It is assured that the late cardinal Passionei, who detested

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AN

ACCOUNT

OF THE

DESTRUCTION

OF THE

JESUITS

IN

FRANCE.

By M. D’ALEMBERT.

Incorruptam fidem professis, nec amore quisquam,

& fine odio dicendus est.

Tacit. Hist. ch. 1.

LONDON.

Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. De HONDT,

near Surry-street in the Strand.

MDCCLXVI.

To M. • • •

COUNSELLOR

TO THE

PARLIAMENT

OF • • •.

Permit, Sir, an unknown, but zealous, citizen, an impartial historian

of the Jesuits, to pay public homage to that truely philosophical

patriotism which you have displayed in this affair. In exciting

against the society the zeal of the magistrates, you have not

neglected to fix their enlightened attention on all those men, who

may have with this alien society any marks of resemblance, and who,

arrayed in black, gray, or white, may acknowledge like it, in the very

bosom of France, another country, and another sovereign.

You have shewn no less lights in making known to the sage

Depositaries of the laws, all the Men of the party, whoever they be,

all the fanaticks, whatever livery they wear, whether they invoke

_Francis of Paris_, or _Francis of Borgia_, whether they maintain

_predeterminating decrees, or congruous assistances_.

If the author of this writing had been able to ask you your opinions,

his work would, without doubt, have gained greatly by it. May you,

such as it is, grant it your suffrage, and receive it as a slender

mark of the acknowledgement which religion, the state, philosophy, and

letters owe to you.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The different pieces which have been published on the affair of the

Jesuits (if we except therefrom the requisitories of the magistrates)

breathe an animosity or fanaticism in those who have undertaken either

to defend or attack the society. We may say of these historians,

what Tacitus said of the historians of his time: _Neutris cura

posteritatis, inter infensos vel obnoxios_: “None of them were

influenced by any regard for posterity, being themselves among the

exasperated or the obnoxious.” As the author of the following writing

professes a pretty great indifference for quarrels of this sort, he

has had no violence to do himself in order to tell the truth (so far

at least as he has been able to come at the knowledge of it) with

respect to the causes and the circumstances of this singular event:

if he has sometimes told it with energy, he flatters himself at least

that he has delivered it without bitterness, and he hopes that thus

his work will not displease those, who like him are detached from any

spirit of party or interest. He has even waited, before he published

this writing, till peoples' minds should be no longer heated, in regard

to the matter which is the object of it; he will lose thereby,

without doubt, some readers, but the truth will gain by it, or at

least be no loser.

The facts which are related here, are, for the most part, very well

known in France: they are less so to foreigners, for whom we have

proposed to write as well as for the French. The reflexions which have

been to this historical account, may be useful to both, and perhaps

still more to the French than to foreigners.

[Illustration: Decorative image]

ON THE

DESTRUCTION

OF THE

JESUITS IN FRANCE.

The middle of the century, in which we live, appears destined to form

an æra, not only in the history of the human mind, by the revolution

which seems to be preparing itself in our opinions, but also in the

history of states and empires, by the extraordinary events of which

we have successively been witnesses. In less than eight years we have

seen the earth shaken, swallow up a part of Portugal, Spain, Africa,

and Hungary, and terrify by its shocks several other nations; a war

kindled from Lisbon to Petersbourg, for some almost uncultivated

tracts in North-America; the system of Europe changing suddenly its

appearance at the end of two centuries by the strict and unhoped-for

union of the houses of France and Austria; the consequences of that

union, all contrary to what it was natural to have expected from it;

the king of Prussia withstanding alone five formidable powers leagued

against him, and issuing from the bosom of the storm victorious and

covered with glory; an emperor cast headlong from his throne; the

king of Portugal assassinated; France terrifyed at a like attempt,

and trembling for a life the most precious; lastly, the Jesuits,

those men who were thought so powerful, so firmly established, so

redoubtable, driven from the former of these two kingdoms, and

destroyed in the second. This last event, which is, for certain,

neither the most melancholy, nor the greatest of those which we have

just recapitulated, is perhaps neither the least surprising, nor the

least susceptible of reflexions. It is for philosophers to see it such

as it is, to shew it such as it is to posterity, to make known to the

sages of all nations, how passion and hatred have, without knowing it,

assisted reason and justice in this unexpected catastrophe.

In order to explain myself with impartiality on the destruction of the

Jesuits in France, the object of this treatise, we must begin very

far back, and reascend to the very origin of this famous society,

place in one point of view the obstacles which had been opposed to it,

the progresses which it has made, the blows which it has given and

received; lastly, the causes apparent and secret, which brought it to

the brink of the precipice, and which have terminated by throwing it

from thence.

