"You have deserved well of the Order--few better; and whatever their
enemies may say, the Companions of Jesus are not unmindful of their
children, nor ungrateful, unless the highest necessities of the general
good require it. You look upon the prosecution of Molinos as an act of
intolerable tyranny, and you are yourself eager to enter upon a crusade
on behalf of religious freedom and of the rights of private devotion and
judgment. You are ready to engage almost single-handed against the
whole strength of the Society of Jesus, of the Curia, and of the
existing powers. I say nothing of the Quixotic nature of the
enterprise; that would not deter you. Nor of its utter hopelessness; how
hopeless you may judge from the sudden collapse of the party of
Molinos--a party so favoured in high places, so fashionable, patronized,
as has been said, even by the Pope himself. You may also judge of this
from the fact, of which you are probably aware, that every detail of
your late meeting was communicated to us by the President of that
meeting, and by many of those who attended it. But in speaking of these
matters to you, whose welfare I sincerely seek, I address myself to
another argument which I imagine will have more weight. You have only
considered this coveted spiritual freedom as the right of the favoured
few, of the educated and refined. You have no desire and no intention
that it should be extended to the populace. But you do not consider, as
those who have the guidance of the Church polity are bound to consider,
that to grant it to the one and deny it to the other is impossible; that
these principles are sure to spread; that in England and in other
countries where they have spread they have been the occasion of
incalculable mischiefs. You are standing, at this moment, thanks
chiefly to the nurture and clemency of the much-abused Society of Jesus,
at a point where you may choose one of two roads, which, joining here,
will never meet again. The question is between individual license and
obedience to authority; and upon the choice, though you may not think
it, depends the very existence of Christianity in the world. Between
unquestioning obedience to authority and absolute unbelief there is not
a single permanent resting-place, though many temporary halts may be
made. You will scarcely dispute this when you remember that every
heretical sect admits it. They only differ as to what the authority is
to which obedience is due. We, in Rome at least, cannot be expected to
allow any authority save that of the Catholic Church, and indeed what
other can you place instead of it--a Book? Do you think that those who
have entered upon the path of inquiry will long submit to be fettered by
the pages of dead languages? You know more of this probably than I do
from your acquaintance with the sceptics of other lands."
He paused as if waiting for a reply, but Inglesant did not speak;
perhaps the logic of the Jesuit seemed to him unanswerable--especially
in the St. Angelo at Rome.