The Jesuits Unveiled - page 1 of 3

Undoubtedly your Republic rests upon the granite, but I come from below the ground; there I have seen miners — I want to warn you. Their hammers, forged in the hatred of political and religious freedom, in the fire of fanaticism and superstition, are harder, more durable than diamond: the point is sharp, piercing, irresistible. I saw the granite falling in large and heavy blocks, as fast as they sap. Of course they must work a long while, before they reach the surface, and blow up your Republic — but these miners never die, soon or late they will succeed.

Do not believe they do not work because the strokes of their hammers are without echo. I warn you, for I know them — I have seen them — even, I was ready to sap with them, when, yielding to the voice of my conscience, loving liberty, loving your welfare, your Republic, I threw away my hammer and fled. "Who are these miners?" ask you. They are many Societies, of which the most formidable is that of the Jesuits.

Take history and read. You will see that the fame of the misdeeds of several of them, a long while, filled the world; that they spread ruin through all nations, darkened the pages of history, and shed the blood of the apostles of the gospel and of democracy. Since the sun of improvement, in his rising, has enlightened the world, they, like birds of darkness, whose eyes have been burnt, have artfully slided out of the governmental life, or rather, being too cowardly to fight openly, they, as moles, break through to light only when they can surely stir up nations against nations, provinces against provinces, citizens against citizens, kindred against kindred — as lately in Switzerland — but everywhere and silently, they loose the ties of society, and, hiding their mischievous hearts, endeavor to deceive their looks. They borrow among you a false skin, proclaim that they love your freedom, worship your Republic.... But, beware...Now, as always, it is truly said: Timneo Danados et dona ferentes. "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts."

"Since you believe," reply you, "that the Jesuits and other Romish Religious Societies hate and sap our freedom, our institutions, and our Republic, unveil to us their principles what they are. Then we will draw the consequences." Americans, read attentively what I shall write, and reflect about it. Afterward you will judge for yourselves.

I shall unveil only the Jesuits, for all the other Societies which I denounce as dangerous to your Republic are educated and taught nearly the same way in the noviciate, hold almost the same principles, and have pretty much the same spirit, and the same views. The Female Romish Religious Societies, indeed, are not initiated in all mysteries of their Orders, but, they are bound to the blindest obedience to the priests, their absolute leaders; consequently, are as dangerous as they, even, in one sense more dangerous, because, uniting to the charms of their sex the sincerity of their corporal, intellectual, and moral slavery, they are most influential on Catholic and Protestant families.

The General of the Order is elected for life, by the great congregation. This great congregation is composed of all the Provincial officers, and two Professed of each Province, sent to Rome by all the Professed, and moreover, of certain Superiors.

The administration of the Order of the Jesuits is divided into Assistances, the Assistances into Provinces, the Provinces into Houses.

The General is the centre — the head of all this immense and complicated administration. His power is absolute and without control. He is so omnipotent that he has the right of deciding and directing, without one exception, all the material, political, spiritual, and religious interests, not only of all the Order, but of all individuals, who are bound to reveal to him their deepest thoughts, feelings, all they know, even their sins.

He has, in his seven palaces of Rome, and keeps registered, all the christian and family names of the Jesuits, their age, country, the appreciation of their past life, both in their families and in the world, their temperament, capacity, character, learning, qualities, vices, employments, residences: all about their parents and kindred, viz., their profession and social condition, the number of their children, the amount of their fortune, the presumed patrimonial allowance and family's inheritance which each Jesuit, at the death of his father, mother, and kindred, shall get and bring to the Order.

Moreover, the General has and keeps registered the exact amount of all money which each Jesuit receives in his convent, in preaching sermons, in replacing, for the mass and ceremonies of Sunday, the Curates and Vicars who take trips for their health or business, or go to the springs, or take other sorts of pleasure; all that he receives in saying masses for devotees and other Catholics, or in administering the sacraments; all that he receives by gifts and donations: the whole amount of expenses and receipts of each convent.

