in the catechism of the Jesuits. We may judge of the effect which these contestswould produce. “Indeed, gentlemen,” said the emperor of China to them, “you take a great deal of trouble in coming so far to preach to us contradictory opinions, concerning which you are ready to cut one another’s throats.” After having made them this representation, he left them to preach as long as they would, persuaded that such apostles could not have any great success. He availed himself besides, for the good of his country, of the residence of the Jesuits, who talked much more at court of astronomy and natural philosophy, than of the Trinity and religion, and who succeeded at last in rendering the other missionaries either suspected or contemptible.
It is not that they were not very ready to expose themselves to the greatest dangers, and even to death, for the sake of that religion which they burlesqued in their manner of preaching it, and which served only as an instrument to their ambition. When the emperor of Japan judged it proper (for reasons which appeared to him indispensible) to exterminate Christianity from his territories, the Jesuits had there their martyrs as well as others, and even in greater numbers. The reader will not be surprised at it, when he knows what was told me by a person extremely worthy of credit. He was particularly acquainted with a Jesuit, who had been employed twenty years in the missions of Canada; and who, while he did not believe a God, ashe owned privately to this friend, had faced death twenty times for the sake of the religion which he preached with success to the savages. This friend represented to the Jesuit the inconsistency of his zeal: “Ah!” replied the missionary, “you have no idea of the pleasure which is felt in commanding the attention of twenty thousand people, and in persuading them to what we believe not ourselves.”
Such is the spirit of the method which the Jesuits have followed, for teaching with success to mankind what they called religion and Christian morality. Such was the moderate doctrine which they preached at the court of Louis XIV. and by means of which they succeeded in rendering themselves so agreeable.Accordingly it was principally under the reign of that prince that the power, the credit, and opulence of the Jesuits received in France such prodigious aggrandizements: it was under this reign that they succeeded in rendering the clergy dependent on them (we may even say their slaves) by the disposal of benefices, with which the fathers la Chaize and le Tellier, the king’s confessors, were successively entrusted: it was in this reign that they succeeded, in consequence of the need which the bishops stood in of them, in extorting, even while they braved them, their confidence, or the appearance of their confidence, and in obtaining the direction of several seminaries; in which the youth, destined to the church, were brought up intheir doctrines, and in the hatred of their enemies: it was under this reign that they succeeded, by decrying or vilifying the other orders and the secular ecclesiasticks, in invading a great number of colleges, or at least in obtaining permission for establishing new ones: it was under this reign that they succeeded so far, through the confidence and consideration which Louis XIV. gave them, as to draw all the court to their college of Clermont. We remember still the mark of flattery which they bestowed on that monarch, by divesting that college of the name which it bore of theSociety of Jesus, in order to call it the college ofLouis the Great; and nobody is ignorant of the Latin distich which was made on that occasion, and in which the society wasreproached “with acknowledging no other God but the king.” Thus they represented them at once as idolaters of despotism, in order to render them vile, and as preachers of regicide, in order to render them odious: these two accusations might appear a little contradictory, but the business was not to speak the exact truth; it was to say of the Jesuits as much ill as possible.
Lastly, what completed the power and glory of the society was, that under Louis XIV. the Jesuits succeeded in destroying, or at least in oppressing in France the Protestants and the Jansenists, their eternal enemies; the Protestants, by contributing to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, that source of depopulation and of evils to this kingdom; theJansenists, by depriving them of the ecclesiastical dignities, by arming the bishops against them, by forcing them to go and preach, and write in foreign countries, where even these unfortunate people still found persecution.
Under this very reign in which the Jesuits were so powerful, and so formidable, the most terrible strokes were given them, more terrible perhaps than any they had felt till that time. The pleadings of Pasquier and Arnaud were but bombast satyrs, and in a bad taste: theProvincial Lettersgave them a wound much more deadly: this master-piece of pleasantry and eloquence diverted and moved the indignation of all Europe at their expense. In vain they replied, that the greatest part of the theologists and monks had taught, as wellas them, the scandalous doctrine which they were reproached with: their answers, ill written, and full of gall, were not read, while every body knew theProvincial Lettersby heart. This work is so much the more admirable, as Paschal in composing it appears to have divined two things, which seemed not made for divination, language, and pleasantry. The language was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading: in theProvincial Lettersthere is not a single word that is grown obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday. Another attempt, no less difficult,was to make people of wit and good folks laugh at the questions ofsufficient grace,next power, and the decisions of the casuists; subjects very little favourable to pleasantry, or, which is worse still, susceptible of pleasantries that are cold and uniform, and capable at most of amusing only priests and monks. It was necessary, for avoiding this rock, to have a delicacy of taste so much the greater, as Paschal lived very retired, and far removed from the commerce of the world: he could never have distinguished, but by the superiority and delicacy of his understanding, the kind of pleasantry which could alone be relished by good judges in this dry and insipid matter. He succeeded in it beyond all expression: several of his bon-mots have evenbecome proverbial in our language, and theProvincial Letterswill be ever regarded as a model of taste and style. It is only to be feared, that the expulsion of the Jesuits, lessening the interest which we took in this book, may render the perusal of it less poignant, and perhaps make it be one day forgot. This is a fate which the most eloquent author has to apprehend, if he writes not on subjects that are useful to every nation, and to all ages: the duration of a work, whatever merit it may have in other respects, is almost necessarily connected with that of its object. TheThoughts of Paschal, greatly inferior to theProvincials, will live perhaps longer, because there is all reason to believe (whatever the humble society may say of it) thatChristianity will last longer than they.
TheProvincialswould be perhaps more assured of the immortality which they merit in so many respects, if their illustrious author, that genius so elevated, so universal, and so little formed for taking an interest in scholastick trumpery, had turned alike both parties into ridicule. The shocking doctrine of Jansenius, and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for it as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez. Every work, in which we sacrifice with success to the publick laughter fanaticks who worry one another, subsists even after those fanaticks are no more. I might venture to foretell this advantage to the chapteron Jansenism, which we read withso much pleasure in the excellentEssay on General History, by the most agreeable of our philosophical writers. The irony is scattered in that chapter to the right and left, with a delicacy and ease which must cover both the one and the other with indelible contempt, and make them weary of cutting one anothers’ throats for nonsensical fancies. Methinks I see Fontaine’s cat[10], before whom the rabbit and the weasel bring their suit on the subject of a pitiful hole which they contend for; and who, by way of decision,
Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems,Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre.
Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems,Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre.
Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems,
Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre.
No body is perhaps fitter than this illustrious writer, to form a historyof theological quarrels, in order to render them at once both odious and ridiculous, and thereby deliver mankind for ever from this shameful and terrible scourge.
The Practical Morals of the Jesuits, written by doctor Arnauld, which came out soon after theProvincials, though of a merit greatly inferior, put the finishing stroke to the throwing upon these fathers an odium, which they will never be able to wash off. This unfavourable and deep impression, which is perpetually kept up by the reading of these books, has even now found, at the end of a century, minds disposed to believe all the ill which has been said of the Jesuits, and of approving all the mischief that has been done to them. The term ofJesuiticalmoralshas been, as it were, consecrated in our language, to signify loose morals, and that ofEscobarderieto signify an artful lie: and we know how much weight a fashionable way of speaking carries with it, especially in France, towards procuring credit to opinions.
The Jesuits, loaded from that time with so much hatred, and such a number of imputations, were not to be till long after the victims of it: they triumphed in the first violence of the attack, and became but the more powerful, the more animated against their enemies, and the more formidable to them. Yet what enemies had they to deal with? With men of the greatest merit and reputation, and whose consideration with the public still increased bytheir very persecution; an Arnauld, a Nicole, a Saci; in one word, all the writers of the celebrated house of Port-Royal. These adversaries were much more to be dreaded by the society than plain theologists, whom the common run of mankind listen not to, understand not, and have no esteem for: they were great philosophers (as great at least as could be in those days) men of the first class in literature, excellent writers, and men of an irreproachable conduct. They had in the kingdom, and even at court, respectable and zealous friends, whom they acquired by their talents, their virtues, and the signal services for which literature was indebted to them. The general and rational grammar, called thePort-Royalgrammar, from their being theauthors of it; the excellentLogiccalled by the same name; theGreek Roots; their learned grammars of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish; such were the productions of this free and respectable society. The illustrious Racine had been their scholar, and had preserved, as well as Despréaux, his friend, the most intimate connections with them: their works on religion and morality were read and esteemed by all France; and by the masculine and correct style in which they were written, had contributed most of any, next to theProvincials, to the perfection of our language, while the Jesuits counted yet among their French writers only des Barris and des Garrasses. What pity that those writers of the Port-Royal, those men of such superiormerit, should have thrown away so much genius and time in ridiculous controversies on the good or bad doctrine of Jansenius, on idle and endless discussions on free-will and grace, and on the important question, Whether five unintelligible propositions be in a book which nobody reads? Tormented, imprisoned, exiled for these vain disputes, and employed perpetually in defending so futile a cause, how many years of their lives have philosophy and letters to regret as lost! What lights would they not have added to those with which they had already illumined their age, if they had not been carried away by these unhappy and pitiful distractions, so unworthy of taking up the thoughts of men like them! May we venture to say a littlemore of this, at the risk of deviating one moment from our subject? Can reason withhold shedding bitter tears, when she sees how many useful talents the quarrels, so often excited in the bosom of Christianity, have buried? how many ages these wretched and scandalous contests have destroyed to the human understanding? and how many geniuses, formed for discovering new truths, have employed (to the great regret of true religion) all their sagacity and abilities, in supporting or giving reputation to ancient absurdities? When we run through, in the vast royal library, the first apartment, of an immense extent, and find it destined, for the greatest part, to a collection, without number, of the most visionary commentators on thescriptures, of polemical writers on, questions the most void of meaning, of school divines of every sort; in short, of so many works from whence there is no drawing one single page of truth, can we refrain crying out with sorrow (ad quid perditio hæc?) “To what end all this loss?” Again, human nature would have been in no very great degree to be pitied, if all these frivolous and absurd objects, theseholy trifles, as a celebrated magistrate calls them[11], had ended in ill language only, and had not occasioned the shedding of torrents of blood. But let us shut our eyes on these dismal objects, and make only one other reflexion, as consolatory as it is humiliating to thehuman mind. How is it possible, that the same species of beings which invented the art of writing, arithmetic, astronomy, algebra, chemistry, watch-work, the art of weaving, so many things in short worthy of admiration in the mechanical and liberal arts, should have invented the philosophy and divinity of the schools, judicial astrology, the concomitant concourse, versatile and congruous grace, the victorious delectation, absolute accidents, and so many other fooleries, as would occasion the suspending, by authority of justice, the person who should first broach them now-a-days? Plato defined man, “an animal with two feet without feathers.” How ridiculous soever this definition may appear, it was perhaps difficult (the lights ofreligion set aside) to characterise otherwise the indefinable human species; which on one side seems, by master-pieces of genius, to have approached the heavenly beings, and on the other, by a thousand incredible marks of folly and cruelty, to have set itself on a level with the most stupid and ferocious animals. When we measure the interval between a Scotus and a Newton, or rather between the works of Scotus and those of Newton, we must cry out with Terence,Homo homini quid præstat!“What difference there is between man and man!” Or must we only attribute this immense distance to the enormous difference of ages, and think with sorrow that thesubtileandabsurd doctor, who wrote so many chimeras, admired by his contemporaries,had perhaps been a Newton in an age more enlightened? Let us weigh well all these reflexions; let us add thereto the perusal of ecclesiastical history, those kalendars of the virtue of some men, and the weak wickedness of so many others; let us behold in that history the usurpations, without number, of the spiritual power; the robberies and the violences exercised under the pretext of religion; so many bloody wars, so many cruel persecutions, so many murders committed in the name of a God who abhors them; and we shall have pretty nearly an exact catalogue of the advantages which the disputes of Christianity have brought upon mankind.
