that it may be without return, were it only for the sake of peace,
and that we may at last be able to say, _hic jacet_. Its best friends
(we are not afraid to assert it) are too good subjects to think the
contrary: the re-establishment of this turbulent, irritated, and
fanatical society, would do more hurt to the state, than it could, in
the opinion even of its own partisans, do good to the church. This
event (if Providence please to make it durable) will form not only an
epoch, but, according to many people, a true chronological æra in the
history of religion: dates will be reckoned henceforth in that history
from the _Jesuitical Hegira_[19], at least in Portugal and in France;
and the Jansenists hope, that this new _ecclesiastical computation_
will not be long before it be admitted into other Catholic countries.
This is the end of those fervent prayers which they put up to God for
the greatest good of their enemies, and for bringing about “the return
of the society to itself.”
Nothing will be, without doubt, more advantageous and more pleasing
to them. It is well known that every Jansenist, provided he can say,
with the savages in Candide, “Let us have a slice of the Jesuit,”
will be at the summit of his happiness and joy: but it remains to know
what profit reason (which is full as good as Jansenism) will derive
at last from a proscription so greatly desired. I say _reason_, and
not _irreligion_: this is a precaution necessary to be taken; for
the theology of the Jansenists is, as we have seen, so reasonable,
that they are apt to consider the words _reason_ and _irreligion_ as
synonimous. It is certain that the annihilation of the society may
be productive of great advantages to reason, provided the intolerant
spirit of Jansenism succeed not in credit to Jesuitical intolerance;
for we are not afraid to say that, between these two sects, both which
are wicked and pernicious, if we were obliged to choose, and supposing
them to be invested with the same degree of power, the society, which
has just been expelled, would be still the least tyrannical. The
Jesuits, a complaisant set of people, provided we declare ourselves
not their enemies, give sufficient permission to think as we please.
The Jansenists, devoid of consideration as well as abilities, will
have us think just as they do: if they were masters, they would
exercise over our writings, over our understandings, over our
discourses, the most violent inquisition. Happily it is not much to be
feared, that they will ever acquire much credit: the rigor which they
profess will not make its way at court, where folks are very desirous
of being Christians, but on condition that it cost them little; and
their doctrine of Predestination and Grace is too harsh and too
absurd not to shock their minds. Let foreigners reproach France as
much as they will (it is of small importance) on the little concern
she seems to take in her national theatre, so esteemed throughout
all Europe, and on the distinguished favour which she bestows on her
musick, though despised by all nations: those foreigners, envious of
us and our enemies, will not surely ever have the melancholy advantage
of reproaching our government with a more material fault, that of
taking, for the object of its protection, men without talents, without
understanding, unknowing and unknown; after having heretofore carried,
on a violent persecution against the illustrious and respectable
fathers of so pitiful a posterity. Furthermore, the nation, which
begins now to be enlightened, will probably grow enlightened more and
more. Disputes concerning religion will be despised, and fanaticism
will be held in horror. The magistrates, who proscribed the fanaticism
of the Jesuits, are men of too much understanding, too good subjects,
too much fitted for the age they live in, to suffer another fanaticism
to succeed it: even already some of them (among others Mr. de la
Chalotais) have explained themselves so openly as to displease the
Jansenists, and to merit the honour of being placed by them in the
rank of philosophers. That sect seems to say like God, whose language
it so often and so abusively makes use of, “He that is not for me is
against me:” but it will not thereby make the more proselytes. The
Jesuits were regular troops, bred and disciplined under the standard
of superstition: they were the Macedonian phalanx, which it imported
reason to see broken and destroyed. The Jansenists are only Cossacks
and Pandours, of whom reason will have a cheap conquest, seeing they
will fight singly and dispersed. In vain will they cry out as usual,
that it is sufficient to shew an attachment to religion, to be reviled
by _modern philosophers_. It will be replied to them, that Paschal,
Nicole, Bossuet, and the writers of the Port-Royal, were attached to
religion; and that there is not one _modern philosopher_ (at least,
one worthy of that name) who does not revere and honour them. In vain
will they imagine, that because they succeeded to the Jansenism of
Port-Royal, they are to succeed also to the respect which it enjoyed:
it is as if the valets de chambre of a great lord should want to make
themselves be styled his heirs, because they inherited a few of his
cast clothes. Jansenism, in the Port-Royal, was a blemish which it
effaced by great merit: in its pretended successors it is their sole
existence; and what, in the age wherein we live, is an existence so
poor and ridiculous?