Again, the General has and keeps registered the number of all Colleges of the Order, that of the scholars of each of them, the character, qualities, defects, and vices, of those who belong to the richest families, their less or more favorable disposition towards the Order; all programmes of these colleges, the amount of all receipts and expenses, and exact statement of their standing, property, and of all means used to get scholars. The General has and keeps registered the number, fortune, acquaintance, friends, kindred, and children, of all respectable and influential families among merchants, capitalists, bankers, proprietors, officers of goverlnments, in both the civil and military departments, of all Catholic, even Protestant countries; the number, fortune, and disposition, of the rich ladies and gentlemen whom the Reverend Fathers confess, chiefly of the old and rich maids, whose inheritance, by a prudent confession and artful direction, they will obtain.

He has, too, and keeps registered, an exact information of the learning and influence of the various Faculties of medicine, laws, sciences; the number of all universitary colleges, of their presidents, directors, teachers, and scholars, notes about their favorable or hostile dispositions towards the Order; the number of individuals in all religious Orders, Corporations, and Nunneries, of their receipts and expenses, all documents about their means and proceedings to eclipse or to prejudice the Jesuits, either by more celebrated preachers, or by a greater consideration and influence among the people, or by a higher ability and artfulness in obtaining the favor, gifts, and protection, of the richest and most powerful families.

He has and keeps registered secret notices of the private life, of the political, administrative, and religious views of all Catholic Bishops, of all their Great-Vicars, Canons, Chaplains of Nunneries, influential priests, and generally of the secular clergy, even of the talented and distinguished Protestant ministers.

Lastly, the General has and keeps registered the most intimate notes of the private life and diplomacy of all Governors of Provinces, Ministers, Kings, Emperors, and Presidents of Republics. In what manner does the General get these documents? For what purpose? — In what manner? By spies, namely, by the Jesuits with the short gown, who are in all classes of society, and who, to earn the favors and protection of the Reverend Fathers, are incessantly upon the watch for news to communicate them to their dear and powerful leaders. The General gets these documents chiefly by the confessional. Witness the past and present social events: the ladies are potent on the human mind and heart; they are acquainted with all secrets; they very often lead the political and religious leaders, rule families, and sometimes nations. Fearing to assume the responsibility of their influence, and still wishing to keep it, they hasten to find a security in going to confess. Believing that the confessor, being bound to the sacramental silence, will be faithful to this sacred duty knowing full well, too, that the Jesuits are the most tolerant among the priests in matter of sins and intrigues, they choose as directors of their consciences these Reverend Fathers, and inform them about everything. But, as according to many theologians, the sacramental silence obliges only to keep unknown the penitents, and as the Jesuits are bound in conscience to unveil to their superiors all their thoughts, feelings, and all they know, they reveal all these events to the Superiors of the convents, who transmit them to the Provincials, and the Provincials to the General, in Rome. It is written in the second volume of the Constitution of the Jesuits — Article, "Formula scribendi,"
TRANSLATION. —

For what purpose does the General require these documents? It is from his seat at Rome, to direct all the Order, as a single man, as a machinist, who by his own will imposes upon his machine an arbitrary motion. It is to govern, con jointly with the Pope, the Roman kingdom, viz., by appointing military, civil, and religious officers, only their own creatures and friends — those slavish and despotic men, who are devoted to their absolute, anti-Christian, and tyrannical principles.

Again, for what purpose does the General of the Jesuits require these documents? To rule, conjointly with the Pope, the Roman Catholic church, viz., by imposing, in the name of God, absurd, arbitrary, despotical, and cruel beliefs, ordinances, bills, and laws, upon the minds and consciences of the Catholics, by choosing the Bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries among the clergymen, who are devoted body and soul to aristocratical principles. It is to influence the internal administration and foreign politics of all Governments, by directing the Provincials in their proceedings and intrigues. And what is the end of these proceedings and intrigues? To favor the promotion to employments and dignities of candidates who partake of their principles, views, and plans. And at what does the General aim To keep to the Pope his autocracy in his temporal kingdom, his divine power in his spiritual kingdom or property — the Roman Catholic church — and to obtain in him the greatest power possible, in all Realms, Empires, and Republics.

