The New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits Detected and Briefly Exposed Part 4

The inst.i.tute proceeds to remove from youth every species of bad example.

It directs the prefect and the master how to dissolve growing friendships, that might be dangerous; it forbids the public explanation of books, or of single pa.s.sages, which might mislead active imaginations; it ordains a scrutiny of all books, that come into the pupil's use; it charges the master to watch every trespa.s.s against the rules of civility and good manners. Falsehood and detraction, swearing, and foul words, are to be quickly corrected, or not tolerated within the {202} college. It is, again, the master's particular duty to form the manners of his pupils to decency, modesty, and politeness; to correct their errors in language, their faults in p.r.o.nunciation, their awkwardness in gestures, their coa.r.s.eness in behaviour, not less than to cultivate their memory and regulate their imagination. For this purpose the inst.i.tute, without neglecting modern languages, prescribes, for the justest reasons, the study of Latin and Greek, in the purest models of Athens and ancient Rome. It joins to these the study of history, and its concomitants, geography, chronology, and mythology; and all this must precede the introduction of youth into the regions of eloquence and poetry, where sportive imagination may amuse and feed itself for a while with brilliant images and expressive language: but the inst.i.tute teaches how to reduce all this to the standard of reason and sound judgment, by the succeeding study of philosophy and mathematics; and these, in their turn, are the preparation for the deeper discussions of theology, which lifts the {203} soul out of the narrow sphere of human science, and enables the mind, and, still more, the heart, to make excursions into the immensity of G.o.d.

The short sketch, which is here presented, of education among the Jesuits, is enough to convince us, that no system was ever more solid, more calculated to produce eminent men, in every department of civil and ecclesiastical life. Undoubtedly it did produce a succession of them during two hundred years; and it thus verified the decisive sentence of Bacon, _Ad paedagogicam quod attinet, brevissimum foret dictu. Consule scholas Jesuitarum_[68]. Perhaps the real value of the system is still better proved by the miserable state of degradation, into which public education and public morals have sunk in catholic countries, since its utter suppression.

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But the founder of the Jesuits is not satisfied with suggesting what is right; he provides, what is still more necessary, proper masters to enforce it. He gives them two years of only spiritual, and five others of spiritual and literary education, to train them to their important task. With this he trusts, that their conduct will be irreproachable, that they will be worthy to be trusted with the grand interests of letters and of morals. He expects them to be docile, modest, and willing to be guided by their elders, who have successfully completed their course. They must be young enough to gain the confidence of children, and firm enough to command respect. To animate them to a.s.siduity in duty, they must be provided with all necessary books; they must be stimulated to zeal by the prospect of _G.o.d's greater glory_; they must, therefore, be perfectly weaned from self-interest; they are required to yield continual service to persons, from whom they must receive none; they must impart virtue and knowledge, but never sell {205} either; they must inspire grat.i.tude, and never profit by it; they must prove themselves deserving of every thing, and accept nothing[69].

The society, in every period of its existence, possessed, in every country, many excellent and distinguished professors and masters, in every science which it professed to teach; and the {206} uniformity and steadiness of their education raised the bulk of its masters much above the rate of decent mediocrity. It is apparent, that, in the conducting of public education throughout a large kingdom, a body of men, well compacted together, and properly trained to the work, must possess superior advantages; and the world has long since agreed, that no other body of men ever did, or could furnish so many able and useful teachers, as the society of Jesuits constantly presented for the public service. There were, no doubt, elsewhere, masters, able to balance, perhaps to eclipse, the reputation of those of the society; but these men were seldom found, except in the first chairs of great universities; they did not diffuse learning throughout a kingdom, and the succession of them was not uniformly continued. The Jesuits were universally spread throughout a country, and every town had a chance of enjoying their best masters. Even in the first universities it has been allowed, that the Jesuits' schools were of use to the other colleges, and reciprocally {207} received great advantages from them. The spirit of laudable emulation stimulated both to generous exertions, and the general interests of learning were thereby promoted.

During the five or six years which the Jesuits employed in teaching, many of them obtained renown, and all, it may be presumed, had acquired the ready use of the Latin language; had discovered the bent of their talents; and had attained maturity of judgment and love of application. At the end of their course these masters, aged from twenty-five to thirty years, were now once more remanded to the benches, and applied, during four years, to the study of theology, under able professors, in the princ.i.p.al city and college of their province; thus forming a perpetual colony of forty or fifty mature and improved students, such as rival colleges could seldom equal. "At Paris," says cardinal de Maury, "the great college of the Jesuits was a central point, which attracted the attention of all the best writers, and of persons {208} of distinction in every rank. It was a kind of permanent literary tribunal, which the celebrated Piron, in his emphatic language, used to style _La chambre ardente des reputations literaires_; always dreaded by men of letters, as the princ.i.p.al source and focus of public opinion in the capital[70]." What the cardinal a.s.serts of Paris, was equally true of Rome, Vienna, Lisbon, and other great cities, which possessed the colleges of higher studies of the society. I conclude with remarking, that, if any part of what is prescribed in the inst.i.tute had been retrenched from the education of Jesuits, their society would not have deserved such commendations from Piron and cardinal de Maury[71].