It is somewhat above two hundred years since the society of Jesuits

took birth. Its founder was a Spanish gentleman, who having had

his brain heated by romances of chevalry, and afterwards by books

of devotion, took it into his head to be the Don Quixote of the

Virgin[1], to go and preach to infidels the christian religion which

he knew nothing of, and to associate himself for that purpose with

those adventurers who should think proper to join him.

It will be thought astonishing, without doubt, that an order, become

so powerful and so celebrated, should have for its founder such a man.

This founder was however wise enough to decline entering into the

order of Theatins, which a cardinal, who some years after became pope,

had just established a little before the Jesuits began to appear.

Ignatius, in spite of all the opposition which his society experienced

at its birth, chose rather to be the legislator of an institution

than to subject himself to laws which were not of his making. It seems

as if he foresaw, from that very time, the future grandeur of his

order, and the small figure the other would make, though destined to

be in our times the cradle of a pious prelate, raised from the bosom

of that order (by an impenetrable Providence) to the first dignities

of the state and of the church[2].

Ignatius had also the wit to perceive, that a society which made

particular profession of devotion to the holy see, would find

infallible support from the head of the Roman church, and by these

means from the catholic princes, its dear and faithful sons; and

that thus this society would triumph at length over the transitory

obstacles which it might meet with at its origin. It was in this

view that he gave to it those famous constitutions, since perfected,

and always on the same plan, by two successors very superior to

Ignatius, the two generals Lainez and Aquiviva, so celebrated in the

annals of the Jesuits: the latter especially, intriguing, adroit, and

full of great views, was on all these accounts very proper for the

government of an ambitious society: to him it is indebted, more than

to any other, for those regulations so well contrived and so wise,

that we may style them the master-piece of the industry of human

nature in point of policy, and which have contributed, during two

hundred years, to the aggrandizement and glory of this order. These

regulations, it is true, have ended in being the cause or the motive

of the destruction of the Jesuits in France; but such is the fate

of all human grandeur and power, it is in their very nature to grow

worse and become extinct when they have arrived at a certain degree

of greatness and lustre. The empire of the Assyrians, that of the

Persians, the Roman empire itself, have disappeared, precisely for

this very reason, because they were become too large and too powerful.

These examples ought to console the Jesuits, if it be possible for

Jesuitical pride to be consoled.

We cannot better compare this society, every where surrounded with

enemies, and every where triumphant for the space of two centuries,

than to the marshes of Holland, cultivated by obstinate labour,

besieged by the sea, which threatens every instant to swallow them

up, and perpetually opposing their dikes to that destructive element.

Let these dikes be pierced but in one single place, Holland will be

laid under water after so many ages of labour and of vigilance. This

is what has happened to the society; its enemies have at last found

out the weak part, and pierced its dike; yet those who had raised

it with so much care and patience, those who had afterwards watched

so long over its preservation, those who have cultivated, with so

much success, the soil which was protected by this dike, merit

nevertheless commendation on that account.

Scarce had the company of Jesus (for that is the name which it had

taken), begun to shew itself in France, when it met with numberless

difficulties in establishing itself there. The universities

especially made the greatest efforts to expel these new comers;

it is difficult to decide, whether this opposition does honour or

discredit to the Jesuits who experienced it. They gave themselves

out for the instructors of youth gratis; they counted already

amongst them some learned and famous men, superior perhaps to those

of whom the universities could boast: interest and vanity might

therefore be sufficient motives to their adversaries, at least in

these first moments, to seek to exclude them. We may recollect the

like opposition which the Mendicant orders underwent from these

very universities when they wanted to introduce themselves there;

opposition founded on pretty nearly the same motives, and which ceased

not but by the state into which these orders are fallen, now become

incapable of exciting envy.

On the other side, it is very probable that the society, proud of

that support which it found amidst so many storms, furnished arms to

its adversaries by braving them; it seemed to shew itself, from this

time, with that spirit of invasion which it has but too much displayed

since, but which it has carefully covered at all times with the mask

of religion, and of zeal for the salvation of souls. This desire

of extending itself, and of domineering, appeared already on all

sides: the society insinuated itself into the confidence of several

sovereigns; it caballed at the courts of some others; it rendered

itself formidable to the bishops, by the dependance which it affected

on the court of Rome alone; in short, the more it aggrandized itself,

the more it seemed to justify, by its credit and its intrigues, the

rancour of its enemies against it. To govern the universe, not by

force, but by religion, such appeared to have been the device of this

society from its origin; a device which it has made appear further to

proportion as its existence and its authority gained strength.

Never did it lose sight, either of this object, or of the means (as

smooth as efficacious) which it was to employ in order to succeed in

it. It is perhaps the only one of all the societies, as the house

of Austria is the only one of all the powers of Europe, which has

observed an uniform and constant policy; an inestimable advantage to

societies and sovereign houses. Individuals only pass away, and are

subject in that short space to a small circle of events, which by

no means permit them to have any immutable system. Bodies and great

houses subsist for a long time; and if they pursue always the same

projects, the scene of the world, which, changes perpetually, brings

on at last, soon or late, circumstances favourable to their views.

