in other spheres. Loyola himself, though visionary and monastic, had no
higher wish than to infuse piety into the Catholic Church, and to
strengthen the hands of him whom he regarded as God's vicegerent.
Somehow or other he succeeded in securing the absolute veneration of his
companions, so much so that the sainted Xavier always wrote to him on
his knees. His "Spiritual Exercises" has ever remained the great
text-book of the Jesuits,--a compend of fasts and penances, of visions
and of ecstasies; rivalling Saint Theresa herself in the rhapsodies of a
visionary piety, showing the chivalric and romantic ardor of a Spanish
nobleman directed into the channel of devotion to an invisible Lord. See
this wounded soldier at the siege of Pampeluna, going through all the
experiences of a Syriac monk in his Manresan cave, and then turning his
steps to Paris to acquire a university education; associating only with
the pious and the learned, drawing to him such gifted men as Faber and
Xavier, Salmeron and Lainez, Borgia and Bobadilla, and inspiring them
with his ideas and his fervor; living afterwards, at Venice, with
Caraffa (the future Paul IV.) in the closest intimacy, preaching at
Vicenza, and forming a new monastic code, as full of genius and
originality as it was of practical wisdom, which became the foundation
of a system of government never surpassed in the power of its mechanism
to bind the minds and wills of men. Loyola was a most extraordinary man
in the practical turn he gave to religious rhapsodies; creating a
legislation for his Society which made it the most potent religious
organization in the world. All his companions were remarkable likewise
for different traits and excellences, which yet were made to combine in
sustaining the unity of this moral mechanism. Lainez had even a more
comprehensive mind than Loyola. It was he who matured the Jesuit
Constitution, and afterwards controlled the Council of Trent,--a
convocation which settled the creed of the Catholic Church, especially
in regard to justification, and which admitted the merits of Christ, but
attributed justification to good works in a different sense from that
understood and taught by Luther.
Aside from the personal gifts and qualities of the early Jesuits, they
would not have so marvellously succeeded had it not been for their
remarkable constitution,--that which bound the members of the Society
together, and gave to it a peculiar unity and force. The most marked
thing about it was the unbounded and unhesitating obedience required of
every member to superiors, and of these superiors to the General of the
Order,--so that there was but one will. This law of obedience is, as
every one knows, one of the fundamental principles of all the monastic
orders from the earliest times, enforced by Benedict as well as Basil.
Still there was a difference in the vow of obedience. The head of a
monastery in the Middle Ages was almost supreme. The Lord Abbot was
obedient only to the Pope, and he sought the interests of his monastery
rather than those of the Pope. But Loyola exacted obedience to the
General of the Order so absolutely that a Jesuit became a slave. This
may seem a harsh epithet; there is nothing gained by using offensive
words, but Protestant writers have almost universally made these
charges. From their interpretation of the constitutions of Loyola and
Lainez and Aquaviva, a member of the Society had no will of his own; he
did not belong to himself, he belonged to his General,--as in the time
of Abraham a child belonged to his father and a wife to her husband;
nay, even still more completely. He could not write or receive a letter
that was not read by his Superior. When he entered the order, he was
obliged to give away his property, but could not give it to his
relatives.[2] When he made confession, he was obliged to tell his most
intimate and sacred secrets. He could not aspire to any higher rank than
that he held; he had no right to be ambitious, or seek his own
individual interests; he was merged body and soul into the Society; he
was only a pin in the machinery; he was bound to obey even his own
servant, if required by his Superior; he was less than a private
soldier in an army; he was a piece of wax to be moulded as the Superior
directed,--and the Superior, in his turn, was a piece of wax in the
hands of the Provincial, and he again in the hands of the General.
"There were many gradations in rank, but every rank was a gradation in
slavery." The Jesuit is accused of having no individual conscience. He
was bound to do what he was told, right or wrong; nothing was right and
nothing was wrong except as the Society pronounced. The General stood in
the place of God. That man was the happiest who was most mechanical.