If the outlines of education, which have been {209} here traced from the book of the Jesuits' inst.i.tute[72], do not win approbation, they may be presented to the reader, at least, as an object of curiosity. Serious men will, perhaps, think them more deserving of attention than are many of the ephemeral vagaries, which modern adventurers in the art of training youth daily obtrude upon the public. The Jesuits' system is recommended by the experimental success of two centuries; and, whether the plan was originally conceived, or only adopted and methodised, by Ignatius and his followers, certain it is, that, from the close of the council of Trent to the opening of the Gallic revolution, the main principles, on which it rests, even the practical details of it, with little variation, pervaded the education of the catholic clergy in all distinguished seminaries, whether directed by Jesuits or by others; and they may, therefore, be regarded as {210} the source of all the virtue and learning which adorned the catholic church in that period, and which the Gallic revolutioners were sworn to destroy. If these antichristian conspirators first doomed the Jesuits to annihilation, it was because their schools were widely diffused through Europe, and were marked by them as hotbeds of every thing which they chose to term fanaticism, bigotry, and superst.i.tion; that is to say, zeal, faith, and devotion. These were to be extirpated, to make room for fanaticism, bigotry, and superst.i.tion of another kind; those of equality, reason, and philosophy. And mark with what avidity they seized upon the spurious maxim, which had been attributed to the Jesuits, "that it was lawful to do evil, that their expected good might come:" falsehood, forgery, blasphemy, false witness, murder, regicide; every crime that a bad heart could suggest, a perverted head direct, or a venal arm perpetrate, was resorted to, to attain that _summum bonum_, jacobinism. They had before them the _Monita Secreta_ and the Inst.i.tute, and they chose the {211} former for the basis of their const.i.tutions. I need not repeat the infamous doctrines collected in that forgery, which was published at the end of the pamphlet, that induced me to undertake to write these pages, and of which Clericus has given us an account in the following Letters; suffice it to say, by way of contrast, that horrors are there piled high one upon another, and said to be the secret code of regulations of men, who profess to take the inst.i.tute of Ignatius for their guide, a code replete with piety and virtue. I have already said enough to silence the remark, that men may profess only and not act, for I have shown, that, if ever men acted up to their professions, the Jesuits have; but it will be an agreeable task to put some of the points of the inst.i.tute, which have been distorted, into the view in which truth requires they should be seen.

First, let us glance an eye over the contents of this inst.i.tute. It contains, not only what the founder wrote, but likewise all the papal {212} bulls and briefs granted to the society; all the decrees and canons of the several congregations, which form laws in the society; several instructions, precepts, and ordinations, issued by different generals, and adopted by general congregations, for universal practice; the general _Ratio Studiorum_; the privileges granted to the society by the holy see; the particular rules prescribed for every office in the society, and for every cla.s.s of men in it, as priests, missionaries, preachers, students, &c. The groundwork of all this is what the founder himself wrote; _viz._ an _Examen Generale_ to be proposed to candidates for admittance; _Const.i.tutiones Societatis Jesu_; an epistle _De Virtute Obedientiae_; a book of _Spiritual Exercises_; and, finally, many of the particular rules of offices. The Prague edition of the Inst.i.tute, anno 1757, two small folio volumes, lies before me, and I have taken a good deal of fruitless trouble to find out some propositions denounced by the enemies of the Jesuits, without reference to the page or chapter. I have found nothing but what reflects {213} honour on the code. The objects of it are the glory of G.o.d, the general good of man, and the preservation of the society. In pursuance of the first of these, the members make vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience; they mortify their senses, renounce worldly honours, and preach the Gospel. The means they use for the second consist of example, prayer, works of charity, pious publications, preaching, educating youth, and sending forth missions. For the third object, their preservation, they have appropriate rules of union, discipline, reputation, freedom from party, and moderation[73].

Such is the code which has been so misrepresented. It is impossible, within the bounds of a pamphlet, and, indeed, I have already stretched into the lat.i.tude of a book, to give an adequate notion of it, and to combat the opinions which have gone abroad against it. These opinions {214} are so many adopted prejudices, the refutation of which is completely given in the _Apologie de l'Inst.i.tut_, to which I must refer the reader, who will find in it many extracts from the inst.i.tute itself; and I shall here briefly notice the vow of obedience, and the imputed despotism of the general, about which so much has been said.