To return to the Jesuits, the nomination of father le Tellier to theplace of confessor to Louis XIV. furnished them with an opportunity of wreaking fully their vengeance. This violent and inflexible man, hated by his very brethren, whom he governed with a rod of iron, made the Jansenists drink “to the very dregs,” according to his own expression, “of the cup of the society’s indignation.” Scarce was he in place, but they foresaw the evils of which he would be the cause: and Fontenelle the philosopher said, on learning his nomination, “the Jansenists have sinned.”
The first exploit of this ferocious and fiery Jesuit, was the destruction of Port-Royal, where not one stone was left upon another, and from whence they dug up the very corpses that were interred there. This violence,executed with the last barbarity, against a house respectable for the celebrated persons who had inhabited it, and against poor nuns, more worthy of compassion than of hatred, excited clamours throughout the whole kingdom: these clamours have re-echoed down even to our times; and the Jesuits themselves confessed, on seeing the spectacle of their destruction, that the stones of Port-Royal were falling on their own heads to crush them.
But the indignation which the destruction of Port-Royal excited against them, was nothing in comparison of the general commotion which the bullUnigenitusoccasioned. It is certain that this bull was their work: we know also the universal oppositionwhich it produced in almost all the orders of the state: we know the intrigues, the frauds, the violences, which were put in practice to extort the acceptance of it. We may remember that Louis XIV. having succeeded in making it to be received (partly by foul and partly by fair means) by an assembly of forty prelates, saw with pain nine bishops who remained in opposition to it: he could have wished, for the peace of his conscience, an entire uniformity in the episcopal corps. “That is very easy,” said the duchess his daughter to him, “you need only order the forty acceptants to be of the opinion of the nine others.” The propositions condemned were, for the most part, so ill chosen, that it is pretendedthat a great prince, on reading them in the bull, took them for truths which it enjoined to be believed, appeared edified by them, and was very much surprised, though of a docile disposition, when his confessor undeceived him.
The magistrates were not the last to rise against this bull. They were especially shocked at the censure of the ninety-first proposition. “The dread of an unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us from doing our duty.” Instructed by the melancholy effects of the quarrels between the Priesthood and the Empire during so many ages, they perceived how easy it was to avail themselves of this censure, to detach the people, by menaces of excommunication, from the fidelity which theyowe their sovereign. They saw, in so rash a condemnation, the secret attempt which the Jesuits and the court of Rome wanted to make upon our maxims, of the temporal independence of kings. There was no subscribing, with any modesty, to the Anathema launched out against a proposition so evident, but by confining it to a tortured sense, which it presents not, in judging it (which is ridiculous in such a case) upon a pretended intention of the author in favour of excommunicated fanaticks. Who doubts that fanaticks might not abuse the truth which this proposition includes, to the braving of every excommunication which they shall think unjust? But is the abuse, which may be made of a truth, a reason for proscribing it? Would the scriptureitself be safe from a stigma founded on like motives?
Nevertheless, in spite of the opposition of the magistrates, the bull was registered; every thing plyed, either willingly or by force, under the weight of the royal authority: the fury with which father le Tellier, the author of this strange production, persecuted all its opposers, was carried so far, that the Jesuits themselves, though long inured to violence, were terrified at his, and said aloud, “Father le Tellier drives at such a rate, that he will overturn us.” They thought not perhaps that they were speaking so much truth. It is this bull, and the persecution which it occasioned, that after fifty years has given the Jesuits the mortal blow: we shall see itin the sequel of this recital. But it may not be useless to make, before-hand, an observation on the conduct and the projects of father le Tellier. Many people believe, that this Jesuit was a knave, void of religion, who made its respectable name subservient to his hatred: it is much more probable that he was a fanatick in reality, who, being persuaded of the goodness of his cause, thought every thing permitted him, in order to ensure the triumph of what he supposed to bethe sound doctrine. At the same time that he persecuted the Jansenists, he accused Fontenelle to Louis XIV. as an atheist, for having writtenThe History of Oracles. Fontenelle, the pupil of the Jesuits, their friend at all times, as well as the great Corneillehis uncle, disapproving also the doctrine and morality of the Jansenists, as far as a philosopher can disapprove theological opinions; in short, ever discreet and reserved with respect to religion, in his discourses, as well as in his writings; such was the man whom le Tellier wanted to ruin, at the very time that he sought to crush Quesnel and his partisans. Would he have behaved in this manner, if he had not been animated by a principle of persuasion?
Happily for Jansenism and for philosophy, Louis XIV. died. Le Tellier, loaded with the public execration, was exiled to la Flêche, where he ended, in a short time, a life odious to the whole nation. The duke of Orleans the regent, being in everyrespect the reverse of Louis XIV. was disposed neither to brave with violence the publick clamour, which the constitution Unigenitus had excited, nor rudely to offend the pope and the bishops, who were too far engaged to recede: he caused to be accepted, almost without noise, this fatal bull, which, presented by the Jesuits, had excited such great clamours: supported by the philosophers who surrounded him, and who began, from that time, to command attention; supported above all by his minister Dubois, whose way of thinking, in matters of religion, was well known, he threw over this theological dispute, a ridicule which put a stop to it.
The Jesuits, though become less powerful during the regency, recovered,nevertheless, in a short time, the place of confessor to the king, of which they had been for a short time deprived: it is pretended that their restoration at court was one of the secret articles of the re-union between France and Spain in 1719. It is added, that this article had been procured by the management of the Jesuit d’Aubenton, confessor to Philip V. and extremely powerful at the court of Madrid. For the honour of the ministers which France had at that time, we must believe that this anecdote is fabulous.