We must, when once we have declared ourselves their enemy, either

annihilate them entirely, or end in being their victim; so long

as they have one gasp remaining, they cease not to be formidable.

“You have drawn the sword against the Jesuits,” said a man of wit

to a philosopher; “well, throw the scabbard into the fire.” But

individuals, how numerous and animated soever they be, have very

little force against a body: accordingly the Jesuits so decryed, so

attacked, so detested, would subsist perhaps still with more lustre

than ever, if they had not had for irreconcileable enemies other

bodies still subsisting as well as them, and as constantly taken up

with the project of exterminating them, as they have been with that of

aggrandizing themselves.

The manner in which this society established itself in those places

where it found the least resistance, discovers very plainly the

project which we have attributed to them, _of governing mankind_, and

of making religion subservient to that design.

It is thus that the Jesuits have acquired in Paraguai a monarchical

authority, founded, it is said, on persuasion alone, and, on the

lenity of their government: sovereigns in that vast country, they

render happy, it is assured, the people there who obey them, and whom

they have at last effectually subjected to them without employing

violence. The care with which they exclude strangers, prevents our

knowing the particulars of this singular administration; but the

little which has been discovered of it, speaks its praise, and

would render it perhaps to be desired, if the relations be faithful,

that many other barbarous countries, where the people are oppressed

and unhappy, had had, as well as Paraguai, Jesuits for apostles

and masters. If they had found in Europe as few obstacles to their

domination, as in that vast country of America, it is to be believed

that they would rule there at this day with the same empire: France,

and the states into which philosophy has penetrated for the happiness

of mankind, would without doubt have lost greatly thereby; but some

other nations perhaps would not have been more to be pityed for it.

The people know but one thing only, the wants of nature, and the

necessity of satisfying them; the moment they are by their situation

sheltered from misery and suffering, they are content and happy:

liberty is a good which is not made for them, of which they know not

the advantage, and which they possess not but to abuse it to their own

prejudice; they are children who fall down and hurt themselves the

moment they are left to go alone, and who get up again only to beat

their nurse; they must be well fed, kept employed without crushing

them, and led without suffering them to see too plainly their chains.

“This (say they) is what the Jesuits do in Paraguai; this probably

is what they would have done every where else, if the world had been

disposed to permit them.” But in Europe, where they had already so

many masters, they did not think proper to suffer any new ones: this

resistance, tho’ so natural, irritated the Jesuits, and rendered

them wicked: they made those nations, which refused their yoke, feel

all the evils which those nations endeavoured to inflict on them:

useful and respectable in Paraguai, where they found only docility

and gentleness, they became dangerous and turbulent in Europe, where

they met with dispositions a little different; and it is not without

reason it has been said of them, that seeing they did so much good

in a corner of America, and so much ill elsewhere, it was necessary

therefore to send them all to the only place where they were not

hurtful, and to purge the rest of the earth of them.

Let us return to France, or rather to the history of the

establishment of the society in that kingdom. Already had the

Jesuits, supported by the protection of the popes and by that of

kings, succeeded, in spite of the opposition of the universities,

to obtain very great advantages, to found several houses, to raise

at length in Paris itself a college, which was looked upon by the

others with envy. The establishment of this college had undergone

several assaults at different periods: at first Stephen Pasquier, so

well known for his satyrical talents, and several years after Anthony

Arnauld, father of the doctor, had successively pronounced against the

Jesuits those famous pleadings, in which a few truths are found joined

to much declamation. The society, victorious in these pleadings,

had obtained by patent the liberty of continuing its lessons; the

university of Paris was obliged to put up with it, and thought itself

still very happy in not being constrained to admit into its bosom

those ambitious and factious men, who would soon have possessed

themselves of the power: perhaps also they escaped this yoke, only

because the Jesuits disdained to impose it on them: probably they

thought themselves sufficiently strong to raise with success altar

against altar; and their vanity, flattered with making a party by

themselves, nourished from that time the hope which it has since but

too well realized, of taking away from the universities the education

of the most brilliant of the nobility of the kingdom.

In the midst of this war of the universities and the parliaments

against the Jesuits, the assassination of Henry IV. by John Chatel, a

scholar of those fathers, was, as it were, the signal of a new storm

again them, and made that thunder burst which had long rolled over

their heads. The Jesuit Guignard, being convicted of having composed,

in the time of the League, writings favourable to regicide, and of

having kept them after the amnesty, perished by the last torture; and

the parliaments which long since saw with an evil eye those usurpers,

and who sought only a favourable occasion to get rid of them, banished

them from the kingdom, as a “detestable and diabolical society, the

corrupters of youth, and enemies of the king and of the state:” these

were the words of the arrêt.