"Their blind obedience! To be as unresisting as _a dead body_, or as tractable as _a stick_ in the hands of an old man![74]." This language, taken disjointedly, is among the bugbears held up by the new conspirators against the Jesuits. It must surely be allowed, that obedience is necessary in every inst.i.tution, where training the mind is an object, and the inst.i.tute is not reprehensible for excluding wilful argumentation, while it allows every one the use of his reason. _Blind obedience_ is not required for the commission of a crime, but in duties known to be pious {215} and moral, in actions evidently laudable. Nor is the expression of the text _caeca obedientia_, but _caeca quadam obedientia_[75]. The rule is for the better training of the young and the inexperienced; and what school does not proceed upon it to the extent required by the inst.i.tute, which excepts whatever is criminal, or morally wrong? It literally prescribes, that this _kind_ of _blind obedience_ shall, nevertheless, be conformable to justice and to charity; _omnibus in rebus ad quas potest c.u.m charitate se obedientia extendere_[76]. Nay, the order of the superior is not only to be examined, to see that it is free from a capital sin, but from any sin whatever; _in omnibus quae a superiore disponuntur ubi definiri non possit (quemadmodum dictum est) aliquod peccati genus intercedere_[77]. In a word, discussion is not forbidden by the inst.i.tute, but in cases where it is evident that there is no sin; {216} _ubi non cerneretur peccatum_[78]; a doctrine continually repeated on this head, _quemadmodum dictum est_, that is, _in quibus nullum manifestum est peccatum_[79]. Where now is the horror of this obedience? It will seem a paradox to say, that the rigour of it arises from the mildness of the Jesuit government: but it is not less the fact; for, as all violent measures and corporal punishments are excluded from the society, a prompt moral obedience is absolutely necessary to its existence. It thus becomes an amiable, as well as an indispensable law.

But the despotism of the general? The obedience, which the Jesuits owe their general, is the same as that which they pay to their ordinary superiors. It flows from the same source, and tends to the same end. Having demonstrated the slavery of it to be a chimera, the despotism of the general naturally vanishes with {217} it. The nature of the society required, that it should be under a single chief: to have given to separate houses independent chiefs would have destroyed the great objects depending upon a union of councils. It was no cen.o.bitical order devoted chiefly to working out their own salvation; but one, whose members were to be spread over the whole world, to promote the glory of G.o.d and the good of man. The inst.i.tute, however, takes great care, that the chief should not be a despot: it gives him no slaves, nor even subjects, but friends, children, and counsellors[80]; mildness is the sceptre it bestows upon him, and charity the throne[81]; it {218} equally prohibits the superior to govern by violence and the inferior to obey through fear[82]. The general is elected by the whole society, who first swear to choose only him, whom they believe to be the most worthy of the office[83]. There is nothing arbitrary or changeable in the {219} authority of the general: it is subjected by the inst.i.tute to stable and invariable laws, and his duties are minutely prescribed. If he deviates from them, it provides for his removal[84]. Far from being a despot, he is not even exempted from the superintendance of a monitor chosen by the society, who observes his conduct, tells him of his faults, points out his duties, and is consequently compelled not to excuse him in any point[85]. In spiritual affairs, the general is subject to the pope; in temporal matters, to the government under which he lives; and, in what {220} concerns himself personally, or the society solely, to a general meeting of the order[86]. Though elected for life, he may be deposed for several reasons stated in the inst.i.tute; and the same hands that clothed him with power may strip him of it[87]. It has been said, that the motive for appointing a single chief was the facility it offers for promoting more certainly the ends of ambition. The inst.i.tute strongly condemns ambition in individuals, and still more strongly in the general[88]. One great {221} charge against the power of the general is, that his authority may injure that of sovereigns, by withdrawing their subjects from their obedience: on the contrary, he is expressly forbidden, by the inst.i.tute, to take from a state any Jesuit whatever, without the knowledge of the sovereign[89]. The annulling of contracts is another source of abuse, founded on a mistaken pa.s.sage in the inst.i.tute, where it is said; "Although the general, by his open letters to particular superiors, confers on them an ample power in that respect, yet that power may be restricted and limited by private letters." This pa.s.sage has no reference to contracts, and relates only to the power given openly to local superiors to dismiss improper persons; and there can be no objection to the private limiting of that power. But the most obnoxious charge of all is, that the general of the Jesuits maintains spies everywhere, for the purpose of diving into the secrets of courts, and into the {222} affairs of private families. The inst.i.tute contains a rule directly the reverse of this a.s.sertion, a rule by which he is expressly prohibited from meddling in affairs that do not concern the society, even under any pretext of piety or religion[90].

After all, then, the general of the Jesuits is not such a monster as he has been painted, and it is absurd to suppose, that a learned and sensible old man, who, about to give an account of his ministry to G.o.d, has but a few years to fill the office, should consider it as the spring of every kind of crime; it is absurd to suppose, that the brethren of the order, who have sacrificed every thing on earth to the hope of finding under the empire of the inst.i.tute the greatest perfection of the Christian character, should believe, that they are obliged, by virtue of that very inst.i.tute, to commit the greatest sins man is capable of; and it is absurd to {223} suppose, that, if a general were mad enough to abuse his power, there would not be found a pope wise enough, or Jesuits virtuous enough to depose him, conformably to the laws of the church and of the inst.i.tute.

Formerly, when the Jesuits had powerful protectors, the practice was to turn them into ridicule; now, that they have powerful enemies, the object is to stigmatize them with every vice. Nothing is more difficult, or more delicate, than to parry ridicule; but, to refute abuse, one has only to expose it.

In the present state of the continental powers, it seems hardly possible, that the society of Jesuits should recover its ancient importance, but their destruction must ever be lamented; and, since their unrelenting enemies have tempted the public curiosity to inquire into their history, this chapter shall be closed with a brief account of the final catastrophe of that small portion of their body, which for two {224} hundred years was connected with England, by the common bonds of country, language, and blood.