Every novice had a monitor, and every monitor was a spy.[3] So strict
was the rule of Loyola, that he kept Francis Borgia, Duke of Candia,
three years out of the Society, because he refused to renounce all
intercourse with his family.[4]
[Footnote 2: Ranke.]
[Footnote 3: Steinmetz, i. p. 252.]
[Footnote 4: Nicolini, p. 35.]
The Jesuit was obliged to make all natural ties subordinate to the will
of the General. And this General was a king more absolute than any
worldly monarch, because he reigned over the minds of his subjects. His
kingdom was an _imperium in imperio_; he was chosen for life and was
responsible to no one, although he ruled for the benefit of the Catholic
Church. In one sense a General of the Jesuits resembled the prime
minister of an absolute monarch,--say such a man as Richelieu, with
unfettered power in the cause of absolutism; and he ruled like
Richelieu, through his spies, making his subordinates tools and
instruments. The General appointed the presidents of colleges and of the
religious houses; he admitted or dismissed, dispensed or punished, at
his pleasure. There was no complaint; all obeyed his orders, and saw in
him the representative of Divine Providence. Complaint was sin;
resistance was ruin. It is hard for us to understand how any man could
be brought voluntarily to submit to such a despotism. But the novice
entering the order had to go through terrible discipline,--to be a
servant, anything; to live according to rigid rules, so that his spirit
was broken by mechanical duties. He had to learn all the virtues of a
slave before he could be fully enrolled in the Society. He was drilled
for years by spiritual sergeants more rigorously than a soldier in
Napoleon's army: hence the efficiency of the body; it was a spiritual
army of the highest disciplined troops. Loyola had been a soldier; he
knew what military discipline could do,--how impotent an army is without
it, what an awful power it is with discipline, and the severer the
better. The best soldier of a modern army is he who has become an
unconscious piece of machinery; and it was this unreflecting,
unconditional obedience which made the Society so efficient, and the
General himself, who controlled it, such an awful power for good or for
evil. I am only speaking of the organization, the machinery, the
_régime,_ of the Jesuits, not of their character, not of their virtues
or vices. This organization is to be spoken of as we speak of the
discipline of an army,--wise or unwise, as it reached its end. The
original aim of the Jesuits was the restoration of the Papal Church to
its ancient power; and for one hundred years, as I think, the
restoration of morals, higher education, greater zeal in preaching: in
short, a reformation within the Church. Jesuitism was, of course,
opposed to Protestantism; it hated the Protestants; it hated their
religious creed and their emancipating and progressive spirit; it hated
religious liberty.
I need not dwell on other things which made this order of monks so
successful,--not merely their virtues and their mechanism, but their
adaptation to the changing spirit of the times. They threw away the old
dresses of monastic life; they quitted the cloister and places of
meditation; they were preachers as well as scholars; they accommodated
themselves to the circumstances of the times; they wore the ordinary
dress of gentlemen; they remained men of the world, of fine manners and
cultivated speech; there was nothing ascetic or repulsive about them,
like other monks; they were all things to all men, like politicians, in
order to accomplish their ends; they never were lazy, or profligate or
luxurious. If their Order became enriched, they as individuals remained
poor. The inferior members were not even ambitious; like good soldiers,
they thought of nothing but the work assigned to them. Their pride and
glory were the prosperity of their Order,--an intense _esprit de corps_,
never equalled by any body of men. This, of course, while it gave them
efficiency, made them narrow. They could see the needle on the
barn-door,--they could not see the door itself. Hence there could be no
agreement with them, no argument with them, except on ordinary matters;
they were as zealous as Saul, seeking to make proselytes. They yielded
nothing except in order to win; they never compromised their Order in
their cause. Their fidelity to their head was marvellous; and so long as
they confined themselves to the work of making people better, I think
they deserved praise. I do not like their military organization, but I
should have no more right to abuse it than the organization of some
Protestant sects. That is a matter of government; all sects and all
parties, Catholic and Protestant, have a right to choose their own
government to carry out their ends, even as military generals have a
right to organize their forces in their own way. The history of the
Jesuits shows this,--that an organization of forces, or what we call
discipline or government, is a great thing. A church without a
government is a poor affair, so far as efficiency is concerned. All
churches have something to learn from the Jesuits in the way of
discipline. John Wesley learned something; the Independents learned
very little,
But there is another side to the Jesuits. We have seen why they
succeeded; we have to inquire how they failed. If history speaks of the
virtues of the early members, and the wonderful mechanism of their
Order, and their great success in consequence, it also speaks of the
errors they committed, by which they lost the confidence they had
gained. From being the most popular of all the adherents of the papal
power, and of the ideas of the Dark Ages, they became the most
unpopular; they became so odious that the Pope was obliged, by the
pressure of public opinion and of the Bourbon courts of Europe, to
suppress their Order. The fall of the Jesuits was as significant as
their rise. I need not dwell on that fall, which is one of the best
known facts of history.
