to vestments and robes and forms of worship, and hatred of ceremonies
and holy days, and other matters which seemed to lean to Romanism. But
the grandeur and the permanence of the movement were in a return to the
faith of the primitive Church and a purer national morality, and to the
unrestricted study of the Bible, and the exaltation of preaching and
Christian instruction over forms and liturgies and antiphonal chants;
above all, the exaltation of reason and learning in the interpretation
of revealed truth, and the education of the people in all matters which
concern their temporal or religious interests, so that a true and rapid
progress was inaugurated in civilization itself, which has peculiarly
marked all Protestant countries having religious liberty. Underneath all
these apparently insignificant squabbles and dissensions there were two
things of immense historical importance: first, a spirit of intolerance
on the part of government and of church dignitaries,--the State allied
with the Church forcing uniformity with their decrees, and severely
punishing those who did not accept them,--in matters beyond all worldly
authority; and, secondly, a rising spirit of religious liberty,
determined to assert its glorious rights at any cost or hazard, and
especially defended by the most religious and earnest part of the
clergy, who were becoming Calvinistic in their creed, and were pushing
the ideas of the Reformation to their utmost logical sequence. This
spirit was suppressed during the reign of Elizabeth, out of general
respect and love for her as a Queen, and the external dangers to which
the realm was exposed from Spain and France, which diverted the national
mind. But it burst out fiercely in the next reigns, under James and
Charles, about the beginning of the seventeenth century. And this is the
last development of the Reformation in England to which I can
allude,--the great Puritan contest for liberty of worship, running, when
opposed unjustly and cruelly, into a contest for civil liberty; that is,
the right to change forms and institutions of civil government, even to
the dethronement of kings, when it was the expressed and declared will
of the people, in whom was vested the ultimate source of sovereignty.
But here I must be brief. I tread on familiar ground, made familiar by
all our literature, especially by the most brilliant writer of modern
times, though not the greatest philosopher: I mean that great artist
and word-painter Macaulay, whose chief excellence is in making clear
and interesting and vivid, by a world of illustration and practical
good-sense and marvellous erudition, what was obvious to his own
objective mind, and obvious also to most other enlightened people not
much interested in metaphysical disquisitions. No man more than he does
justice to the love of liberty which absolutely burned in the souls of
the Puritans,--that glorious party which produced Milton and Cromwell,
and Hampden and Bunyan, and Owen and Calamy, and Baxter and Howe.
The chief peculiarity of those Puritans--once called Nonconformists,
afterwards Presbyterians and Independents--was their reception of the
creed of John Calvin, the clearest and most logical intellect that the
Reformation produced, though not the broadest; who reigned as a
religious dictator at Geneva and in the Reformed churches of France, and
who gave to John Knox the positivism and sternness and rigidity which he
succeeded in impressing upon the churches of Scotland. And the peculiar
doctrines which marked Calvin and his disciples were those deduced from
the majesty of God and the comparative littleness of man, leading to and
bound up with the impotence of the will, human dependence, the necessity
of Divine grace,--Augustinian in spirit, but going beyond Augustine in
the subtlety of metaphysical distinctions and dissertations on
free-will election, and predestination,--unfathomable, but exceedingly
attractive subjects to the divines of the seventeenth century, creating
a metaphysical divinity, a theology of the brain rather than of the
heart, a brilliant series of logical and metaphysical deductions from
established truths, demanding to be received with the same unhesitating
obedience as the truths, or Bible declarations, from which they are
deduced. The greatness of human reason was never more forcibly shown
than in these deductions; but they were carried so far as to insult
reason itself and mock the consciousness of mankind; so that mankind
rebelled against the very force of the highest reasonings of the human
intellect, because they pushed logical sequence into absurdity, or to
dreadful conclusions: _Decretum quidem horribile fateor_, said the great
master himself.