About the year 1590, the English Jesuits obtained, from the liberality of Philip II of Spain, the foundation of their princ.i.p.al college at St. Omer; and, soon after, the bishop of that city conferred upon them an ancient abbey, with its demesnes, situated in the neighbouring small town of Watten. A few years later, they acquired the foundation of their college at Liege, from Maximilian the elector of Bavaria, and likewise a smaller settlement in the city of Ghent. In these several houses, they applied themselves to the education of British catholic youth, and to the formation of missionaries. In 1762, the two first-mentioned of these establishments were subjected to confiscation by the unsparing _arrets_ of the parliament of Paris. The inhabitants could obtain no mercy, on the consideration of being foreigners admitted on the public faith; they were all ejected, {225} without the smallest allowance for their support, or even for their return to their native soil. They presented themselves to the Austrian government of the Netherlands, at Bruxelles; they were admitted under an _octroi_, the most solemn act of that government, and they established themselves in the city of Bruges. In 1773, on the appearance of pope Clement XIV's destructive brief, they were once more unmercifully pillaged, in despite of the public faith, pledged in the _octroi_; and here the fangs of fiscal avarice were sharpened to an uncommon edge, because it was the persuasion of that despotic government, that, being Jesuits, they deserved no pity, and, being English, they must be rich. At the same period, their large college at Liege was stript of all its income, by the two courts of Munich and Rome, and the inmates of the house were also here turned adrift, without any allowance for their personal subsistence. In this utter distress, a few of these persecuted men, who remained at Liege, not quite dispirited by their calamities, were encouraged by the prince {226} bishop of Liege, to form, within the old college, a school and a seminary of priests. The plan was sanctioned by a brief of pope Pius VI; they found friends, and unremitting labour and industry during twenty years advanced their work to a degree of consistency, which merited the approbation and confidence of the public. But all this was of no avail. Utter destruction was to be their doom. In 1794, when the French armies, by one general sweep, overturned, in the Low Countries, every thing that related to the religion of Jesus Christ, they were finally dislodged and scattered; their house and all their valuables were left to the disposal of those outrageous freebooters; waggon-loads of their best books were converted into wadding for the cannon; their mathematical and optical cabinet was pillaged; they retired in sorrow, each to seek a refuge, with hardly a hope of seeing better days. Thus terminated the English province of the society of Jesus.

A few of these ancient men, who have weathered the whole storm, are still alive, {227} comforting their old age with the late public testimony of the head of the church, that they deserved a better fate. Having availed themselves of the indulgence of the British government, on leaving the Netherlands they sought an asylum in their own country. They here subsist, in the security of conscious innocence, fearless of the prejudices and malice of a few unprovoked foes, who know not how to harra.s.s them but by the old weapons of misrepresentation and slander. They have pledged their allegiance to their king and country, in the comprehensive oath of 1791; they meddle not with general or county politics; _they seek no offices of state_, that remaining stumbling block in the way of the catholic n.o.bility and gentry; they attend solely to their own professional concerns; and, as peaceable and loyal subjects, they may justly expect protection for their persons and for their property. Friends of the government and of the country, friends of monarchy, friends of public tranquillity, friends of order and {228} subordination, friends of religion, friends of morality, friends of letters, shall they not be protected? Ignorance, prejudice, and pa.s.sion, shall not prevail against such men.

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CHAPTER IV.

_Character of Pombal. Summary Observations, and a brief notice of the tendency and danger of Education independent of Religion._

The success of the old conspiracy against the Jesuits will not be wondered at, when we reflect upon the character of the age in which it was formed, and on the means that were used to mature it. Ignorance was the lot of the generality of men: despotism pervaded courts, and tools were never wanting to shape events to the will of the powerful. Of the parliaments, the university, and of the Jansenists, enough has been said to show the inveteracy and malignity with which they carried on their unjust persecutions of the society, and to expose the {230} causes of their conduct; but, in the mention which has occasionally been made of the Portuguese minister Carvalho, marquis of Pombal, the great persecutor of the Jesuits, too little has been said to account for his hatred of them; I will, therefore, here, make him the subject of a few pages.