Why did the Jesuits become unpopular and lose their influence?
They gained the confidence of Catholic countries because they deserved
it, and they lost that confidence because they deserved to lose it,--in
other words, because they became corrupt; and this seems to be the
history of all institutions. It is strange, it is passing strange, that
human societies and governments and institutions should degenerate as
soon as they become rich and powerful; but such is the fact,--a sad
commentary on the doctrine of a necessary progress of the race, or the
natural tendency to good, which so many cherish, but than which nothing
can be more false, as proved by experience and the Scriptures. Why were
the antediluvians swept away? Why could not those races retain their
primitive revelation? Why did the descendants of Noah become almost
idolaters before he was dead? Why did the great Persian Empire become as
effeminate as the empires it had supplanted? Why did the Jewish nation
steadily retrograde after David? Why did not civilization and
Christianity save the Roman world? Why did Christianity itself become
corrupted in four centuries? Why did not the Middle Ages preserve the
evangelical doctrines of Augustine and Jerome and Chrysostom and
Ambrose? Why did the light of the glorious Reformation of Luther nearly
go out in the German cities and universities? Why did the fervor of the
Puritans burn out in England in one hundred years? Why have the
doctrines of the Pilgrim Fathers become unfashionable in those parts of
New England where they seemed to have taken the deepest root? Why have
so many of the descendants of the disciples of George Fox become so
liberal and advanced as to be enamoured of silk dresses and laces and
diamonds and the ritualism of Episcopal churches? Is it an improvement
to give up a simple life and lofty religious enthusiasm for
materialistic enjoyments and epicurean display? Is there a true advance
in a university, when it exchanges its theological teachings and its
preparation of poor students for the Gospel Ministry, for Schools of
Technology and boat-clubs and accommodations for the sons of the rich
and worldly?
Now the Society of Jesus went through just such a transformation as has
taken place, almost within the memory of living men, in the life and
habits and ideas of the people of Boston and Philadelphia and in the
teachings of their universities. Some may boldly say, "Why not? This
change indicates progress." But this progress is exactly similar to that
progress which the Jesuits made in the magnificence of their churches,
in the wealth they had hoarded in their colleges, in the fashionable
character of their professors and confessors and preachers, in the
adaptation of their doctrines to the taste of the rich and powerful, in
the elegance and arrogance and worldliness of their dignitaries. Father
La Chaise was an elegant and most polished man of the world, and
travelled in a coach with six horses. If he had not been such a man, he
would not have been selected by Louis XIV. for his confidential and
influential confessor. The change which took place among the Jesuits
arose from the same causes as the change which has taken place among
Methodists and Quakers and Puritans. This change I would not fiercely
condemn, for some think it is progress. But is it progress in that
religious life which early marked these people; or a progress towards
worldly and epicurean habits which they arose to resist and combat? The
early Jesuits were visionary, fanatical, strict, ascetic, religious, and
narrow. They sought by self-denying labors and earnest exhortations,
like Savonarola at Florence, to take the Church out of the hands of the
Devil; and the people reverenced them, as they always have reverenced
martyrs and missionaries. The later Jesuits sought to enjoy their wealth
and power and social position. They became--as rich and prosperous
people generally become--proud, ambitious, avaricious, and worldly. They
were as elegant, as scholarly, and as luxurious as the Fellows of Oxford
University, and the occupants of stalls in the English cathedrals,--that
is all: as worldly as the professors of Yale and Cambridge may become in
half-a-century, if rich widows and brewers and bankers without children
shall some day make those universities as well endowed as Jesuit
colleges were in the eighteenth century. That is the old story of our
fallen humanity. I would no more abuse the Jesuits because they became
confessors to the great, and went into mercantile speculations, than I
would rich and favored clergymen in Protestant countries, who prefer ten
per cent for their money in California mines to four per cent in
national consols.