The Puritans were trained in this theology, which developed the loftiest
virtues and the severest self-constraints; making them both heroes and
visionaries, always conscientious and sometimes repulsive; fitting them
for gigantic tasks and unworthy squabbles; driving them to the Bible,
and then to acrimonious discussions; creating fears almost mediaeval;
leading them to technical observation of religious duties, and
transforming the most genial and affectionate people under the sun into
austere saints, with whom the most ascetic of monks would have had but
little sympathy.
I will not dwell on those peculiarities which Macaulay ridicules and
Taine repeats,--the hatred of theatres and assemblies and symbolic
festivals and bell-ringings, the rejection of the beautiful, the
elongated features, the cropped hair, the unadorned garments, the
proscription of innocent pleasures, the nasal voice, the cant phrases,
the rigid decorums, the strict discipline,--these, doubtless
exaggerated, were more than balanced by the observance of the Sabbath,
family prayers, temperate habits, fervor of religious zeal, strict
morality, allegiance to duty, and the perpetual recognition of God
Almighty as the sovereign of this world, to whom we are responsible for
all our acts and even our thoughts. They formed a noble material on
which every emancipating idea could work; men trained by persecutions to
self-sacrifice and humble duties,--making good soldiers, good farmers,
good workmen in every department, honest and sturdy, patient and
self-reliant, devoted to their families though not demonstrative of
affection; keeping the Sunday as a day of worship rather than rest or
recreation, cherishing as the dearest and most sacred of all privileges
the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience
enlightened by the Bible, and willing to fight, even amid the greatest
privations and sacrifices, to maintain this sacred right and transmit it
to their children. Such were the men who fought the battles of civil
liberty under Cromwell and colonized the most sterile of all American
lands, making the dreary wilderness to blossom with roses, and sending
out the shoots of their civilization to conserve more fruitful and
favored sections of the great continent which God gave them, to try new
experiments in liberty and education.
I need not enumerate the different sects into which these Puritans were
divided, so soon as they felt they had the right to interpret Scripture
for themselves. Nor would I detail the various and cruel persecutions to
which these sects were subjected by the government and the
ecclesiastical tribunals, until they rose in indignation and despair,
and rebelled against the throne, and made war on the King, and cut off
his head; all of which they did from fear and for self-defence, as well
as from vengeance and wrath.
Nor can I describe the counter reformation, the great reaction which
succeeded to the violence of the revolution. The English reformation was
not consummated until constitutional liberty was heralded by the reign
of William and Mary, when the nation became almost unanimously
Protestant, with perfect toleration of religious opinions, although the
fervor of the Puritans had passed away forever, leaving a residuum of
deep-seated popular antipathy to all the institutions of Romanism and
all the ideas of the Middle Ages. The English reformation began with
princes, and ended with the agitations of the people. The German
reformation began with the people, and ended in the wars of princes. But
both movements were sublime, since they showed the force of religious
ideas. Civil liberty is only one of the sequences which exalt the
character and dignity of man amid the seductions and impediments of a
gilded material life.
AUTHORITIES.
Todd's Life of Cranmer; Strype's Life of Cranmer; Wood's Annals of the
Oxford University; Burnet's English Reformation; Doctor Lingard's
History of England; Macaulay's Essays; Fuller's Church History; Gilpin's
Life of Cranmer; Original Letters to Cromwell; Hook's Lives of the
Archbishops of Canterbury; Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church;
Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography; Turner's Henry VIII.; Froude's
History of England; Fox's Life of Latimer; Turner's Reign of Mary.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA.
* * * * *
A.D. 1491-1556.
RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS.
Next to the Protestant Reformation itself, the most memorable moral
movement in the history of modern times was the counter-reformation in
the Roman Catholic Church, finally effected, in no slight degree, by the
Jesuits. But it has not the grandeur or historical significance of the
great insurrection of human intelligence which was headed by Luther. It
was a revival of the pietism of the Middle Ages, with an external reform
of manners. It was not revolutionary; it did not cast off the authority
of the popes, nor disband the monasteries, nor reform religious worship:
it rather tended to strengthen the power of the popes, to revive
monastic life, and to perpetuate the forms of worship which the Middle
Ages had established. No doubt a new religious life was kindled, and
many of the flagrant abuses of the papal empire were redressed, and the
lives of the clergy made more decent, in accordance with the revival of
intelligence. Nor did it disdain literature or art, or any form of
modern civilization, but sought to combine progress with old ideas; it
was an effort to adapt the Roman theocracy to changing circumstances,
and was marked by expediency rather than right, by zeal rather than a
profound philosophy.