During the reign of John V, the Jesuits were in high favour at the court of Lisbon. That king expired in the arms of the famous Malagrida. Carvalho was then a real or pretended friend of the society. The Jesuits, whom king John consulted, recommended him, with little forecast, for the emba.s.sies of London and Vienna, and, afterwards, to his successor, Joseph I, as prime minister. He soon, however, betrayed his jealousy of the power and credit of the Jesuits; and he determined to effect their ruin. The first opportunity of persecuting them arose from the treaty with Spain, for an exchange of lands and fixing new boundaries in South America, the motive of which we have {231} already seen. The disorder, that ensued among the Indians, the marquis imputed to the influence and ambition of the Jesuits; whence arose the absurd fable of the Jesuit king Nicolas, and of the project and attempt to usurp the dominion of South America, which, with great industry and many foul arts, he propagated all over Europe. The insurrection of the Paraguay Indians is usually called the first cause of Pombal's hatred of the Jesuits. In his ambitious views of engrossing all authority and power, he dreaded opposition from the king's brother, don Pedro, who was greatly attached to the order. A dispensation had been obtained from Rome to allow don Pedro to marry his niece, and Pombal, with confidence of success, endeavoured to prevent the marriage. He strove to inspire the king with jealousy of his brother, suggested various reasons why the princess ought to be given to some foreign prince, and recommended William duke of c.u.mberland in preference to all others. The king consulting his confessor, F. Moreira, that {232} Jesuit prevailed upon his master to reject the proposal. On that occasion, the marquis vowed vengeance, not only against the prince and F. Moreira, but against the whole order of Jesuits. Another grand cause of his rage against the society was but too well known to the missionaries. The greatest obstacle to the success of their missions among the Indians had always been the prevalence and violence of the rich European settlers, and more frequently still of the royal governors. They had often succeeded, by their credit at Madrid and Lisbon, to protect the poor Indians from personal outrage and slavery, yet it was always a difficult struggle. Pombal had made his brother, who was called Xavier Mendoza, governor general of Maragnon, in the Brazils, and never had the country before known a tyrant so despotic and outrageous. The pious queen dowager, Mariana of Austria, greatly favoured the missions.

When any Jesuits sailed for Brazil, she regularly exhorted them to attend seriously to the propagation of religion, and directed them to inform {233} her exactly of whatever obstacles they might experience from the king's officers, and the Portuguese settlers, promising redress for their injuries and concealment of their names. In full confidence of her protection the missionaries often preferred serious complaints against Xavier Mendoza, and the wrongs of the poor Indians were frequently redressed. The minister's anger at these accusations of his brother, of which he could not discover the authors, almost drove him mad: but the queen dying, he contrived to get possession of her private papers, and discovered the channel of intelligence. His increased rage against the missionaries and Jesuits in general may be imagined. The conduct of the Jesuits, after the earthquake in 1755, afforded him fresh grounds of enmity. They spread themselves through the city and the adjacent country, everywhere inviting the people to repentance. Their sermons were everywhere attended by mult.i.tudes, their confessionals were thronged. Penitential processions were inst.i.tuted, the city was edified. In their {234} discourses, they attributed the public calamity to a special visitation of Divine Providence, with the design of chastising the increasing depravity of morals in all ranks, and inviting them to repentance. The court was pleased with the exertions of the Jesuits. The king, in particular, thanked their provincial, and ordered the repairs of their professed house to be undertaken and defrayed by the royal treasury. This mark of royal favour sorely mortified the minister: he complained of the fanaticism of the Jesuits, especially of Malagrida, who had printed a discourse on the subject of the earthquake, which was read and highly commended by the king. His majesty had signified his intention of making a spiritual retreat, or exercise, for a week, under the direction of that celebrated father. The marquis, after innumerable other artifices to discredit the Jesuits, and their doctrine of an interfering Providence, a.s.sured the king, that a conspiracy was formed to overturn the government; that, unless Malagrida were withdrawn, a public sedition would ensue. The {235} king, intimidated, at length consented to his removal; but the crafty minister, dreading the resentment of the whole city, applied, the same day, to the pope's nuncio, and stating the king's authority and positive request, prevailed upon him to order Malagrida to retire from Lisbon to Setubal. He then forbade processions, or other marks of public penance and devotion, publicly alleging, that the misfortune of the city was to be attributed solely to natural causes; and by these and other means he succeeded in keeping the weak king in constant dread of imaginary plots, conspiracies, and insurrections. The king was soon completely subdued; every thing was abandoned to the disposal of the minister, his authority and power became absolute, and he soon displayed his real character in such a series of despotic and tyrannical deeds as the annals of mankind cannot equal. These may be found fully detailed in the four volumes of his life, printed at Florence in 1785; in _Memoires du Marquis de Pombal_; in _Anecdotes du Ministere du Marquis de Pombal_; and in various other {236} publications. His power with the king expired in 1777, when he was imprisoned, impeached, and convicted, by the unanimous voices of his judges, of enormous crimes, deserving capital punishment. The queen was prevailed upon, by the intercession of some of the foreign courts, to remit the sentence: he was only banished to Pombal, where he died in 1783. "Who would think," said the abbe Garnier, in his funeral oration for Joseph I, "that one man, by abusing the confidence and authority of a good king, could, for the s.p.a.ce of twenty years, silence every tongue, close every mouth, shut up every heart, hold truth captive, lead falsehood in triumph, efface every trace of justice, force respect to be paid to iniquity and barbarity, and enslave public opinion from one end of Europe to the other?"

Such was Sebastian Joseph Carvalho, marquis of Pombal, the enemy of the Jesuits, and prime promoter of their destruction. The very enmity of such a man is a strong negative proof of innocence and virtue. {237}

But the cry was up; the society was to be destroyed; envy, hatred, and malice led the chace; atheism, deism, and philosophy, with their attendants, ridicule and sophistry, joined in the pursuit, and the victim was hunted down. The founders, or rather the finishers and embellishers of the modern school of reason, could not endure men, who preached doctrines and maintained principles so opposite to their own new-fangled systems.