Lest the Provincials may be traitors, or not zealous enough to fulfil scrupulously their instructions, they are surrounded with spies appointed by the General, under the name of Procurors, Ministers, Monitors, or Inquisitors, which officers are bound to correct and denounce them, and to inform the General about all particularities of their behavior.

Behold the organization and administration of the Jesuits! They are a kind of wheel, of which the General is the nave, the simple members the spokes, and the dignitaries the felloes. They are united, and support so strongly, so indissolubly, each other, that their "plurality" constitutes a perfect "unity," a whole, indestructible, except from an outward external cause. But, to appreciate better the boundless authority, or rather omnipotence, of the General among the Jesuits, chiefly to infer more exact consequences, let us open the second volume of the Constitution of the Jesuits. We read at the article:

Thus, the General of the Jesuits is omnipotent, a kind of god among them. They must think, feel, believe, will, speak, act, preach, teach, write, do wrong, right, evil, good, according to his wishes and caprices, obey the Pope under his direction, worship God by his command and conformably to his instructions. But, as the General considers the Pope (by heart and vow) as his God in this world, he thinks, feels, believes, wills, acts, orders, in one word, identifies himself with the Pope, exactly in the same manner as the Jesuits do towards him. And what is Papacy? Witness history: it is the greatest foe of Christ, of his religion, of God, and of mankind.

Then, the Jesuits are tools, living-instruments in the hands of the Pope; and as they are scattered and powerful through all the world, they are the strongest support and pillar of his anti-Christian, anti-social, and anti-human tyranny. Pius IV. told an ambassador of Portugal that "the Jesuits were his soldiers;" Benedict XIV. called them "Janissaries of the Holy See."

The Order of the Jesuits is a Divine One. — The Pope confirmed the rule of the Saint and granted him a bull of confirmation.

To Deny that the Order of the Jesuits is Divinely perfect is a Heresy. — Americans, the Jesuits teach their novices that God inspired and revealed to Saint Ignatius their rules. You will see farther how blasphemous is their falsehood. Jesus Christ says:

But the Jesuits have held and taught, still hold and teach, all bad doctrines, have committed all crimes, as it shall be exposed, evil demonstrated.

Again we must infer that the Order and rules of the Jesuits are as sacred, as divine, as the Bible, or Christ's institutions — for the Popes forbid clergymen, laymen, etc.... to contradict them, under the greatest penalty, that of "Exconmmunication major;" which Ecclesiastical censure binds the faithful not to converse, deal, correspond, keep friendship or other relations with the excommunicated, and the excommunicated to live alone, abandoned by their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, kindred, friends, acquaintances, and fellow citizens.

If the Order and rules of the Jesuits have been revealed and inspired, they must admit that Clement XIV.(1769-74), suppressing both their Institute and their rules, was so much an enemy of God, so sacrilegious a destroyer of His works, that he solemnly declared that God mistook in inspiring and revealing their Institute and rules.

We must infer from this principle the blasphemous consequences, that God was wrong in putting in our heart the love of friends, and that Jesus Christ sinned in choosing Saint John for his friend among his apostles. 0, Jesuits, how unnatural, inhuman, anti-Christian, and hostile to God, is your teaching!

Americans, let us not forget the title of the classical and doctrinal code from which we extract the teaching of the Jesuits, namely: "Tract of the Christian and Religious Perfection." Since the Jesuits consider denunciation as a Christian perfection, they will carry out this doctrine wherever they will prevail. Then what will happen A system of denunciation will be organized in society. Friends shall betray and denounce their friends, sons their fathers, daughters their mothers, wives their husbands, husbands their wives. Hatred, vengeance, and intestine war,(pp61) will be stirred up. Society and families will present a wide field of contention and strife. Witness the past and present history of Europe.