This movement took place among the Latin races,--the Italians, French,
and Spaniards,--having no hold on the Teutonic races except in Austria,
as much Slavonic as German. It worked on a poor material, morally
considered; among peoples who have not been distinguished for stamina of
character, earnestness, contemplative habits, and moral
elevation,--peoples long enslaved, frivolous in their pleasures,
superstitious, indolent, fond of fêtes, spectacles, pictures, and Pagan
reminiscences.
The doctrine of justification by faith was not unknown, even in Italy.
It was embraced by many distinguished men. Contarini, an illustrious
Venetian, wrote a treatise on it, which Cardinal Pole admired. Folengo
ascribed justification to grace alone; and Vittoria Colonna, the friend
of Michael Angelo, took a deep interest in these theological inquiries.
But the doctrine did not spread; it was not understood by the
people,--it was a speculation among scholars and doctors, which gave no
alarm to the Pope. There was even an attempt at internal reform under
Paul III. of the illustrious family of the Farnese, successor of Leo X.
and Clement VII., the two renowned Medicean popes. He made cardinals of
Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Pole, Giberto,--all men imbued with
Protestant doctrines, and very religious; and these good men prepared a
plan of reform and submitted it to the Pope, which ended, however, only
in new monastic orders.
It was then that Ignatius Loyola appeared upon the stage, when Luther
was in the midst of his victories, and when new ideas were shaking the
pontifical throne. The desponding successor of the Gregorys and the
Clements knew not where to look for aid in that crisis of peril and
revolution. The monastic orders composed his regular army, but they had
become so corrupted that they had lost the reverence of the people. The
venerable Benedictines had ceased to be men of prayer and contemplation
as in the times of Bernard and Anselm, and were revelling in their
enormous wealth. The cloisters of Cluniacs and Cistercians--branches of
the Benedictines--were filled with idle and dissolute monks. The famous
Dominicans and Franciscans, who had rallied to the defence of the Papacy
three centuries before,--those missionary orders that had filled the
best pulpits and the highest chairs of philosophy in the scholastic
age,--had become inexhaustible subjects of sarcasm and mockery, for they
were peddling relics and indulgences, and quarrelling among themselves.
They were hated as inquisitors, despised as scholastics, and deserted
as preachers; the roads and taverns were filled with them. Erasmus
laughed at them, Luther abused them, and the Pope reproached them. No
hope from such men as these, although they had once been renowned for
their missions, their zeal, their learning, and their preaching.
At this crisis Loyola and his companions volunteered their services, and
offered to go wherever the Pope should send them, as preachers, or
missionaries, or teachers, instantly, without discussion, conditions, or
rewards. So the Pope accepted them, made them a new order of monks; and
they did what the Mendicant Friars had done three hundred years
before,--they fanned a new spirit, and rapidly spread over Europe, over
all the countries to which Catholic adventurers had penetrated, and
became the most efficient allies that the popes ever had.
This was in 1540, six years after the foundation of the Society of Jesus
had been laid on the Mount of Martyrs, in the vicinity of Paris, during
the pontificate of Paul III. Don Iñigo Lopez de Recalde Loyola, a
Spaniard of noble blood and breeding, at first a page at the court of
King Ferdinand, then a brave and chivalrous soldier, was wounded at the
siege of Pampeluna. During a slow convalescence, having read all the
romances he could find, he took up the "Lives of the Saints," and
became fired with religious zeal. He immediately forsook the pursuit of
arms, and betook himself barefooted to a pilgrimage. He served the sick
in hospitals; he dwelt alone in a cavern, practising austerities; he
went as a beggar on foot to Rome and to the Holy Land, and returned at
the age of thirty-three to begin a course of study. It was while
completing his studies at Paris that he conceived and formed the
"Society of Jesus."