They knew, that respect for revealed truths, and reverence for established authority, the two objects of their detestation, were the main pivots on which the whole system of the education of the Jesuits turned. _Deum timete, regem honorificate_, "Fear G.o.d and honour the king," was their adopted maxim: religion and loyalty were never disunited by them, and the revolutionary conspirators had determined to subvert both. These everywhere opened schools of philosophy, as they affected to term it; that is, schools of impiety and irreligion; where G.o.d, his mysteries and his laws, were cited to the tribunal of proud and depraved {238} reason; where it was a rule to reject what was not comprehended, to ridicule whatever checked and restrained youthful pa.s.sions, to begin by examining every thing incoherently, and to end by believing nothing. Infinite were the arts by which these odious maxims were infused; and they were all sweetened by previous lessons of libertinism and dissoluteness, which soiled the imagination by the most obscene productions, and corrupted the heart by the most abominable maxims. They were multiplied under the t.i.tles of poems, histories, dissertations, romances; they imposed upon the simple by affected doubts of the most established truths; by impudent a.s.sertions, that religion is now abandoned to the weak, the ignorant, the vulgar. The interest of vice soon inveigled their disciples to re-echo the cry, that lessons, drawn from belief and fear of the Supreme Being, are no more than the accents of fanaticism, superst.i.tion, and bigotry[91]. {239} Jesuits were the avowed heralds of these _degrading_ lessons, they were not philosophers. "No," says D'Alembert, one of the fathers of the new system, "the Jesuits have been teaching {240} philosophy two hundred years, and they have never yet had a philosopher in their body."

In the meaning of these writers, the charge must be fully admitted. Never did Jesuits harbour within their walls the maxims or the doctrines of modern sophisters. They acknowledged no philosophy, that appeared to infringe revelation or morals; but not on that account did they forego a modest claim to the t.i.tle of philosophers. Those among them, who best deserved it, were actively employed in detecting, exposing, and refuting the fallacies of the modern Voltairian school; and, without affecting the peculiarity of the name, they were satisfied with being philosophers in the ancient acceptation of the term; that is, while they inculcated respect for divine revelation, and for established authority, they never ceased, during two hundred years, to furnish a succession of professors, who unfolded the principles of natural and of moral knowledge. And what branch of human {241} science was banished from their schools? Their public lessons might be called _elementary_ by deep proficients; but they were accommodated to the capacity of the bulk of their youthful auditors; their object was to awaken in them the love of science, to lay the foundation on which the edifice of deep knowledge was afterwards to rise. It is allowed, that the most distinguished scholars in every branch, in past times, generally had been trained in the Jesuits' schools; and can it be said, with truth, that none of the masters, who had taught them, ever rose to eminence; that none of them were philosophers? That they never affected to a.s.sume the t.i.tle is allowed: their philosophy was more circ.u.mspect. On their first principle they accepted, and they taught others to accept, without hesitation, the oracles of the church of Christ; they never blushed for their faith, or, as it was miscalled, their credulity. They believed sublime truths, that surpa.s.sed comprehension, because they feared G.o.d, who attests them, and knew that he cannot deceive. {242} Fixed in this first principle, they conceived no incongruity in joining to it eager researches into the secrets of nature, steady pursuit of improvement in every human science. If eminence in these justly confers the t.i.tle of _philosopher_, it is strange, that the doctors of the new antichristian school should have overlooked the names of innumerable Jesuits in every branch of science, who were respected as philosophers, until faith in divine revelation was reckoned to depreciate all literary merit. It would be tedious to rehea.r.s.e the mult.i.tude of names, which might be adduced; but I must observe, that the succession of them was never discontinued; and that, in the very last state of the society, there were men among them revered and consulted by the most eminent professors and academicians, who disdained to be mere disciples of Voltaire and D'Alembert. The best mathematicians of Italy bowed to the names of Ricati and Lecchi. The most eminent astronomers frequented the observatories of the Jesuits at Rome, Florence, and Milan, directed by the fathers Boscovich, {243} Ximenes, and La Grange. Fathers Meyer and Hall were celebrated through Germany, and the Polish Jesuit Poczobult, the royal astronomer at Wilno, was known wherever astronomy was cultivated. The celebrated M. La Lande, and our own astronomer, Dr. Maskelyne, did not disdain his correspondence. La Lande, in particular, in his writings, mentions these Jesuit philosophers with honour.

It is the remark of M. Chateaubriand[92], that, without any prejudice to other literary societies, the Jesuits were truly styled _Gens de Lettres_, because the whole circle of sciences was more or less cultivated among them. It was a rare case to meet with a Jesuit devoid of scientific knowledge. Their reputation, in this point of view, contributed much to the esteem in which the society was formerly held, before the strange concurrence of causes, which has not been hitherto explained, had operated upon the {244} catholic princes to discard them, and, in so doing, to open volcanoes beneath their thrones.