It is unhappily too certain (and the history of those dreadful

times furnishes melancholy proofs of it) that the maxims which they

reproached Guignard and the Jesuits with, respecting the murder of

kings, were at that time those of all the other religious orders, and

of almost all the ecclesiastics. Henry III. had been assassinated by a

fanatic of the order of Jacobins; their prior Bourgoin had just been

broke upon the wheel for that doctrine; a Carthusian, named Ouin, had

attempted the life of Henry IV. This abominable doctrine was that

of the chiefs of the League, among whom were reckoned priests and

bishops; it was also, if we may venture to say it, that of a great

part of the nation, whom fanaticism had rendered weak and furious.

The crime of the society was then that of many others. But the rancour

of the court of Rome against Henry IV. the particular profession which

the Jesuits made of devotion to that ambitious court; lastly, the

confidence which the king had shewn towards them, in permitting them

to instruct youth; all these motives, strengthened by the just hatred

which their ambition had excited, made them deemed with reason so much

the more dangerous and more criminal. Never have the Jacobins been

reproached with a Bourgoin and Clement, assassins of their fraternity,

as the Jesuits have been reproached with their scholar Chatel, and

Guignard their fellow: the reason is, that the Jacobins are little

dreaded, and that the Jesuits were both feared and odious.

In this their almost general disaster, two parliaments had spared

them, those of Bourdeaux and Toulouse: moreover, in banishing them

the rest of the kingdom, they had neither alienated nor confiscated

their effects; the magistrates who had proscribed them, had committed

that great mistake; those fathers, who had still a corner in France to

take shelter in, made use of the little breath which remained to them,

in preparing for their resurrection; they joined to their intrigues,

within the kingdom, the support of several sovereigns, and especially

of the court of Rome, which Henry IV. feared to displease; and in

spite of the just remonstrances of the parliaments, they obtained

their return a few years after they had been banished. Henry IV. did

much more for them; whether it was that they had found means to render

themselves agreeable to that prince, or that he hoped to find in them

more facility in reconciling with his amours the new religion which he

professed; or whether, lastly, which is most probable, that great and

unfortunate king, having been so often assassinated, and being still

in danger of it, feared and wanted to shew respect for these foxes who

were accused of having tigers at their command, he gave them in France

considerable establishments; among others the magnificent college of

la Flêche, whither he was desirous that his heart should be carried

after his death; lastly, as if to interest them more particularly

in his preservation, notwithstanding the reports which prevailed

against them, he took a Jesuit for confessor. It is pretended that he

acted thus, in order to have, in his very court and about his person,

an hostage who should be answerable to him for that suspected and

dangerous society: it is added, that the Jesuits had been recalled on

the very condition of giving this hostage: if the thing be true, it

must be confessed that they were able, like dexterous men, to make

subservient to their grandeur a law humiliating in itself, and to

avail themselves skilfully, for the augmentation of their credit, of

the distrust and dread which they had inspired.

Louis XIII., who reigned after Henry IV. or rather cardinal Richelieu,

who reigned under his name, continued to favour the Jesuits: he

thought their zeal and their regular conduct would serve at once as an

example and curb to the clergy; and that the permission of teaching,

which had been granted them, and of which they acquitted themselves

with success, would be to the universities an object of emulation.

This great minister was not deceived. It cannot be denied that the

Jesuits, and especially those of France, have produced a great number

of useful works for facilitating to young people the study of letters;

works, by which the universities themselves have profited, so as to

produce, in their turn, similar works, and perhaps better still: the

one and the other are known; and the impartial public has given them

the favourable reception they merited.

Let us add (for we must be just) that no religious society, without

exception, can boast so great a number of men famous in the sciences

and in letters. The Mendicants, even at the time of their greatest

lustre, were but schoolmen, the Benedictines only compilers, the other

monks mere blockheads[3]. The Jesuits exercised themselves with

success in every kind, eloquence, history, antiquities, geometry,

literature both profound and agreeable: there is hardly any class of

writers in which they count not men of the first merit: they have

even had good French writers; an advantage of which no other order

can boast; for this reason, that in order to write well in one’s own

language, it is necessary to keep company with people of fashion, and

that the Jesuits, by the nature of their functions, have been more

dispersed throughout the world than others.

It is assured that the late cardinal Passionei, who detested these

fathers, (for which he might have good reasons) pushed his hatred

against them so far, as not to admit into his fine and numerous

library any writer of the society. I regret this, for the sake both

of the library and of the master; the one lost a number of good

books by it; and the other, so philosophical, as we are assured, in

other respects, was not at all so on this occasion. If any thing can

console the Jesuits, it is that the same cardinal, so sworn an enemy

of all their works, had the misfortune to countenance and extol the

rhapsodies of that same Abraham Chaumeix, whose very name now is

become ridiculous, and who is at present turned down to his proper

place, after having been quoted and celebrated as a kind of father of

the church[4].