Everything else was peaceable, with respect to the Jesuits, during the remainder of the regency and the succeeding ministry: they aimed only at supporting themselves, without making much noise. CardinalFleury, who loved them not, was nevertheless persuaded that they were to be protected strongly, “as the firmest supports of religion;” the maintenance of which that minister looked upon as a part of government. This manner of thinking in cardinal Fleury, with regard to the Jesuits, is found expressed in some manuscript letters of his, which I have read. “They are,” said he further, “excellent servants, but bad masters.” In pursuance of this principle, he treated them civilly, during his ministry, but without shewing them any marks of declared favour: on the contrary, he greatly raised (and the Jesuits were not the better pleased with him for it) the community of Sulpiciens, who were much less illustrious and less powerful,but also less formidable. Cardinal Fleury, an enemy to the Jansenists, whom he looked upon as dangerous, and at the same time very little biassed for what had any considerable degree of credit in its way, of whatever kind it was, took under his particular protection this numerous community: it had all that was necessary to make him think it worthy thereof: it joined to the merit of being extremely devoted to the bull, the happiness of having never made any noise. This minister filled the bishopricks of France with a multitude of the pupils of St. Sulpicius, who were more commendable for their devotion than their talents: thus he planted the first seeds of that state of languor into which the clergy of Franceseem now-a-days to be fallen, but from which it is to be hoped they will soon rouze themselves; thanks to the philosophick spirit which enlightens at present some of its members, and which makes them justly look upon fanaticism and ignorance as the two true scourges of Christianity.
However, the bull of which the Jesuits had been the promoters, and which had met with so much opposition when it appeared, came insensibly to be received by all the bishops. The French nation, which clamours so readily, and which more readily still grows tired of clamouring, was familiarized to a production which it had at first calledmonstrous: every one received it, with an interpretation according to his own liking; for suchis the wonderful privilege of these kinds of decisions of the church of Rome, that people may, by all means, understand them just as they please, and submit to them at the same time that they continue in their own opinion. Jansenism, heretofore maintained (in spite of reason) by men of real merit, had no longer for its support any defenders, but such as were worthy of such a cause, a few poor and obscure priests, unknown even where they lived: the phrensy of convulsions, which had raised dissensions in the party itself, had rendered them completely contemptible, by rendering them ridiculous: in short, this sect, now expiring and despised, was at the last gasp, when an unforeseen chain of circumstances restored it to a new life, which it hopednot for. The viper which the Jesuits thought crushed, had strength enough to turn back its head, to bite them in the heel, and to kill them. The reader is here presented with the succession of causes, by which this strange event was produced.
The parliaments, which had opposed the society from its birth, had but too much reason for persisting in the same sentiments with regard to it. They were justly offended at the advantages of power and credit, which it had obtained in spite of them: they were above all hurt by the constitutionUnigenitus, the acceptance of which the intrigues of the Jesuits had forced them to register; an acceptance which they thought, as we have seen, contrary to the rights of the crown; and inorder to break forth, waited only for a favourable occasion, without perhaps presuming to flatter themselves that it would ever occur.
The contest occasioned by the refusal of the sacraments to the Jansenists, was the first spark of the conflagration, the Helen of that war, as small in its first object, as it is now become important by its consequences. One of the principal archbishops of the kingdom, and a bishop of Mirepoix, his aid and counsellor, both of them thoroughly persuaded of the excellence of the bull, and of the damnation of those who rejected it, resolved, like consistent prelates, to order the communion to be refused to Jansenists at the point of death. This refusal had before been attempted in some provinces, but twiceor thrice only, at wide intervals, and with little noise: it was now thought time to take off the mask, and absolutely to treat the enemies of the bullUnigenitusas hereticks cut off from the church. If we believe the crowd of constitutionary theologists, the two prelates, authors and executors of this project, were extremely in the right: but let us be permitted to relate here (as mere historians) the singular reasons which were alledged in their favour, and those that were opposed to them. “The bullUnigenitus,” said its partisans, “ill received without doubt, and even spit upon at its birth, had terminated in being unanimously received: there was not, in all Christendom, one bishop who rejected this production, whethergood or bad, of the court of Rome: it was in vain to say that it overturned the principles of Christianity; that the acceptance of it had not been free; that some had received it through fear, others through interest: it was accepted, and without opposition, by the whole body of pastors. Here then we see, in the principles of the Catholic church, all that ought to serve, by way of compass, to plain Christians in their faith. It is not for them to examine either the doctrines themselves, or the nature of the acceptance; it is sufficient to them that they see clearly, that the visible church adopts them. We understand here by the visible church, what every Catholic understandsby the term; that is to say, the pope, the bishops, and almost all the ecclesiasticks, secular and regular, of the second order. Whatever be the doctrine which this visible church teaches, the faithful ought to believe firmly, notwithstanding even the strongest appearances to the contrary, that it has always taught the same; otherwise Jesus Christ would not have said true in promising that church to be always with her. The passages of scripture, and of the fathers, which may appear the most evidently contrary to the new catechism, will be explained in a manner favourable to it: the church has alone the right of fixing the meaning of them. In a word, from the moment thechurch speaks, we must submit to her, whatever she may say. After the council of Nice, the divinity of Jesus Christ was very far from being as solemnly, as universally, as uniformly received by the body of pastors, as the bullUnigenitushath been in these latter times. Nevertheless, after the council of Nice, the Arians were, from that time, hereticks declared, not withstanding the partisans that still adhered to them. It may be; it is even out of doubt, that in the councils which have decided on matters of faith, many of the bishops declared for the good cause, through views of policy, interest, or passion. Witness the unhappy facility with which most of the prelates, who, under Constantine,had declared that the Word was God, declared afterwards, under Constantius, that it was but a man. Witness again the violent conduct of St. Cyril, and of the council of Ephesus, with regard to Nestorius. Witness, lastly, the intrigues which too often disturbed those holy assemblies, and affronted, as we may say, the Holy Ghost, that presides in them. But still, once more, it is not the motives, it is the result of the decision, that the faithful ought to consider. It is by this result alone that they ought to abide: they would have too much to do, if it were necessary for them to go back again to the causes which dictated the decree. God hath promised to his churchinfallibility in her decisions; but he has not promised to every individual purity in his motives: he makes use of all sorts of means, even of the passions of men, for making the truth triumph, and be known; and he employs human things, in order to make divine matters succeed.”