The destruction of the Jesuits was, literally, the destruction of that education, in catholic countries, by which order was established on its best and surest foundation, the belief of future rewards and punishments, and the conviction, that man was on earth but a transient being, whose chief object was to work out his salvation and eternal happiness in another world; a conviction, that could only be impressed upon the mind by the truths of revelation. It is no part of my object here to enter into a dissertation upon the comparative excellencies and defects of religious systems; but I maintain, that the distinguishing faculty of comprehending religious subjects, and the disposition to be influenced by them, interwoven in the nature of man, are proofs, that it is intended by G.o.d that he should be princ.i.p.ally and generally influenced by religious motives; and that morality, with all its beauty, to be valuable, must originate in {245} that source. Let even temperate philosophers say what they will of morality, independent of religion, there is one striking advantage to states arising from the latter, which the former cannot yield.

Contentment and resignation are the fruits of religion; insulated morality generates discontent, and has a perpetual tendency to doubt the justice of the inequality of conditions in this life; very naturally too, if the short race of it be all to which our hopes and fears can extend. There is also a gradation in morality; there is a confined and a _refined_ morality. _Suum cuique tribuitur_ is a maxim of confined morality; the _refined_ moralist is a cosmopolite; and, still more refined, he denies the rights of _meum_ and _tuum_; and the government that suffers one man to enjoy more than another is an unjust government, consequently man ought to seek a just one, and so we have the revolutionary system. It is only religion, it is only the Christian religion, which can reconcile morality to the state of man.

This is the beautiful morality which binds him in social order, {246} which gives to Caesar what is due to Caesar, and, in securing to every man the rights he has obtained of property, calls upon him to rectify the selfishness of corrupted nature; to do as he would be done by, to love his brother as himself, and still farther to a.s.similate himself to his Master and to his G.o.d, by loving his enemies. Divine morality! which could have flowed only from a divine source! Divine legislation! dictated by G.o.d himself! It is unfortunate, that the nature of man will not permit the spirit, and even the outward forms, of a religion so adapted to the actual condition of the human species to be universal; and, that the different views taken of the text, by the variance of the human understanding, should diverge into incongruous systems, and excite religious dissentions. But, however this may be deplored, it is still more deplorable, that it should ever enter into the mind of man to establish systems of education, in which that which should be the foundation of it is totally excluded from it; that the end of knowledge should be separated {247} from the means of it; that the rudiments of instruction should be devoted solely to the acquisition of worldly arts, of which the operation is to be left to the direction of ignorance and selfishness. It is astonishing, with the experience men have so lately and so dearly gained, that there can be found one to approve of a system, in this country, the archetype of which has desolated Europe and ruined France. In attributing the explosion of the French revolution to the deistical and atheistical philosophers, I do not hesitate to attribute the long continuation of it to the change that took place in the forms of education; to the universities of Buonaparte[93], to the confining of men's interests to {248} the duration of life. In this country, there is a system in full operation, and patronized by some of the first characters of the state, by which a very large portion of the people will, in a few years, consist of persons able to read, write, and keep accounts, who will have no knowledge, or an erroneous one, of the duties and sanctions of religion, and whose morality will consequently be dependent on their reasoning faculties; and I am very much mistaken if those faculties will not lead to similar conceptions and similar effects as those produced by the reasoning faculties of 1788 and 1789. This opinion cannot be mistaken for one of intolerance. I think it would have been happier had the whole nation been of one accord in every point of religion; and I see, in the church of England, sufficient inducements to have restrained minds, sensible of the danger of innovation, from making a few points of mysterious doctrines a plea for separating from her; but while I say this, I am far from thinking that men should be compelled into modes of worship, {249} I am only sorry to see them dissenting. I am an advocate for the toleration of _conscientious_ scruples; but there is one thing which I think no government ought to tolerate, and that is public schools openly professing to banish religious instruction; for they must prove seminaries of malcontents and democrats. The luxury and aristocracy of a few well educated rich atheists and deists afford no objection; it is of the low and of the indigent that these schools are formed, of persons who may be rendered the most valuable or the most pernicious part of the community.

_h.o.m.o sum_: he is not a man, who can be an enemy to the mental improvement of his fellow creatures. The ignorance of the lower cla.s.ses is deplorable; it is the moral duty of those in higher stations, it is the n.o.ble task of governments to raise them on the scale of intellect; education cannot be too general, but let it be in the true spirit of education. We are creatures, who depend greatly, perhaps wholly, on instruction. We can in general do little of ourselves. We must at first have {250} guides, and, to borrow the pithy expression of the famous bishop of Down, Jeremy Taylor, "if our guides do not put something into our heads, while children, the Devil will." The arts of reading and writing are mere mechanical instruments: to render them a blessing the soul must be fashioned into a spring of thought and action, and it behoves the fashioner to temper it justly. How desirable soever it might be, that the rising generation, enjoying the same const.i.tution, should be united in the same mode of worship, yet, as that blessing seems unattainable in the present state of the world, it would be some consolation, if the various dissenters from the established church would hold themselves bound to insist upon the Christian religion, according to their own views of it, being taught in the new schools; and, I am free to confess, that the dissenting ministers in general are not deficient of zeal in impressing their religious principles on the minds of their followers; and it is but justice to say, that the world at large have been indebted to many of them, to Watts, {251} to Hartley, and to others: nor do I think, that the generality of dissenters can possibly approve of that plan, which, a.s.sembling poor children to be taught reading, writing, and figures, sends them to learn the relation between the Creator and his creature, the corruption of human nature, and the means of salvation, in a garret or a cellar, where want and ignorance, or low debauchery, are to be their preceptors. It is a mistaken benevolence, and good men of all communions should deprecate the evil, and resolve to avert it by the establishment of schools where the princ.i.p.al objects of education should be the princ.i.p.al things attended to, that the secondary ones may be made subservent to them; where, while the duties of man to G.o.d, to himself, and to society, are inculcated, the scholar may exercise his powers with books and pens to advantage, and without danger to the state. Nor, without previous oral instruction, should the Bible itself be put into the hands of readers, whether children or ignorant adults.