Accordingly it need not be doubted but the destruction of their
enemies will soon bring on theirs, not with violence, but by slow
degrees, by insensible transpiration, and through a necessary
consequence of the contempt with which that sect inspires all
sensible people. The Jesuits, driven out by them, and dragging them
along with themselves in their fall, may put up, from this instant, to
their founder St. Ignatius, the following prayer for their enemies,
“Father, pardon them, for they know not what they do.”
To speak seriously, and without circumlocution, it is time that
the laws should lend reason their aid for the annihilation of that
party-spirit, which has so long disturbed the kingdom with ridiculous
controversies; controversies, we are not afraid to assert it, more
fatal to the state than infidelity itself, when it seeks not to make
proselytes. A great prince, it is said, reproached one of his officers
with being a Jansenist or Molinist, I know not which: they told him
he was mistaken, for that the officer was an Atheist: “If he be only
an Atheist,” replied the prince, “that is another affair, and I have
nothing to say to it.” This answer, which some have wanted to turn
into ridicule, was however extremely wise: the prince, as head of
the state, has nothing to fear from an Atheist, who is silent, and
dogmatizes not. Such a wretch, while extremely culpable in the eyes of
God and of reason, is hurtful only to himself, and not to others: the
party-man, the disputant, disturbs society by his idle controversies.
In this case that law of Solon prevails not, by which all who took
not some side in the troubles of the state were declared infamous.
That great legislator was too knowing to rank in this number the
controversies concerning religion, so ill calculated to interest
good subjects; he would rather have made it an honour to shun and to
despise them.
Our gloomy theological quarrels confine not to the limits of the
kingdom the injury and hurt they do us: they debase, in the eyes of
Europe, our nation, already too much humiliated by her misfortunes:
they make strangers, and even the Italians, say, “that the French
know not how to be warm, excepting for billets of confession, or for
buffoons, for the bull Unigenitus, or for the comick opera[20].” Such
is the very unjust idea which a handfull of fanaticks give to all
Europe of the French nation, at a time nevertheless when the truely
estimable part of that nation are more enlightened than ever, more
taken up about useful objects, and fuller of contempt for the follies
and the men that disgrace it.
It is not only the honour of France which is interested in the
annihilation of these vain disputes; the honour of religion is still
more concerned in it, on account of the obstacles which they oppose
to the conversion of unbelievers. I will suppose that one of those
men, who have had the misfortune, in our times, to attack religion
in their writings, and against whom the Jesuits and the Jansenists
have equally exerted themselves, should address at the same time the
two most intrepid theologists of each party, and speak to them thus:
“You are right, gentlemen, to cry out shame against me, and it is my
intention to repair it. Dictate to me then in concert a confession
of faith proper for the purpose, and which may reconcile me first
with God, and afterwards with every one of you.” On the very first
article of the creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty,” he would
infallibly set by the ears the two Catechists, by asking them if God
is equally powerful over the heart and over the body? “Without doubt,”
the Jansenist would aver: “Not quite so,” the Jesuit would mutter.
“You are a blasphemer,” the former would cry; “And you,” would reply
the second, “a destroyer of the freedom and the merit of good works.”