Agreeably to these reasonings (the justness of which we pretend by no means to judge of) the partisans of the bull thought themselves warranted to treat the Jansenists as declared sectaries. The latter said, in their defence, that the universal church was possessed of their cause, by the appeal which they had made to a future council; and that, ‘till the decision which they waited for, they could not be cast out of her bosom.It was replied, that a crowd of hereticks, to begin with Pelagius, so odious to the modern Jansenists, had been looked upon and treated as innovators, without having been condemned expressly by any œcumenical council. They objected, that the bull proposed in reality not one truth for belief; the accumulated qualifications ofhereticks,smellingofheresy, ofill sounding, ofoffending pious ears, &c. were not applied to any one proposition of father Quesnel’s in particular. Some of their adversaries, after the example of an illustrious chief of Israel[12], replied to them, (making a jest probably both of them and the bull) that it proposed “to believe with an implicit faith indeterminate truths:” others saidsimply, that in a list of poisons, it was not necessary to mark expressly the degree of malignity of each, in order to warn people to abstain from them. It was demanded again of the Jansenists, how the church could preserve one of her essential characters, that of beingvisible, if she were reduced to a handful of priests, opposed to all the other pastors? And they replied, that the true church, thevisiblechurch, was that which taughtvisiblysound doctrine, and which did not authorise, like the bull, the most shocking Pelagianism: they added, that the church,visibleas she is, and must be, was not the less hid in appearance in those unhappy times, when the fathers of the church assure us that the whole universe “was astonished to see itselfArian.” In a word, the Jansenists answered their adversaries, as Sertorius did Pompey,
Rome n’est plus dans Rome; elle est toute où je suis.
Rome n’est plus dans Rome; elle est toute où je suis.
Rome n’est plus dans Rome; elle est toute où je suis.
It was thus that the one and the other defended their cause. We say nothing of the ill language which they added to them, and which on either side were worthy of their reasons.
The magistrates alone (and this observation is not to be neglected) opposed, on this occasion, to the constitutionists, reasons that were unanswerable: they pronounced, that the doctrine, taught or authorised by the bull, was contrary to the laws of the kingdom, and of consequence ought not to be a pretext for vexation.Of this the magistrates were competent judges, and the partisans of the bull had nothing to reply: it belongs to the depositaries of the law to decide what is conformable or contrary to it; and this question is not within the province of the church.
It is certain, besides, that all those refusals of the sacraments, occasioned by the bull, disturbed private families; that they sowed dissension among the people: that in this view, at least, the magistrates ought to take cognizance of it, and to employ, as they did, the authority of the laws, to put an end to the confusion. But the inconvenience which attends contests in theology, of hurting the publick tranquillity, is the fruit of the error which was committed in France,and almost every where else, of connecting civil affairs with religion, of requiring a citizen of Paris to be, not only a faithful subject, but also a good catholic, and as exact in providing holy bread as in paying his taxes. As long as this spirit shall subsist among us, the maxim of which fanaticks make an ill use so often, “That it is better to obey God than man,” will be an invincible obstacle to the most prudent measures of government and of magistrates for stifling religious quarrels; because men like better to obey a master of their own chusing (and who, after all, commands them to do only what they please) than a master whom they have not chosen, and who enjoins them what they dislike. In Holland, where the Jansenists forma church absolutely separate, which the government knows nothing of, and leaves in peace, they are neither the cause nor the object of any disturbance. It is only by a discreet toleration (equally avowed by religion and politicks) that we can prevent those frivolous disputes from being contrary to the repose of the state, and to the union of the subject. But when shall we see that happy time?
However this be, the Jansenists, treated at their death as excommunicated persons, rose up against this new persecution. The parliament, which had registered the bull with a very ill will, undertook their defence; it banished the fathers who refused the communion to dieing Jansenists: the archbishop, on his side, forbad them, and deprivedof their places those priests who obeyed the parliament; and the unhappyGod-Bearers(so they are called) having before their eyes exile on one side, and famine on the other, found themselves under a melancholy alternative. Reasonable people were surprised that the archbishop, the author of their misfortune, did not go and present himself to the parliament, declare that they had done nothing but by his orders, and give himself up as a victim for so many innocents. They had so much the more reason to expect this, as the virtue of that prelate, and his sincerity in this affair, were by no means suspected. The Jansenists called him persecutor and schismatick; the courtiers, obstinate: his partisans compared him to St. Athanasius,who was also (they said) called obstinate and rebellious by the courtiers of his time.
The dispute grew more and more warm: the court wished ineffectually to put a stop to it; the Jansenists had found means to occasion more trouble in their deaths than they had done during their lives; the parliaments and the arch-bishop were exiled by turns. At last the king, justly tired of these disputes, recalled the magistrates, and in concert with them imposed alike silence on the partisans and on the adversaries of the bull.
This law of silence, it is true, was not too well observed; it was particularly broken by the encomiums which the Jansenists bestowed on it: they printed large volumes to provethat it was necessary to be silent; they resembled the Pedant in Moliere, who after having talked a long time, and said abundance of foolish things, promises at last to keep silence[13], and in order to shew that he maintains his promise, interrupts every moment the conversation, by observingthat he opens not his mouth.
The constitutionists on their side had the presumption to say, that the King had no right to ordain mad subjects to be silent on the ridiculous object which heated their imaginations; that the sixth general council hadanathematizedthetypeof the emperor Constantius, which was also, as they pretended, nothing morethan alaw of silence. The Jansenists replyed, that this council had done better still, inanathematizingPope Honorius.
The King, employed like a good father, according to the expression of a celebrated author, in parting his children who were fighting, was desirous of supporting himself by an authority respectable to both parties, and especially to the most numerous: he thought proper to consult on this question, by which all France was agitated, the late pope Benedict XIV. a man of understanding, who loved not the Jesuits, and who at the bottom despised this controversy. The pope replied like a crafty Italian; on one side he ordained the acceptance of the bull, the work of one of hisinfalliblepredecessors,which he could not decently condemn; on the other, he declared at the same time, that the Jansenists who rejected it, ought nevertheless to have the sacraments administered to them at their deaths, “but at their own risque and hazard,” and after having beenthoroughly advertizedof the danger which they ran with respect to their eternal salvation. From this period the refusals of the sacraments became less frequent; the Jansenists and their adversaries thought they had alike the pope for them, and tranquillity seemed almost re-established.