Remedies against the Disease of the Love of our Kindred, Family.... Father, and Mother. —

The Vows of Religion are so Valuable that they Remit Sins without previous Confession and Absolution. —

The Jesuits maintain that they are the chief Catholics, the main soldiers of the Roman Church, consequently the strictest believers of this Church. However, it is an article of faith, that the sins committed after baptism are remitted only by confession and absolution; and in the case of perfect contrition, by the desire of confessing them. Then the Jesuits are not Roman Catholics, they ought to be termed "heretics." They still from the pulpit preach the Roman Catholic doctrine about the remission of sins. How can we explain this inconsistency?

When further you will read the summary of their doctrines and of their history, you will discover their motives and their aim. You will see that they believe or do not believe, act or act not, according to the circumstances, and always according to their interests. If they teach their novices such doctrines, it is only because they know that in exaggerating the merit and reward of the religious vows, they will succeed more surely to kindle their imagination.

Pay the most serious attention to the explanation of those principles about obedience. Then you will see that they have been the first spring of all the crimes of the Jesuits, of all their impious and immoral doctrines, of all their dreadful history.

That obedience is a motion of the will without discussion and examination, a voluntary death, a life rid of all kinds of curiosities, and a deprivation of one's own discerning.

Effectively, a true monk ought to be so dead to the world that his entrance into religion may be called a civil death. Then, let us be as though we were dead. A dead body sees not, answers not, complains not, and feels not. Let us have not eyes to see the deeds of our Superiors. Let us be without a word to reply when we are ordered. Let us not complain, and when we feel displeased at an order let us stifle the feeling.

I have represented the Jesuits imposing upon the minds of unfortunate novices the belief, that the mystical science and perfection are acquired in thirty lessons; that prayer is an organic exercise; that they ought to be bound to mystical conversations, to be without eyes, to speak with affectation; that the Jesuitical Order holds from God the sublime mission to cast down Protestantism; that the rules of their Order are perfect, the Order itself a divine one; and that, to deny its divine perfection is a heresy, consequently that its smallest rules ought to be observed scrupulously; that we are manure and pigs; that humility consists in kissing the feet, in eating below the table, in lying down at the door of a refectory, and so on; that they ought to reveal all their thoughts and feelings; that friendship is condemnable and denunciation a sacred duty; that to die to their families, even to hate them, are sacred obligations; that they must not write to their fathers, mothers, etc., or visit them, or think of them, because these are the best remedies against the disease of their love; that the religious vows are sublime, for the reason that they rid them of the care of wealth, of raising a family, of directing themselves; that these vows are valuable enough to remit sin without previous confession and absolution; that laymen swim in mud and filth; that wealth, pleasures, honors, love of one's family, which they declare unlawful in society, are lawful in the Jesuitical family.

Now, draw the conclusions. Judge for yourselves whether I was right or wrong in telling that the houses of noviciate of the Jesuits are novel and monstrous butcheries, where they immolate, not animals, not human bodies, but souls created in the likeness of God; that their noviciate is a kind of pneumatic machine, extracting one after another all the faculties of the soul; that their novices having been wrought upon, are in the world with living bodies but without souls, having left them at the disposal of their Superiors, and being merely tools in their hands and blind executors of their arbitrary, capricious, and criminal orders. Judge whether the moulders and moulded, the masters and disciples, are not monsters in society — whether the doctrines which they hold and scatter all over the world, in preaching, confessing, teaching, invading families, are any thing else than monstrous and subversive of society.

Impieties. — "We can with difficulty determine when we are, strictly speaking, obliged to love God."
Christ, however, answered the doctor of the law asking him what was the first and great commandment:

"We are not bound by feeling to love God." If we are not bound by feeling to love God, how will we be bound by feeling to love our fellow-creatures, fellow-citizens, friends, kindred, fathers, and mothers? But let us not be astonished that the Jesuits hold this doctrine, for let us recollect that their hearts have been killed during their noviciate, when their masters taught them forgetfulness, contempt, hatred, for society and their own family.

"If you believe by an invincible error, that God orders you to blaspheme, blaspheme." (The R. F. Jesuit Casnedy — Theological Judgment. Explanation of the first commandment of God.)

"A penitent cursing, provoking his Maker, and, in his anger being carried on to scandalous words, will only sin venially, for passion prevents him from appreciating what he says."