The society owes to the form of its institution (so decried in other

respects) this variety of talents which distinguish it. They reject

no sort of abilities, and require no other condition, in order to be

admitted among its members, but a capacity of being useful. To engage

our liberty, we must pay every where, even among the Mendicants.

The Jesuits know nothing of this paltry interest; they receive with

pleasure and gratuitously every person from whom they hope to draw any

good; nobody is useless among them; of those from whom they expect the

least, they make, according to their own expression, _missionaries_

for the villages, or _martyrs_ for the Indies. They have not even

disdained very great personages, little worthy of the titles which

they bore when they made themselves Jesuits, as a Charles of Lorrain,

and several others: their names have served at least as a decoration

to the order, if they were good for nothing else: we may call them the

_honoraries_ of the society.

Two other reasons seem to have contributed to give the Jesuits,

above all the other orders, the advantage of a greater number of

men estimable for their talents and their works: the first is the

duration of their noviciate, and the law which permits them not to

bind themselves by the last vows before the age of thirty-three. The

superiours have the more time to know their subjects, to judge of

them, and to direct them towards the object for which they are most

proper: these subjects moreover, being engaged at a mature age, after

a long probation, and all the time necessary for reflexion, are less

exposed to disgust and to repentance, more attached to the society,

and more disposed to employ their talents for its glory, and for their

own, which comes only afterward.

A second reason of the superiority of the Jesuits over the other

orders, in respect to the sciences and knowledge, is, that they have

sufficient time for resigning themselves up to study, enjoying in

this point as much liberty as can possibly be enjoyed in a regular

community, not being subjected, as the other orders are, to the minute

practices of devotion, and to offices which absorb the greatest part

of the day. If it were not known that hatred makes arms of every

thing, we should have some difficulty to believe, that during their

great and fatal law-suit, it was gravely objected to them as a

crime, in some of the Jansenist pamphlets, that they did not assemble

together so often as other monks, to say, in common, matins and

prayers; as if a religious society (the first duty of which is to be

useful) had nothing better to do than to chant over heavily bad Latin

several hours in the day. It will be said perhaps, that religious

orders are instituted only for prayer: be it so; but in that case let

the religious shut themselves up in their houses, in order to pray

there quite at their ease, and let them be hindered from meddling in

any thing else.

This suppression of praying and chanting, among the Jesuits, before

it became a subject of reproach against them, had been matter of

pleasantry, agreeably to the genius of our nation: “The Jesuits,”

said they, “cannot sing, for birds of prey never do: they are,”

said they again, “a set of folks who get up at four in the morning,

in order to repeat together the litanies at eight in the evening.”

The Jesuits had the good sense to laugh the first at these French

witticisms, and to make no change in their manner of living; they

thought it more serviceable and more honourable to them, to have

Petaus and Bourdaloues, than triflers and chanters.

It must be confessed nevertheless, that in the sciences and the arts,

two kinds have been but feebly cultivated by the Jesuits: these are

French poetry and philosophy. The best of their French poets is

beneath mediocrity; yet French poetry requires, in order to excel

in it, a delicacy of feeling and taste, which cannot be acquired but

by frequenting the world much more than a religious ought to permit

himself to do. This school of urbanity and delicacy is perhaps the

only thing that was wanting to the Jesuit Le Moine to make him a poet

of the first rank; for that Jesuit, according to the judgement given

of him by one of our greatest masters, had, in other respects, an

imagination that was prodigious[5]. If it be asked why the Jesuits

have not had French poets, we must ask why the universities have

not had more of them, and why so many modern Latin poets, taken

throughout the several communities, and throughout all conditions,

have not been able to succeed in making two tolerable French lines in

verse.

Philosophy (I mean the true, for school-learning is nothing but the

dregs and refuse of it) has not shone with greater lustre among the

Jesuits; but has it been more brilliant among the other orders? It

is almost impossible that a member of any community should become a

great philosopher: the spirit of a society, of a monastick society in

particular, and more perhaps than any other, the domineering spirit

of the Jesuits, that of a servile devotion to their superiors, are so

many fetters to reason, repugnant to that freedom of thinking which

is so necessary to philosophy. Malebranche is the only philosopher

of eminence that ever belonged to a regular congregation; but that

congregation was composed of free-men; and, besides, Malebranche is

perhaps less a great philosopher, than an excellent philosophic writer.