It was not even lessened by the step which the parliament thought itself obliged to take some time after,of protesting anew against this bullUnigenitus; the acceptance of which it had registered with reluctance. It called not in question indeed the doctrine of the bull; that would have been to encroach on the authority of the church, and it knew too well the limits of its own rights: it protested only against the execution of this bull, declaring it contrary to what is termed in France “the liberties of the Gallican Church.” This protest had not the glory it merited; it was the sequel of a number of writings, of which the French levity began to be tired. Nay, the partisans of the bull even made a jest, with an indecency that deserved punishment, of the “pretended liberties of the Gallican Church,” by virtue of which, the parliament, according to theterms of its decrees, enjoined the priests, under ignominious penalties, to administer the sacraments: they saw not, said they jeeringly, how such decrees supported and favoured the liberty of the church of France, by forcing its ministers to do what they did not think they ought to do. This way of talking, these contests, the pieces without number, which resulted from them, served to feed the frivolous disposition and gaiety of the nation: people laughed at the reciprocal animosity of the theologists of both parties, for questions which deserved it so little: for that animosity, though very usual, and of all ages, always astonishes and amuses reasonable people. Every body laughed no less at seeing, that notwithstanding the reiterated orders issued by the Sorbonne,to mention no more of the bullUnigenitus, either in their writings or their theses, the college displayed an attachment the most obstinate to this bull, which it had rejected so long. Nothing more was wanting, it was said, to all the strange things that had happened on this subject, than to forbid without success the faculty of divinity from teaching a doctrine which it cost so much trouble to make them receive. Philosophy, above all, laughed in silence at all these extravagancies, and amused herself with this new change of the scene, waiting with patience for an opportunity of profiting by it. Those among the philosophers who hoped for no good from these quarrels, took the still wiser part, of laughing at the whole. They observed the mutual rancour of the Jansenists and theiradversaries, with that disinterested curiosity with which they observe the combats of animals, well assured, let what would happen, of ending cause to laugh at the expence of some of them. So many blows reciprocally struck on both sides with violence, did not yet reach the Jesuits; employed on one hand in arming the bishops against the expiring remains of the Jansenists their enemies; and on the other, in animating, underhand, the court of France against the parliaments, they were the secret soul of all this war, without appearing to intermeddle in it. But the Jansenists, who, in the quarrel concerning the sacraments, had, or at least thought they had, gained ground, grew bolder by degrees, seemed to prepare for a more decisivestroke; and the arch-bishop, their enemy, whetted, without knowing it, by his zeal, the sword with which the society was soon to be pierced.
Two capital errors which the Jesuits committed about that time at Versailles, began to shake their credit, and to prepare from afar their disaster. They refused, as we are assured, through motives of human respect, to take under their direction some powerful personages[14], who had no reason to expect from them a severity so singular in many respects. This indiscreet refusal, it is said, contributed to hasten their ruin by the very hands which they might havemade their support: thus these men, who had been so often accused of loose morals, and who had maintained themselves at court by such morals alone, were undone the moment that they wanted (even to their own great regret) to profess severity; an abundant subject for reflexions, and an evident proof that the Jesuits, from the very first till that time, had taken the right way to support themselves, seeing they ceased to be, the moment that they deviated from it. It is added, that at the same time that they displeased the court by their scruples, they displeased it also by their intrigues. They laid, it was said, snares for some men in place, whose crime in their eyes was that of being wanting in devotion to the society, theonly country which they know: the usual effect of these sorts of attacks is, to strengthen the credit which they do not overthrow; those who were the objects of the Jesuitical plots obtained but the more favour by that means.
While the Jesuits, rather dreaded than supported by the greater part of the clergy, animated against themselves the parliaments, and alienated the persons of the court who had most credit, they also found the secret to indispose greatly a set of men, less powerful in appearance, but more formidable than is imagined, that of the men of letters. Their declamations, at court and in the city, against theEncyclopediehad irritated against them all those who wished well to that work, and who were very numerous: their invectivesagainst the author of theHenriade, their old pupil, and for a long time their friend, had provoked that celebrated writer, who made them sensibly feel the folly which they had been guilty of in attacking him. Whatever be our strength, or whatever we imagine it to be, we ought never to make ourselves enemies of those who, enjoying the advantage of being read from one end of Europe to the other, are able, with one stroke of their pen, to inflict a signal and lasting vengeance. This is a maxim which favour and power itself ought never to make either individuals, or societies, lose sight of, but which the Jesuits of our times seem to have forgot to their great misfortune. The lion pretends to sleep, suffers the wasp tobuz around his ears; but grows tired at last of hearing it, rouses himself, and kills it. For six years and upwards, the Journalists de Trevoux, and the light troops which low literature maintained in their pay, abused the celebrated person above mentioned, who seemed not to know it, and suffered them to go on. At length tired of seeing himself harrassed by so many insects, he tucked up the maroders, and silenced their chiefs; and what is of importance in France to the gaining of a cause, exposed both the one and the other to publick laughter. While he rendered the Jesuits ridiculous, they rendered themselves odious to all the sensible men of the nation, by the spirit of persecution which they preached up in the same Journal de Trevoux, andthe fanaticism which they published in it. The philosophers, as they are called, whom they sought to maltreat, forgot, on their side, no opportunity of avenging themselves in their works; and this they did in a manner the most mortifying to the Jesuits, without too much engaging and exposing themselves. They did not say to them as the Jansenists did, “You are ambitious, intriguing, and knaves:” this accusation would not have humbled the society: they said to them, “You are blockheads; you have not among you a single man of learning, whose name is famous in Europe, and worthy of being so: you boast of your credit; but that credit exists more in opinion than in reality; it is only a house of cards, which will be overturnedthe moment one blows upon it.” They said true, and the event has proved it. To complete their misfortune, the Jesuits, overwhelmed with the blows which they had imprudently drawn upon themselves, had not one single defender able to repel them: they had no good writers, nor men of merit in any kind; their new enemies, oppressed by them at Versailles, were too strong for them at the pen; and the value of this advantage is sensibly felt in a nation which loves to read only to amuse itself, and which ends always by declaring for that party which succeeds therein the best. The Jesuits had for them the phantom of their power; their adversaries had France and all Europe.