"Besides purgatory known to every body," says Lacroix after Bellarmine and Guimeniius, "there is another place which is a beautiful meadow, covered with all sorts of flowers, lighted brilliantly, exhaling a delicious odor, which is a delightful spot where the souls do not suffer the pain of the senses. This spot is the dwelling of the slight sinners, a very mitigated purgatory, and a kind of sanatorial place on where we may live without dishonor. Then, there we will not be displeased."

"As to the other purgatory, not a sinner has spent there more than ten years." (Life of the Reverend Father Jesuit Claudius Lacroix.)

It is an article of faith in the Roman Catholic Church that a sole purgatory exists, but it makes no difference. Since the Jesuits pretend to be, even by Divine confirmation, the chief soldiers of this church, its strongest defenders, and sent by God himself to support it and cast down Protestantism, evidently they are allowed to change the creed of this Holy Papal Church.

Myself, I will never be admitted into "this beautiful meadow, this delightful spot, this sanatorial prison," even into the other purgatory, considering that I am the greatest sinner among all in unveiling the Jesuits, and consequently deserving a copious dose of their poison called "Aqua Toffana;" and to be buried in hell as soon as possible.

"Mary would prefer to be eternally damned, deprived of seeing her Son, and necessitated to live with the devils, rather than to be bred in original sin." (Rev. Father Jesuit Oquett — Sermon preached at Ascala,1600.)

What is the strictest duty of a mother? The maternal love. What is the glory and crown of a mother? The maternal love. What is the happiness of a mother? To see her son continually; to live near him, beneath the same roof; to partake of his troubles, anxieties, sufferings, successes, joys, pleasures; to mingle and identify her mind and heart with (pp98) his mind and heart; in one word, to lavish on him her cares, solicitude, tenderness, and boundless love. Her irremediable sorrow is to live far from him, without hoping to meet him again — to see him dying. However, the Jesuits dare assure that "Mary would prefer not to see her Son.... rather than to be bred in original sin." What insult, what injury, to the maternal heart of the mother of Christ!

Again: all men coming into life are guilty of original sin. Then, Mary being one of the daughters of Adam, ought to partake of the condition of her fellow-creatures, and like them to be guilty of original sin. It follows, that to suppose she would claim such a privilege and stand above the human family, is a slander against her humility, and is to charge her with selfishness, blind pride, despising and denial of her family. Also, how far from truth, from the feelings of Mary, the Pope and the Bishops have been and are, in celebrating annually, and that with a solemn rite, the feast of the "immaculate conception," and in exhibiting Societies under this calling.

The Jesuits add, that "Mary would prefer to be eternally damned and necessitated to live with the devils, rather than to be bred in original sin." Decidedly they forget logic, for the Scripture informs us that the sinners only shall be eternally damned and necessitated to live with the devils. Then, the Jesuits suppose that Mary would prefer to be guilty of actual sins rather than of original sin.

"Saint Ignatius saw the souls of his fellows arising to heaven and stopping to converse with him. They foretold to him that every Christian wearing the Jesuitical habit should have the privilege to go straight to heaven."

"In Malabar and China, the Jesuits allowed the converts to worship the images of idols, provided they would secretly carry a crucifix." (Magnum Bellarium Romanum — p. 388.)

Is not this compliance an idolatrous one? Of course. But religion in the hands of the Jesuits is merely a political lever to grow up wealthy, powerful, and to reach their criminal aim, viz., to obtain for the Pope the universal monarchy.

"The Jesuits have answers for all tastes, and are so complying, that, when they are in a country where a God crucified is considered as a folly, they suppress the scandal of the cross, preach a Christ glorious, and no Jesus Christ suffering. They did so in China and in India, where they permitted to the Christians even idolatry, by the cunning invention of an image of Christ hid under their clothes, to which they should mentally offer the public adorations, addressed either to the idol Cachinchoam or to their Keum-fucum."

"We may discard our title of Christian, and act as the worldlians act, though what we will do may not be, properly speaking, permitted by the gospel."