From that time we date the counter-reformation. In fifty years more a
wonderful change took place in the Catholic Church, wrought chiefly by
the Jesuits. Yea, in sixteen years from that eventful night--when far
above the star-lit city the enthusiastic Loyola had bound his six
companions with irrevocable vows--he had established his Society in the
confidence and affection of Catholic Europe, against the voice of
universities, the fears of monarchs, and the jealousy of the other
monastic orders. In sixteen years, this ridiculed and wandering Spanish
fanatic had risen to a condition of great influence and dignity, second
only in power to the Pope himself; animating the councils of the
Vatican, moving the minds of kings, controlling the souls of a numerous
fraternity, and making his influence felt in every corner of the world.
Before the remembrance of his passionate eloquence, his eyes of fire,
and his countenance of seraphic piety had passed away from the minds of
his own generation, his disciples "had planted their missionary stations
among Peruvian mines, in the marts of the African slave-trade, among the
islands of the Indian Ocean, on the coasts of Hindustan, in the cities
of Japan and China, in the recesses of Canadian forests, amid the wilds
of the Rocky Mountains." They had the most important chairs in the
universities; they were the confessors of monarchs and men of rank; they
had the control of the schools of Italy, France, Austria, and Spain; and
they had become the most eloquent, learned, and fashionable preachers in
all Catholic countries. They had grown to be a great institution,--an
organization instinct with life, a mechanism endued with energy and
will; forming a body which could outwatch Argus with his hundred eyes,
and outwork Briareus with his hundred arms; they had twenty thousand
eyes open upon every cabinet, every palace, and every private family in
Catholic Europe, and twenty thousand arms extended over the necks of
every sovereign and all their subjects,--a mighty moral and spiritual
power, irresponsible, irresistible, omnipresent, connected intimately
with the education, the learning, and the religion of the age; yea, the
prime agents in political affairs, the prop alike of absolute monarchies
and of the papal throne, whose interests they made identical. This
association, instinct with one will and for one purpose, has been
beautifully likened by Doctor Williams to the chariot in the Prophet's
vision: "The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels; wherever
the living creatures went, the wheels went with them; wherever those
stood, these stood: when the living creatures were lifted up, the wheels
were lifted up over against them; and their wings were full of eyes
round about, and they were so high that they were dreadful. So of the
institution of Ignatius,--one soul swayed the vast mass; and every pin
and every cog in the machinery consented with its whole power to every
movement of the one central conscience."
Luther moved Europe by ideas which emancipated the millions, and set in
motion a progress which is the glory of our age; Loyola invented a
machine which arrested this progress, and drove the Catholic world back
again into the superstitions and despotisms of the Middle Ages,
retaining however the fear of God and of Hell, which some among the
Protestants care very little about.
What is the secret of such a wonderful success? Two things: first, the
extraordinary virtues, abilities, and zeal of the early Jesuits; and,
secondly, their wonderful machinery in adapting means to an end.
The history of society shows that no body of men ever obtained a
wide-spread ascendancy, never secured general respect, unless they
deserved it. Industry produces its fruits; learning and piety have their
natural results. Even in the moral world natural law asserts its
supremacy. Hypocrisy and fraud ultimately will be detected; no enduring
reputation is built upon a lie; sincerity and earnestness will call out
respect, even from foes; learning and virtue are lights which are not
hid under a bushel. Enthusiasm creates enthusiasm; a lofty life will be
seen and honored. Nor do people intrust their dearest interests except
to those whom they venerate,--and venerate because their virtues shine
like the face of a goddess. We yield to those only whom we esteem wiser
than ourselves. Moses controlled the Israelites because they venerated
his wisdom and courage; Paul had the confidence of the infant churches
because they saw his labors; Bernard swayed his darkened age by the
moral power of learning and sanctity. The mature judgments of centuries
never have reversed the judgments which past ages gave in reference to
their master minds. All the pedants and sophists of Germany cannot
whitewash Frederic II. or Henry VIII. No man in Athens was more truly
venerated than Socrates when he mocked his judges. Cicero, Augustine,
Aquinas, appeared to contemporaries as they appear to us. Even
Hildebrand did not juggle himself into his theocratic chair. Washington
deserved all the reverence he enjoyed; and Bonaparte himself was worthy
of the honors he received, so long as he was true to the interests
of France.