It must be confessed that the Jansenists, who never piqued themselves on being artful, were much more so in these latter times, than they thought for; and that the Jesuits, who value themselves greatly on their finesse, were not at all cunning. They fell like fools into the snare which their enemies had laid for them, without once suspecting it. The Jansenist Gazetteer, excited only by fanaticism and hatred (for that half-witted satyrist knew no better) reproached the Jesuits with pursuing in the Jansenists the phantom of heresy, and of not falling upon the philosophers, who became daily, according to him, more numerous and more insolent. The Jesuits stupidly quitted their expiring prey, to attack men full ofvigour, who never thought of hurting them. What was the consequence? They have not quieted their old enemies, and have drawn upon themselves new ones, whom they had nothing to do with. They perceive it very plainly now, but it is too late.
Such was the situation of these fathers, when the war kindled between England and France brought upon the society that famous law-suit which ended in its destruction: the Jesuits carried on a trade with Martinico; the war having occasioned them some losses, they wanted to break their correspondents at Lyons and Marseilles; a Jesuit in France, to whom these correspondents addressed themselves for justice, talked to them like therat retired from the world: “My friends,” said the recluse,“things below no longer concern me; and what can a poor hermit assist you in? What can he do but pray God to help you in this affair? I hope that he will take some care of you.[15]”
He offered to say a mass for them to obtain from God, instead of the money which they demanded, the grace to bear in aChristian-likemanner their ruin. These merchants, thus robbed and treated like fools by the Jesuits, attacked them in the regular way of justice; they pretended that these fathers, by virtue of their constitutions, were answerable one for the other, and that the Jesuits in France ought to discharge the debts of their missionaries in America. The Jesuitswere so persuaded of the goodness of their cause, that as they had a right to be judged before the Great Council, they demanded, in order to render their triumph more brilliant and complete, to have the cause brought before the Great Chamber of the parliament of Paris. They lost it there unanimously, and to the great satisfaction of the publick, which testified its joy at it by universal applause: they were condemned to pay immense sums to the parties, with a prohibition to them to meddle with commerce.
This was but the beginning of their misfortunes. In the law-suit which they maintained, it had been debated, whether in reality, by their constitutions, they were answerable one for the other: this questionfurnished the parliament with a very natural opportunity of demanding a sight of those famous constitutions, which had never been either examined or approved of with the requisite forms. The examination of these constitutions, and afterward that of their books, furnishedlegalmeans more than sufficient for declaring their institution contrary to the laws of the kingdom, to the obedience due to the sovereign, to the security of his person, and to the tranquillity of the state.
I saylegalmeans; for we ought to distinguish, in this cause, thelegalmeans on which the destruction of the Jesuits was founded, from the other motives, no less equitable, of that destruction. We must not believe, that either the constitutionsof these fathers, or the doctrine they are reproached with, were the only cause of their ruin, though they may be the only trulylegalcause, and the only one of course which should have been mentioned in the decrees issued against them. It is but too true, that several other orders have nearly for principle the same servile obedience which the Jesuits vow to their superiours, and to the pope; it is but too true, that a thousand other doctors and religious orders have taught the doctrine of the power of the church over the temporalities of kings: it was not merely because they thought the Jesuits worse Frenchmen than other monks, that they destroyed and dispersed them: it was because they looked upon them with reason asmore to be dreaded on account of their intrigues and their credit; and this motive, though notlegal, is certainly a much better one than was necessary to get rid of them. The national league against the Jesuits resembles that of Cambray against the republick of Venice, which had for its principal cause the riches and insolence of those republicans. The society had furnished the same motives for hatred. The publick were justly displeased at seeing persons of a religious order, devoted by their very profession to humility, to retirement and silence, directing the consciences of kings, educating the gentry, caballing at court, in the city, and in the provinces. Nothing irritates reasonable people more, than men who have renounced the world, and yetseek to govern it. This, in the eyes of the wise, was the least pardonable crime of the society: this crime, of which no mention was made, was of greater weight than all those they were loaded with besides, and which, by their nature, were more proper to cause a decree to be pronounced against them in a court of judicature.
The Jesuits have even had the presumption to pretend, and several bishops their partisans have dared to declare it in print, that the great collection of assertions, extracted from the Jesuit authors by order of the parliament, a collection which served as the principal motive for their destruction, ought not to have had that effect: that it wascompiled in haste by Jansenist priests, and ill-attested by magistrates who were unfit for the work: that it was full of false quotations, passages that were mutilated or misunderstood, objections that were taken for answers: in short, of a thousand other unfair things of the like nature. The magistrates took the trouble of replying to these reproaches, and the publick would have excused them: it cannot be denied, that amidst a great number of exact quotations, some errors had escaped: they were acknowledged without difficulty. But could these errors (though they had been much more numerous) prevent the rest from being true? Besides, were the complaint of the Jesuits and their defenders as just as it appearsto be otherwise, who will give himself the trouble of examining so many passages? In the mean time, till the truth be cleared up (if truths of this nature be worth the trouble) this collection will have produced the good which the nation desired, the annihilation of the Jesuits; the reproaches with which we have a right to upbraid them will be more or less numerous; but the society will not exist; that was the important point.
This volume of assertions, extracted from the books of the Jesuits, condemned by the magistrates, had been preceded some years before by the condemnation of the work of the Jesuit Busenbaum, in which the doctrine of king-killing is openly maintained: the copy on which thiscondemnation was pronounced, bore date 1757, the melancholy æra of that attempt which filled France with horrour and consternation. The Jesuits have pretended that this date was a forgery of their enemies, who, to render them odious, had caused a new title-page to be prefixed to an old edition: the Jansenists maintained, that the edition was in reality quite new, and proved in a sensible manner how far, and to what a degree of impudence, the Jesuits dared be bad subjects. These Jansenists, so little dexterous in other matters, but very violent and rancorous, had actually persuaded the greater part of the French nation, that the atrocious crime in question was the work of the Jesuits. However, the answers of the criminal to the interrogatoriesput to him, as they were made publick, by no means accused those fathers; but he had been a servant to them, as well as to persons of the opposite party: he had declared this to his judges; the Jesuits (for good reasons without doubt, but which we are ignorant of) were not interrogated, as it seemed they should have been; this was enough to a great part of the publick, to charge them with the crime.