But the prosperity which the Jesuits had earned during their first
century of existence excited only envy, and destroyed the reverence of
the people; it had not made them odious, detestable. It was the means
they adopted to perpetuate their influence, after early virtues had
passed away, which caused enlightened Catholic Europe to mistrust them,
and the Protestants absolutely to hate and vilify them.
From the very first, the Society was distinguished for the _esprit de
corps_ of its members. Of all things which they loved best it was the
power and glory of the Society,--just as Oxford Fellows love the
_prestige_ of their university. And this power and influence the Jesuits
determined to preserve at all hazards and by any means; when virtues
fled, they must find something else with which to bolster themselves up:
they must not part with their power; the question was, how should
they keep it?
First, they adopted the doctrine of expediency,--that the end justifies
the means. They did not invent this sophistry,--it is as old as our
humanity. Abraham used it when he told lies to the King of Egypt, to
save the honor of his wife; Caesar accepted it, when he vindicated
imperialism as the only way to save the Roman Empire from anarchy; most
politicians resort to it when they wish to gain their ends. Politicians
have ever been as unscrupulous as the Jesuits, in adopting expediency
rather than eternal right. It has been a primal law of government; it
lies at the basis of English encroachments in India, and of the
treatment of the aborigines in this country by our government. There is
nothing new in the doctrine of expediency.
But the Jesuits are accused of pushing this doctrine to its remotest
consequences, of being its most unscrupulous defenders,--so that
_Jesuitism_ and _expediency_ are synonymous, are convertible terms. They
are accused of perverting education, of abusing the confessional, of
corrupting moral and political philosophy, of conforming to the
inclinations of the great. They even went so far as to inculcate mental
reservation,--thus attacking truth in its most sacred citadel, the
conscience of mankind,--on which Pascal was so severe. They made habit
and bad example almost a sufficient exculpation from crime. Perjury was
allowable, if the perjured were inwardly determined not to swear. They
invented the notion of probabilities, according to which a person might
follow any opinion he pleased, although he knew it to be wrong, provided
authors of reputation had defended that opinion. A man might fight a
duel, if by refusing to fight he would be stigmatized as a coward. They
did not openly justify murder, treachery, and falsehood, but they
excused the same, if plausible reasons could be urged. In their missions
they aimed at _éclat;_ and hence merely nominal conversions were
accepted, because these swelled their numbers. They gave the crucifix,
which covered up all sins; they permitted their converts to retain their
ancient habits and customs. In order to be popular, Robert de Nobili, it
is said, traced his lineage to Brahma; and one of their missionaries
among the Indians told the savages that Christ was a warrior who scalped
women and children. Anything for an outward success. Under their
teachings it was seen what a light affair it was to bear the yoke of
Christ. So monarchs retained in their service confessors who imposed
such easy obligations. So ordinary people resorted to the guidance of
such leaders, who made themselves agreeable. The Jesuit colleges were
filled with casuists. Their whole moral philosophy, if we may believe
Arnauld and Pascal, was a tissue of casuistry; truth was obscured in
order to secure popularity; even the most diabolical persecution was
justified if heretics stood in the way. Father Le Tellier rejoiced in
the slaughter of Saint Bartholomew, and _Te Deums_ were offered in the
churches for the extinction of Protestantism by any means. If it could
be shown to be expedient, the Jesuits excused the most outrageous crimes
ever perpetrated on this earth.