If any order (by the by) could have hoped to dispute with the Jesuits

the pre-eminence in the sciences and in literature, and perhaps to

have borne away the palm from them, it is this congregation of the

Oratory, of which Malebranche was a most distinguished member. The

freedom enjoyed there, without being ever hampered by vows, the

permission of thinking differently from their superiors, and of

employing their talents according to their own pleasure, this was what

furnished the congregation of the Oratory with excellent preachers,

profound scholars, men illustrious in every way. Accordingly the

Jesuits were very sensible what they had to fear from such rivals.

They persecuted them; and the members of the Oratory had the folly to

expose a weak side to them by becoming Jansenists[6]. By this means

they furnished a pretext to the attacks of their enemies, and have

had the grief to see the decay of their congregation brought about by

their own fault. They have indeed just now collected a few tattered

remains from the plunder of the Jesuits; but these remains will hardly

ever be able to replace what they have lost. We ought, besides, to

do them the justice to own, that they testified not any eagerness to

profit by the ruin of their adversaries: the society in its misfortune

experienced, on the part of the Oratory, a moderation of which they

had never given them the example. But be this moderation counterfeit

or sincere, it is difficult to persuade one’s-self that the Oratory

will ever recover with lustre the blows which have been given it by

the Jesuits: the varnish of Jansenism with which it is still stained,

and which renders it at least suspected by the greater part of the

bishops, the almost general prejudice of the public, and of the

greater part of the magistrates, against all communities, of whatever

kind they be, and, above all, the philosophic spirit which makes

every day great progress, seems to forebode the end of this, and of

other fraternities.

If the culture of the sciences and of letters has contributed to

render the society commendable, and intrigue to make it powerful,

another circumstance has not a little served to render it formidable

to its enemies: and that is the union of all its members for the good

of the common cause. In other societies, the interests and reciprocal

hatred of individuals almost always hurt the good of the corps; but

among the Jesuits it is quite otherwise. Not that in this society the

individuals love each other better than elsewhere; perhaps they even

hate one another more, being by their very constitutions spies and

informers, from their birth, upon each other: yet attack a single

person among them, you are sure of having the whole society for your

enemy. Thus heretofore the Senate and Roman people, often divided

among themselves by intestin dissensions, united at the bare name of

the Carthaginians or of Mithridates. There is not a Jesuit who may not

say, like the wicked spirit in scripture, “My name is Legion.” Never

did republican love his country as every Jesuit loves his society: the

very lowest of its members interests himself in its glory, of which he

thinks some rays reflect upon himself: there is not (if I may presume

to say so) even to their brother the apothecary, or the cook, one

among them who is not proud and jealous of it. They are all at once

put in action by this single spring, which one man directs at his

pleasure; and it is not without reason that they have been defined

“a naked sword, the hilt of which is at Rome.” The love which they

have for their society, subsists even in almost all those who have

left it: whether it be a real attachment founded upon gratitude, or a

policy founded on interest or on fear, there is hardly an ex-Jesuit

who preserves not his connexions with his old brethren; and who, even

tho’ he has reason to complain of them, does not shew himself attached

to their interests, and ready to defend them against their enemies.

For the rest, this attachment of the Jesuits to their society, can

be nothing but the effect of that pride which it inspires them with,

and not at all of the advantages which it procures for each of its

members. Independently of the little confidence and real friendship

which they have one for the other, and the severe life which they lead

within their houses, individuals, whatever merit they may have, are

not at all considered in the corps, but in proportion to the talent

which they have for intrigue: modest merit, or such as is confined

to the labour of the closet, is there unknown, little considered,

sometimes persecuted, if unfortunately the pressing interest of the

society demand it. We have seen in these late times the fathers

Brumoi and Bougeant, the last of the Jesuits who had any true and

solid merit, die of chagrin under the weight of the persecutions

which their fraternity were obliged to make them suffer: these two

men, who were greater philosophers, and more enlightened, than their

state in life seemed to permit, were sacrificed by the society to

the clamours which they had excited; the one by approving a work,

in which the regent of the kingdom (who had been dead about twenty

years before) was indirectly attacked; the other, by a philosophical

joke on “the language of beasts,” for which they obliged him to make

reparation, by confining him to the college of la Flêche, and charging

him with the _making_ of a catechism, which brought him down to the

grave, overwhelmed with disgust and vexation. A hundred years before,

Petau, the famous Petau, had like to have experienced fate very nearly

similar, for having pretended, that before the council of Nice the

church was not fully determined on the divinity of the word[7]. He

died in the college of the Jesuits at Paris, abandoned and in want of

every thing. It seems as if the device of the society had been that of

the ancient Romans; _Salus populi suprema lex esto_[8].