The assassination of the king of Portugal, which happened the year following, and in which the society was again involved, served as a new means to its enemies for maintaining, and making it believed, that the attempt, which shocked all France, was their work. The friends of the Jesuits pretended that they were innocentof the crime committed in Portugal; that the storm raised against them on this occasion, and of which also they became the victims in that kingdom, was an effect of the hatred which they had drawn upon them, on the part of the prime minister Carvalho, who was all-powerful with that prince. But why should persons of a religious order inspire a minister of state with hatred against them, unless it be because they have rendered themselves formidable to that minister by their intrigues? Why should Mr. Carvalho, who detested the Jesuits, leave in peace the Cordeliers, the Jacobins, and the Recollects, unless because he found the Jesuits in his way, and that the others vegetated in peace in their convents, without doing the state eithergood or harm? Every religious and turbulent society merits, on that account alone, that a state should be purged of them; it is a crime for them to be formidable.
Accordingly the Portugueze minister availed himself dexterously of the imputation laid to the charge of some of these fathers, of having advised, directed, and absolved the assassins, for causing all the Jesuits to be driven out of the kingdom: they were sent to their general, who, it is said, not knowing what to do with these new-comers, left them to perish with hunger and want on board the very vessels which brought them.
M. de Carvalho, when he expelled the Jesuits, caused three of them to be arrested, who had been declared guilty; but he was not powerfulenough to procure the Jesuit Malagrida to be put to death, though he passed for the most criminal. The Portugueze populace, ignorant, superstitious, and full of Romish maxims, would not have suffered a religious to be delivered up to the secular arm for a crime deserving of the greatest punishments, because that crime was committed only against a layman: they were obliged, in order to convict Malagrida of a crime against God, which should render him worthy of death, to go and seek out some silly books of devotion, the productions of weakness and of madness, written by that unhappy Jesuit: it was solely for these rhapsodies that he was condemned to the fire of the inquisition, not as guilty of high treason, but as a heretick. They reproachedhim with visions and miracles, of which he had had the folly to boast; they reproached him particularly with having been able, at the age of seventy-five years, to divert himself all alone in his confinement as a young novice would have done; which might also have been looked upon as a kind of miracle, truely worthy of being counted among the others. It was upon motives of this sort that he was condemned to a most cruel death: the arrêt did not even make mention of the parricide of which he was accused; and as M. de Voltaire most excellently remarks, an excess of severity was joined to an excess of folly.
It was matter of pleasantry to observe the embarrassment into which the Jesuits and the Jansenists werethrown, on account of this victim sacrificed to the inquisition. The Jesuits, devoted till that time to this bloody tribunal, dared no longer take its part, since it had burnt one of their society: the Jansenists who abhorred it, began to think it just, from the moment that it had condemned a Jesuit to the flames. They assured us, and asserted it in print, that the inquisition was not what they had thought it till then, and that justice was done therewith much wisdom and deliberation. Some magistrates also, till then sworn enemies of the inquisition, seemed at this juncture to soften a little towards it. One of the first tribunals in the kingdom condemned to the fire a writing, in which the Portugueze inquisition was very ill treated on accountof the punishment of Malagrida: and in the declaration which condemned this writing to the fire, they bestowed many commendations, not wholly on the inquisition itself, but on thescrupulous examinationin consequence of which the Jesuit was delivered up to the secular arm.
On account of this charge of regicide, so often renewed against the Jesuits, we shall relate here a curious anecdote. It is astonishing, that among so many pieces which have called these fathersassassins, not one has made mention of a circumstance indeed little known, but which seems to afford a fine light to their enemies. At Rome, in their church of St. Ignatius, they have caused to be represented in the four corners of the cupola (painted about a hundred yearssince by one of their fathers) subjects drawn from the Old Testament; and these subjects are so many assassinations, or at least murders, committed in the name of God by the Jewish people: Jael, who, impelled by the Divine Spirit, drives a nail into Sisera’s head, to whom she had offered and given hospitality; Judith, who, conducted by the same guide, cuts off the head of Holofernes, after having seduced and made him drunk; Sampson, who massacres the Philistines by order of the Almighty; lastly, David, who slays Goliah. At the top of the cupola, St. Ignatius, in a glory, darts out flames on the four quarters of the world, with these words of the New Testament; “I came to set fire to the earth; and what would I but that itbe kindled?” Methinks, if any thing could make known the spirit of the society, with respect to the murderous doctrine that is imputed to them, these pictures would be a stronger proof of it than all the passages which are related from their authors, and which are common to them with many others: but the truth is, that these principles, supported in appearance by the scriptures ill understood, are the principles of the fanaticks of all ages; and we may add, of the greater part of any sect, when they believe it to be their interest to propagate them, and that they can preach them in safety. To them an heretick and infidel prince is a tyrant, and of course a man whom religion and reason order us equally to rid ourselves of. The only thingwhich the Jesuits ought to be reproached with, is that of having forsaken these abominable principles later than others, after having more strongly maintained them; of making particular profession of obedience to the pope, and of a stricter obedience than the other orders; of being, on this account, so much the more to be dreaded in the state, the more they are in credit there, the more dispersed, the more addicted to the ecclesiastical function, and above all to the instruction of youth; of never having expressed themselves frankly and clearly (when they have not been forced to it) on the maxims of government, touching the infallibility of the pope, and the independence of kings; and of having given too much room to understand,that they looked upon these maxims as mere local opinions, which might be maintained either pro or con, according to the country in which they found themselves placed. We may say with truth, and without passion, that this manner of thinking breaks forth in all their works, and in those even of the French Jesuits, who have wanted to appear less Romish with respect to our maxims, than their brethren of Italy or Spain.