Bible societies, consisting, beyond all doubt, of pious {252} men, will diffuse good or evil over the world according to the prudence with which the sacred volumes are distributed. In theology, as in natural philosophy, the uninformed mind cannot, of itself, embrace even the most incontrovertible truths: the raising of the dead and the rotation of the earth are alike incomprehensible; what is not immediately intelligible is not impressive, but when once we have been taught to observe the motion of the heavenly bodies, and are made sensible, that the power, which could a.s.sign certainty of operation to nature, must be equal to the suspension of it, astronomy and religion open upon us, and we fly to Newton and the Testament; and, seeing truths unfold themselves, we willingly take much on trust in both; certain that books, where we find so many demonstrations, are not intended to deceive us in any one point, and the resurrection of our Saviour becomes sooner solved than the precession of the equinox.

It is impossible to contemplate the {253} advantages arising to our fellow creatures and to society from Dr. Bell's system of education for the poor, without delight and without grateful feelings to the author, and, I may add, the still active director of it. Thousands upon thousands will bless him, while he yet lives, and a perpetual series of millions will revere his memory after he shall have joined the myriads of spirits from whom he shall himself learn the celestial allelujahs, and those things which it has not entered the mind of man to conceive.

It would be unjust not to pay a tribute of praise, also, to the founders of an inst.i.tution, who, though dissenting in tenets, have adopted Dr. Bell's plan for a religious education, according to their principles: I allude to the Fitzroy free school for the instruction of six hundred children.

Catholic schools, on a similar plan, have also been established, for the education of the poor children of catholic parents. These are {254} superintended by zealous priests, who give religious instruction gratuitously to the pupils. All such establishments merit encouragement, not only from members of their own communion, but from all, who by influence or wealth are able to aid them.

In making religion the basis of education, no inference can be drawn, that the temporal interests and rights of mankind are to be neglected. Man, born to sorrow, having but a short time to live, is a.s.suredly more concerned in securing an eternal than a temporal happiness; but he is sufficiently long in his transit to render his situation on earth of importance, and the ease and contentment of every individual should be the object of all governments: for this are communities formed, for this are laws made, for this does the sovereign execute the laws, and for this are individuals required to bear and to forbear. Evil must arise, and afflictions must be borne, but that government is the best imagined, and the most wisely administered, {255} by which the large ma.s.s of the people are enabled to pa.s.s through the years of probation with the greatest comfort, and are presented with opportunities of bettering their conditions and promoting their families. But I do not mean to interweave, here, an essay upon government and civil rights; the contemplation of the admirable system of education among the Jesuits led to these observations on the systems of general education, and in concluding them with expressly stating my opinion of the grand object of national community my view is, to leave no room for attributing the sentiments of loyalty and of religion, which, in such a work as this, have naturally fallen from my pen, to servility or bigotry.

My subject is now come to its close: it is not to be denied, that the restoration of the order of Jesuits has excited alarm; for we already see a new conspiracy formed against it, possessing all the malignity, if not all the talent, or power, of the old one. But who are the persons alarmed?

{256} They can be such only as have a similarity of spirit and of views to those of the former enemies of the society (sir John Hippisley nevertheless excepted, whose alarm must have a very different spring); men, who have already dared to warn the clergy of England against inst.i.tuting schools, in which children are to be instructed in the national religion, because of the hostile feelings which will be excited between them and the children of the anti-church inst.i.tutions[94]; jacobinical philosophers, materialists, votaries of reason and eternal sleep, and, perhaps, some clergy, as before, of their own communion, whose interest may be affected, and who have not penetration and virtue enough to see and enjoy the motive and the justice of their restoration to religion and to letters: "ignorance," said Henry IV, in his speech to Harlay before cited, "has always borne a grudge to learning." I trust, however, and believe, that I {257} have proved enough to convince the reader, that the Jesuits have been calumniated; that their destruction was effected by the malice and envy of their enemies, on the one hand, and by the pusillanimity of their proper protector on the other; that, as far as authority extends, there is a great and brilliant balance in their favour; that, on the ground of reasoning, the proof of their virtue as well as of their religion does not fall short of demonstration in the account of their inst.i.tute; that they are not at war with protestant governments, whose catholic subjects they are well known long to have trained up in loyalty; and, that the small number now in this country have completed those proofs of loyalty by a solemn oath of allegiance to the king.

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Calumniare audacter; semper aliquid adhaerebit.

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