To all these means of augmenting their consideration and their credit,

they join another no less efficacious: this is the regularity of their

conduct and manners. Their discipline on this point is as severe as it

is prudent; and whatever calumny may have published concerning it, it

must be confessed, that no religious order gives less handle in this

respect. Even those among them who have taught the most monstrous

doctrine, who have written on the most obscene subjects, have led the

most edifying and the most exemplary lives. It was at the feet of the

crucifix that the pious Sanchez wrote his abominable and disgusting

work: and it has been said, in particular, of Escobar, equally known

by the austerity of his manners, and the looseness of his doctrines,

that he purchased heaven very dear for himself, but bestowed it at an

easy rate upon others.

We have seen what success the Jesuits had the art to procure

themselves at the court of France: their progress was nearly the

same in almost all the other courts: at the beginning of the present

century there was not in Europe a catholic prince, of whose

conscience they were not the directors, and from whom they had not

obtained the most signal favours; in all parts their enemies raged,

and in all parts they made a jest of their enemies.

They confined not their ambition to Europe; perpetually full of the

project of governing, and of governing by religion, they sent to the

Indies, and to China, missionaries, who carried thither christianity

for the people, and the profane sciences for the princes, for the

grandees, and for the more enlightened persons, whom by these means

they might render favourable to them.

Let us stop here a moment, and examine more particularly, by what kind

of learning and doctrine the Jesuits were able to make such great

progress among the Christians, and among those who were not so.

The religion which we profess turns upon two points; its tenets and

its morality. Among its tenets are the Trinity, the Redemption,

the Real Presence, &c. which, in appearing to confound the human

understanding, present to its belief only truths that are speculative

in themselves: these sorts of truths, how obscure soever they seem

to reason, and how much submission soever they require from it, are

not those which meet with the most opposition from the multitude:

naturally inclined to the marvellous, they are disposed to adopt

blindly the most absurd errors in this kind, and much more the truths

which are only incomprehensible, provided they oppose not their

inclinations. The Jesuits therefore preached those truths in all their

exactness; they knew well that they risked not much. But there are

other tenets, as those of Predestination and of Grace, which border on

practical religion, and which, preached in all their rigour to minds

that are unprepared, would be little adapted to make proselytes. We

must take great care, said the wise and pious Fleury, not to propose

at once to infidels, those articles of our belief, which might shock

them too much. Suppose a missionary should come and say abruptly to

savages, “My children, I make known to you a God, whom you cannot

serve worthily, without his special grace, which he has resolved from

all eternity to give, or to refuse you.” “Very well,” the savages

would say to him, “we will wait for that grace, and till it come we

will remain in our present faith.” What success would the Jesuits

have had, had they proceeded in this manner? Let us suppose that a

Jansenist had been in their place, to preach his incomprehensible

doctrine (which he calls nevertheless modestly the doctrine of St.

Augustine and St. Paul) he would soon have been either abandoned as

a madman, or driven away by the people with stones. The Jesuits

conducted themselves much more dexterously; they proved, according to

the saying of their enemies, the truth of that maxim of scripture,

that the children of darkness act with more prudence in their affairs

than the children of light: they preached to the people they wanted

to convert that Pelagianism of which they make profession, and which

is much more accommodated to the weakness and vanity of human nature;

but they not only preached in a manner better suited to humanity than

the Jansenists would have done; they preached also more artfully than

would Pelagius himself. The heresy of that monk did not meet with

the success it might have had, because it stuck half way. Pelagius,

while he restored to freedom her rights, imposed on her severe ties,

by the morality which he recommended to practice: this morality was

that of the Christian religion in all its austerity, the renouncing

of one’s-self, a penitence the most rigorous, and an eternal warfare

against the passions. The Jesuits perceived that these painful duties

were not made for the common run of mankind, and it was the multitude

they wanted to attract to them. After having softened what the

doctrines of Predestination and Grace have too harsh in appearance,

they did the same with what the ties imposed by Christianity have too

difficult. Great personages, for the most part, are, by the fault

of their education, superstitious, ignorant, and given up to their

passions. The Jesuits permitted them to have mistresses, provided

they displayed a zeal for religion, and an attachment to its outward

forms, which are no more than a kind of amusement when the passions

are satisfied, and which serve besides, to consciences that are but

ill enlightened, by way of a quieter, or, if you will, a palliative

in their hours of remorse. They followed pretty nearly the same plan

with regard to all those whom they directed, and succeeded in making,

by these means, a great number of partisans. The Jesuitical spirit,

in the manner of teaching religion, is pretty well described in the

definition which the Abbé Boileau gave of these fathers: “They are

(said he) a people who lengthen the creed, and shorten the decalogue.”