So of the Jesuits,--there is no mystery in their success; the same
causes would produce the same results again. When Catholic Europe saw
men born to wealth and rank voluntarily parting with their goods and
honors; devoting themselves to religious duties, often in a humble
sphere; spending their days in schools and hospitals; wandering as
preachers and missionaries amid privations and in fatigue; encountering
perils and dangers and hardships with fresh and ever-sustained
enthusiasm; and finally yielding up their lives as martyrs, to proclaim
salvation to idolatrous savages,--it knew them to be heroic, and
believed them to be sincere, and honored them in consequence. When
parents saw that the Jesuits entered heart and soul into the work of
education, winning their pupils' hearts by kindness, watching their
moods, directing their minds into congenial studies, and inspiring them
with generous sentiments, they did not stop to pry into their motives;
and universities, when they discovered the superior culture of educated
Jesuits, outstripping all their associates in learning, and shedding a
light by their genius and erudition, very naturally appointed them to
the highest chairs; and even the people, when they saw that the Jesuits
were not stained by vulgar vices, but were hard-working, devoted to
their labors, earnest, and eloquent, put themselves under their
teachings; and especially when they added gentlemanly manners, good
taste, and agreeable conversation to their unimpeachable morality and
religious fervor, they made these men their confessors as well as
preachers. Their lives stood out in glorious contrast with those of the
old monks and the regular clergy, in an age of infidel levities, when
the Italian renaissance was bearing its worst fruits, and men were going
back to Pagan antiquity for their pleasures and opinions.
That the early Jesuits blazed with virtues and learning and piety has
never been denied, although these things have been poetically
exaggerated. The world was astonished at their intrepidity, zeal, and
devotion. They were not at first intriguing, or ambitious, or covetous.
They loved their Society; but they loved still more what they thought
was the glory of God. _Ad majoram Dei gloriam_ was the motto which was
emblazoned on their standard when they went forth as Christian warriors
to overcome the heresies of Christendom and the superstitions of
idolaters. "The Jesuit missionary," says Stephen, "with his breviary
under his arm, his beads at his girdle, and his crucifix in his hands,
went forth without fear, to encounter the most dreaded dangers.
Martyrdom was nothing to him; he knew that the altar which might stream
with his blood, and the mound which might be raised over his remains,
would become a cherished object of his fame and an expressive emblem of
the power of his religion." "If I die," said Xavier, when about to
visit the cannibal Island of Del Moro, "who knows but what all may
receive the Gospel, since it is most certain it has ever fructified more
abundantly in the field of Paganism by the blood of martyrs than by the
labors of missionaries,"--a sublime truth, revealed to him in his whole
course of protracted martyrdom and active philanthropy, especially in
those last hours when, on the Island of Sanshan, he expired, exclaiming,
as his fading eyes rested on the crucifix, _In te Domine speravi, non
confundar in eternum_. In perils, in fastings, in fatigues, was the life
of this remarkable man passed, in order to convert the heathen world;
and in ten years he had traversed a tract of more than twice the
circumference of the earth, preaching, disputing, and baptizing, until
seventy thousand converts, it is said, were the fruits of his
mission.[1] "My companion," said the fearless Marquette, when exploring
the prairies of the Western wilderness, "is an envoy of France to
discover new countries, and I am an ambassador of God to enlighten them
with the Gospel." Lalemant, when pierced with the arrows of the
Iroquois, rejoiced that his martyrdom would induce others to follow his
example. The missions of the early Jesuits extorted praises from Baxter
and panegyric from Liebnitz.
[Footnote 1: I am inclined to think that this statement is exaggerated;
or, if true, that conversion was merely nominal.]