Both addressing themselves afterward to their proselyte, would say to
him, “Ah, Sir, infidelity is still better than the abominable doctrine
of my adversary: beware of confiding your soul to such bad hands. If
the blind,” says the Gospel, “lead the blind, they will both fall
into the ditch.” It must be owned, that the blind infidel would find
himself a little embarrassed between two men, who offer each to serve
him as guide, and yet mutually charge each other with being blinder
than him. “Gentlemen,” would he say to them, without doubt, “I thank
you both for your charitable offers: God has given me, to conduct me
in the dark, a staff, which is reason, and which you say will lead me
to the faith: well, I will make use of this salutary staff, and I
will draw from it more utility than from you two.”
Nothing more remains then to government and the magistrates, for
the honour of religion and the state, than to repress, and render
alike contemptible, both parties. We say it with so much the more
confidence, as nobody calls in doubt the impartiality of the wise
depositaries of justice, and the hearty contempt which they have for
these absurd contests, the dangerous effects of which their office
has required them to prevent. With what satisfaction will wise and
enlightened subjects see them complete their work? Ought not the
Jansenist Gazetteer and the Convulsionaries[21] to expect from
them, on the first occasion, the same treatment as the Jesuits; with
this difference, however, which we are to put (in point of honour)
between the punishment of a revolted noblesse, and that of a turbulent
populace? The Jesuits uttered their dangerous maxims in open day:
the Convulsionaries and the Jansenist Gazetteer preach and print
their extravagancies in the dark. The obscurity alone with which
these wretches envelope themselves, can shield them from the fate
which they merit: perhaps also there needs to destroy them only to
drag them out of that obscurity, only to order the Convulsionaries
(under pain of whipping) to exhibit their disgusting farces, not in
a garret, but in a fair, for money, among dancers on the rope, and
players with cups and balls, who will soon bring them down: and as to
the Jansenist Gazetteer (under pain of being led through the streets
upon an ass) of printing his dull libel not in his garret, but at
an authorised bookseller’s, at the publisher’s, for example, of the
_Christian Journal_, so widely circulated, and so deserving of being
so. Convulsionaries and gazetteers will vanish, the moment in which
they shall have lost the little merit which remains to them, that of
_clandestineness_. In a very short time the name of the Jansenists
will be forgotten, as that of their adversaries is proscribed; the
destruction of the one, and the disappearance of the others, will
leave no longer any trace to recollect them by: this event, like those
which have preceded it, will be effaced and buried by those which
shall follow; and nothing at most will remain of it but that French
witticism, that the chief of the Jesuits is a broken captain, who has
lost his company.
To conclude, we shall observe that the title of _Society of Jesus_ is
still one of the reproaches which the Jansenists cast on the Jesuits,
as a too proud denomination; by which they seemed to attribute to
themselves alone the quality of Christians: this is a pretty slight
subject of quarrel, and proves only what we have already said, that
hatred has formed weapons of every thing to attack them. The true
crime of the society, we cannot repeat it too often, is not the being
called the _Company of Jesus_, but the having been really a company
of intriguers and fanaticks; the having endeavoured to oppress every
thing which gave it umbrage; the having wanted to domineer in every
thing; the having intermeddled in all affairs and all factions; the
having sought, in a word, rather to render themselves necessary than
useful.
The spirit of giddiness, which has occasioned the misfortune of the
Jesuits in France, seems to announce to them a like fate in the rest
of Europe. They have long been cried down in the territories of
the king of Sardinia, and the republick of Venice; and the little
existence they yet preserve there, may very possibly be shaken anew
by the shocks which they have just felt elsewhere: their conduct in
Silesia, during the last war, has not disposed favourably towards them
a prince, in other respects an enemy to superstition and the monkish
race: the house of Austria, which has so long protected them, begins
to be tired of them, and to find out what they are; and they have
all room to fear, lest the bomb, which has burst in Portugal and in
France, should dart some of its splinters against them into all parts
of Europe.