Again, the Jesuits are accused of riveting fetters on the human mind in
order to uphold their power, and to sustain the absolutism of the popes
and the absolutism of kings, to which they were equally devoted. They
taught in their schools the doctrine of passive obedience; they aimed
to subdue the will by rigid discipline; they were hostile to bold and
free inquiries; they were afraid of science; they hated such men as
Galileo, Pascal, and Bacon; they detested the philosophers who prepared
the way for the French Revolution; they abominated the Protestant idea
of private judgment; they opposed the progress of human thought, and
were enemies alike of the Jansenist movement in the seventeenth century
and of the French Revolution in the eighteenth. They upheld the
absolutism of Louis XIV., and combated the English Revolution; they sent
their spies and agents to England to undermine the throne of Elizabeth
and build up the throne of Charles I. Every emancipating idea, in
politics and in religion, they detested. There were many things in their
system of education to be commended; they were good classical scholars,
and taught Greek and Latin admirably; they cultivated the memory; they
made study pleasing, but they did not develop genius. The order never
produced a great philosopher; the energies of its members were
concentrated in imposing a despotic yoke.
The Jesuits are accused further of political intrigues; this is a common
and notorious charge. They sought to control the cabinets of Europe;
they had their spies in every country. The intrigues of Campion and
Parsons in England aimed at the restoration of Catholic monarchs. Mary
of Scotland was a tool in their hands, and so was Madame de Maintenon in
France. La Chaise and Le Tellier were mere politicians. The Jesuits were
ever political priests; the history of Europe the last three hundred
years is full of their cabals. Their political influence was directed to
the persecution of Protestants as well as infidels. They are accused of
securing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,--one of the greatest
crimes in the history of modern times, which led to the expulsion of
four hundred thousand Protestants from France, and the execution of four
hundred thousand more. They incited the dragonnades of Louis XIV., who
was under their influence. They are accused of the assassination of
kings, of the fires of Smithfield, of the Gunpowder Plot, of the
cruelties inflicted by Alva, of the Thirty Years' War, of the ferocities
of the Guises, of inquisitions and massacres, of sundry other political
crimes, with what justice I do not know; but certain it is they became
objects of fear, and incurred the hostilities of Catholic Europe,
especially of all liberal thinkers, and their downfall was demanded by
the very courts of Europe. Why did they lose their popularity? Why were
they so distrusted and hated? The fact that they _were_ hated is most
undoubted, and there must have been cause for it. It is a fact that at
one time they were respected and honored, and deserved to be so: must
there not have been grave reasons for the universal change in public
opinion respecting them? The charges against them, to which I have
alluded, must have had foundation. They did not become idle, gluttonous,
ignorant, and sensual like the old monks: they became greedy of power;
and in order to retain it resorted to intrigues, conspiracies, and
persecutions. They corrupted philosophy and morality, abused the
confessional privilege, adopted _Success_ as their watchword, without
regard to the means; they are charged with becoming worldly, ambitious,
mercenary, unscrupulous, cruel; above all, they sought to bind the minds
of men with a despotic yoke, and waged war against all liberalizing
influences. They always were, from first to last, narrow, pedantic,
one-sided, legal, technical, pharisaical. The best thing about them, in
the days of their declining power, was that they always opposed infidel
sentiments. They hated Voltaire and Rousseau and the Encyclopedists as
much as they did Luther and Calvin. They detested the principles of the
French Revolution, partly because those principles were godless, partly
because they were emancipating.