I cannot help remarking, on this occasion, one singular contradiction

of the human mind in matters of religion. The Jansenists are at once

what it seems impossible to be at the same time, Predestinarians in

opinion, and Rigorists in morality: they say to man, “You have great

duties to fulfill, but you can do nothing of yourself; and whatever

you do, what human virtues soever you practise, every one of your

actions will be A NEW CRIME; at least unless God sanctify you by his

grace, which you will not obtain if you are not predestined to it

gratuitously and before the foreknowledge of your merits.” It must be

confessed, that this doctrine is mild, adapted to consolation, and

above all consistent! But in these sorts of matters, the business is

not to be consistent and reasonable; it is the temper of the person

who dogmatises, and not logic, that dictates to him what he is to

preach. The Jansenist, unpitying in his nature, is equally so, both

in his doctrines and in the morality which he teaches; he is little

embarrassed that the one is contrary to the other: the nature of the

God that he preaches (and who, happily for us, is only his own) is to

be harsh as himself, both in what he would have us do, and in what

he wills that we should believe. What would be thought of a monarch,

who should say to one of his subjects, “You have irons on your legs,

and you have not the power to take them off; however I now inform

you, that if you walk not presently, both for a long time, and very

upright, on the brink of the precipice on which you now stand, you

shall be condemned to eternal punishment[9]?” Such is the God of

the Jansenists; such is their theology in its original and primitive

purity. Pelagius, in his error, was more reasonable. He said to man,

“You can do every thing; but you have a great deal to do.” This

doctrine was less shocking to reason; but, however, very incommodious

and irksome. The Jesuits have, if we may say so, beat down Pelagius’s

price: they have said to Christians, “You can do every thing, and God

requires but little of you.” This is the way in which we must speak

to carnal people; and especially to the great of the age, whenever we

would have them listen to us.

These are not the only cautions which they have taken; for they have

thought of every thing. They have had (indeed in small number) severe

casuists and directors; compared with the small number of those,

who thro’ temper or scruple wanted to impose, in all its rigour,

the yoke of the gospel. By this means, making themselves, to use

the expression, “all to all,” according to a saying of scripture

(the sense of which indeed they wrested a little) on one side they

procured to themselves friends of every kind; and on the other they

refuted, or thought they refuted, before-hand, the objection which

might be made to them, of teaching universally looseness of morals,

and of having made it the uniform doctrine of their society. This kind

of complete assortment, designed to satisfy all tastes, is pretty well

described in the following well-known lines of Despréaux:

Si Bourdaloue un peu sévère

Nous dit, craignez la volupté,

Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,

Nous la permet pour la santé.

It must also be observed, that most of those Jesuits, who were so

severe in their writings, or in their sermons, were less so towards

their penitents. It has been said of Bourdaloue himself, that if he

required too much in the pulpit, he abated it in the confessional

chair: a new stroke of policy, well understood on the part of the

Jesuits, in as much as speculative severity suits persons of rigid

morals, and practical condescension attracts the multitude.

In China they employed still other methods: they rendered light to the

people the yoke which they came to impose on them, by permitting them

to mingle with the practical duties of Christianity, some ceremonies

of the religion of the country; to which the multitude, every where

superstitious and tumultuous, was too firmly attached.

This philosophy, so purely human, which sees in the zeal of the

Jesuits, and of many others, to go and preach religion at the

extremities of the earth, nothing more than a means which they make

use of for becoming of consequence and powerful, regards, as the most

dexterous of their missionaries, those who know how best to arrive at

that end. We must not then be astonished, if the society is a little

surprised at the number of invectives and clamours, of which these

fathers have been the object, on account of the Chinese superstitions

which they permitted to their new converts. In that, as well as in

the rest of their conduct, to the very time of their destruction,

they have proved, we repeat it, that they knew mankind better than

their adversaries did: they perceived that they were not to frighten

or disgust their new converts, by prohibiting them a few national

practices which were dear to them, and which they still have it in

their power to interpret as they please. Pope Gregory, who is called

the Great, and who was certainly a man of good sense, seems, if we may

believe the Jesuits, to have set them, in that respect, the example:

they have, at least, pretended to the authority of it. Augustine the

monk, whom this pope had sent into England, to convert the people

who were yet barbarous, consulted him on some remains of ceremonies,

partly civilized, partly Pagan, which the new converts were unwilling

to renounce: he demanded of Gregory, whether he might permit them

those ceremonies. “There is no taking away,” replied that pope, “from

rugged minds, all their habits at once: we ascend not a steep rock

by leaping on it, but by clambering up step by step.” We see here the

principle on which the Jesuits pretend to have conducted themselves

in China. They were persuaded, that without this condescension, the

religion which they preached would not have been even heard there.

I have no doubt, but artful as they are, (or rather as they were)

they have still further palliated and mitigated matters with respect

to other points: and it cannot be denied, that they have done well,

relatively to their own views; since, after all, it was neither God

nor Christianity that they wanted to reign there; it was the society

under those respectable names.