* * * * *
We shall close this treatise with the queries, of which mention
has been made above, respecting the oath which was required of the
Jesuits: they are proposed in such a manner, that there seems to be
no doubt, either as to the answer to be made to each, or consequently
as to the part which these fathers should have taken. It appears,
in the writings published on this subject by the Jansenists and the
Jesuits, as if they had made it their business to deviate from the
true point of view of the question. Instead of the idle declamations
which have been printed on both sides, the author seems to have meant
to substitute a little logick: this is the secret for abridging
a number of controversies, which the rhetorick of lawyers and of
mandates would perpetuate to eternity.
QUERIES.[22]
I.
Are not the king, or the magistrates who represent him, competent
judges for deciding, whether a religious institution be conformable or
contrary to the laws of the kingdom?
II.
Is it necessary that the spiritual power concur with the temporal, for
this decision, which is purely civil?
III.
Did not the king’s subjects, who submitted themselves to this
institution, submit thereto, on the supposition, nay, in the
persuasion, that the king and the state approved thereof?
IV.
If the king, or the magistrates who represent him, having at first
permitted or tolerated the institution, come afterwards to be of
opinion, that it is contrary to the laws of the kingdom, would the
king’s subjects, who had subjected themselves to this institution,
and who took the resolution of renouncing it, wound thereby their
consciences?
V.
Does the renunciation of the institution import a renunciation of
the vow of _chastity_ and that of _poverty_, which they had taken,
and which neither the king nor the magistrates can hinder them from
observing?
VI.
Is it making an attempt upon the rights of the spiritual power, to
declare that their vow of obedience, (considered only in a civil
light) is inconsistent with the obedience which they have vowed
from their birth to their lawful sovereign; an obedience, by virtue
of which they live in the territories of that sovereign, under the
protection of the laws?
VII.
If the vow which they have made as subjects, be declared contrary to
that which they have made as monks, is not this second vow null of
itself, being destroyed by a vow more ancient and more sacred?
VIII.
If they think themselves, notwithstanding this consideration, engaged
by their vow of _obedience_; if they prefer a religious state to that
of subjects; can, nay indeed ought not the prince, or the magistrates
who represent him, to declare, that they have forfeited the rights of
subjects, and oblige them to quit a state of which they refuse to be
members?
IX.
Have not the professed monks, who shall renounce the institution,
and who are bound besides, by their vow of _poverty_, and by the
renunciation of their effects, a right to require the state to charge
itself with their subsistence?
X.
Would professed monks, who on refusing to renounce their vow
of _obedience_, should receive either from the court, or their
friends[23], notwithstanding their vow of _poverty_, pensions much
greater than is necessary for their subsistence, prove by this
conduct, that they were much less attached to _their vow_ than to
their General; that they refused much more through pride than through
religion, to renounce the society; that they were, in a word, more
Jesuits than Christians?
XI.
Ought not those professed monks, who shall renounce the institution,
at the same time, in order to put out of dispute their religion and
their honour, to declare the motives of attachment to their sovereign
and their country, which oblige them to that renunciation, and to
demand a juridical act of that declaration?
XII.
Is it necessary to require of the _non-professed_ monks, any thing
more than a mere juridical declaration, that they have made no vows;
and a promise of not making any?
XIII.
And with regard to those who voluntarily renounced the institution,
before the arrêt, which requires the oath, is it necessary to require
of them any thing else than a simple juridical declaration that they
have renounced it?
XIV.
Will not the Jesuits equally embarrass the Jansenists their enemies,
whether they take the oath which is required, or whether they take it
not? If they take it, they deprive their inveterate enemies of the
hope and the pleasure of seeing them banished; if they refuse to take
it, they refute, without reply, the imputation which has been so often
cast upon them, of sporting with religion and with oaths? In the first
case they disconcert hatred; in the second they confound calumny.
Which side ought they to take? That of disconcerting hatred, and of
confounding calumny both at once, in joining to the oath, which is
required of them, the declaration, the substance of which is contained
in the XIth Query, and of which we shall give below the formula.
XV.
What scourge have been the disputes concerning religion, and in
particular the absurd and miserable contest of Jansenism, which for
upwards of a hundred years has made so many persons unhappy in one
of these two parties, and which now is likely to make as many in the
other!
XVI.
What a happiness, for nations and for kings, is the banner of
philosophy, which by inspiring for those frivolous disputes the
contempt which they merit, is the only means of preventing their
becoming dangerous?
XVII.
Who is the author of these reflexions? A Frenchman, attached solely
to his country, who interests himself neither for _versatile grace_,
nor _victorious delectation_; who is neither of any sect, nor of
any order, neither of the congregation of _messieurs_, nor of the
troop of St. Médard; who has neither received money from the General
of the Jesuits, nor been whipped with rods in the garrets of the
Convulsionaries; who wishes that men would live in peace, and that so
much hatred, excited by whims, so many _profound_ acts of knavery,
occasioned by _senseless_ disputes, so many evils, in short, brought
about by so many follies, should teach them at last to be wise.
So be it.
_A form of declaration for the professed monks._
I The undersigning, a professed monk of the late Society called of
Jesus, declare, that when I subjected myself to the institution
and government of that society, I supposed, as an indispensable
condition of that engagement, that it had the approbation of the
king my lawful sovereign; his majesty having declared since, in an
unequivocal manner, by the mouth of the magistrates, depositaries of
his authority, the incompatibility of my vow of obedience, with that
more ancient and sacred vow which I have made to my king and to my
country, and finding myself obliged to choose the one or the other
of these vows, which I can no longer observe together, I think myself
bound, in honour and in conscience, to hold by that which I made as a
Frenchman and subject of his majesty: it is through this sole motive
that I renounce living, henceforward, under the authority of the
institution, and the government of the said society; not intending,
however, to renounce the vow of poverty, and that of chastity, which
I have made, and the observance of which no motive can forbid me;
promising anew to God and to the church, as far as is necessary, to
preserve the virtue of perfect continence, and to receive from those,
who shall think proper to provide me with subsistence, only just what
is absolutely necessary to that very subsistence, pursuant to the
precept of St. Paul. In confirmation whereof I have signed the present
declaration, of which I demand the enrollment, in order to discharge,
at once, without any view either of interest or human respect, what I
owe to God and my king.
_Done at Paris this....._
_A form of declaration for the non-professed Jesuits._
I The undersigning ... declare, that not being bound yet by the vows
of profession to the late Society called of Jesus, and the king my
sovereign having forbidden all his subjects, by the mouth of the
magistrates, depositaries of his authority, to bind themselves to
that institution, I promise and swear, as a good and faithful subject
of his majesty, not to engage myself in the said Society, by any vow
whatever. In confirmation, &c.
_A form of declaration for the ex-Jesuits._
I The undersigning declare, that in the month of ... and year of
... before the arrêt of the court of ... which requires of the late
Jesuits the renunciation of that institution, I made voluntarily that
renunciation, of which the pieces hereunto annexed are vouchers.
_F I N I S_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the Jesuit writers of the life of St. Ignatius.
[2] Father Boyer the Theatin, afterwards Bishop of Mirepoix, and since
preceptor to the children of France.
[3] We speak here in general; for it is agreed that there have been,
and are still, in the other orders, some men of merit.
[4] We know from a very respectable and very sure hand, that this
father of the church was some months since at Petersbourg, where he
wrote, for bread, panegyricks on a great princess, who pays to his
eulogies the same regard as to his writings. Nothing more was wanting
to the disgrace of those who set him to work, but to leave him, as
they do, in want, and obliged to go to beg abjectly, at six hundred
leagues, his subsistence.
[5] M. de Voltaire, in his excellent catalogue of the writers of the
age of Louis XIV.
[6] They were very far from this in 16.... when they forbid all the
subjects of the congregation from teaching Jansenism and Cartesianism.
[7] See Bayle’s dictionary under the word Petau. See also the
Longueruana, Part I. p. 86.
[8] The safety of the people is the supreme law.