O Jesuits, what leading thread you put in our hands to explore the windings of the labyrinth of your history! How faithfully and carefully you have practised this hypocritical maxim! In feigning humility, you grew up powerful. In feigning chastity, you were allowed to be refinedly licentious. In feigning piety, you reached consideration. In feigning devotedness to youth and solid learning, you obtained by gratuitous donations many thousand colleges, filled with numberless scholars, who paid very dear for the superficial instruction sold to them by yourselves. In feigning poverty, you acquired immense wealth. In feigning prodigality, you became lucratively covetous. In feigning idolatry, you obtained from the Emperor of China motley, dignities, even a living in his palace. In feigning sensibility, you gained the devotedness of the rich and noble ladies. In feigning commiseration towards the poor, you harvested a countless amount of alms which you either pocketed, or politically distributed to obtain the brutal favor of the mob. In feigning servility before the secular clergy, you oppressed them. In feigning zeal in the diocesses, you usurped the jurisdiction of the bishops. In feigning a sublime and mystical doctrine, you gained the consciences and all the faculties of the soul, and between us I could add, the bodies of the devotees. In feigning to have discovered a rosy road leading to heaven, namely, in dancing, immodestly dressing, tissuing sinful intrigues of love, spending time frivolously and voluptuously, etc., you became the confessors and directors of the rich, influential, and noble ladies, who paid largely for your sacrilegious compliances with money and protection, and in getting for you charges, dignities, wealth, in serving all your ambitious and criminal desires. In feigning to find an easy way to lead to Paradise the mistresses of kings, you obtained their favor, gratitude, gifts, and rewards, of every kind. In feigning love of royalty, and in widening the narrow way of the gospel, you obtained the confidence of Kings and Emperors; were admitted to their councils; imposed your views upon them in God's name; confessed, absolved, and gave them the sacrament, in spite of their tyrannical and criminal behavior. And for what? All this, to kill them after a while if they did not obey passively your wishes, which were in the style of the court imperious orders. In feigning friendship for the ministers of Kings and Emperors, you disgraced and banished them from the courts. In feigning republicanism, you invaded the Republics, formented disunion, hatred, and kindled civil war, to dissolve them — to reach by these means your pretentious and criminal aim, viz., to conquer for the Pope the "universal monarchy," which through him you would possess. Finally, in feigning devotedness to all forms of governments, you disturbed all. In feigning, the most sincere attachment for the Princes, Kings, and Emperors, you betrayed them all, except the Popes, or at least Papacy.

...religious things are a spiritual merchandise of which the Jesuits are the storekeepers; that, according to a greater or less ability and artfulness in dealing, they will be allowed to get less or more money; that the sole difference between the goods-merchants and them will be, that the first shall be termed profane dealers, and the Jesuits sacred dealers.

"Sittlony and Astrology are lawful." (The R. F. Jesuit Ars. de Kirn-Theol. Tripartita, Tome 2, Tract 5, ch. 12: published in 1744.)

Astrologers, fortune-tellers, mountebanks of every denomination, flock together! The Jesuits will grant you licenses and letters-patent for exercising your honorable and useful trade. These licenses and letters-patent will be valuable, for the Jesuits (at least they say so) hold such power from God by letters of attorney, which He bestowed upon them as His lieutenants in this world. Simony has been declared lawful by fifteen theologians of the Jesuits.

"We may swear in a slight or grave matter without the intention of holding our oath, if we have good reasons to swear." (The R. F. Jesuit Cardenas-Crisis Theologica-Question Oath.)

"We may swear that we did not a thing, though we have done it, by understanding within ourselves either 'any parlticular day,' or 'before we are born.' Likewise, such expedient is frequently convenient and justifiable, when it is necessary or useful to our health, honor, or social station." (The R.F. Jesuit Sanchez-Opera Moralis. — Part-2, Book 3, cli. 6.)

"The followers of Probabilism ought to be called 'virgins,' because they do not commit a venial sin." (The R. F. Jesuit Caramuel — Fundamental Theology, p. 134.)

"A confessor may follow the probable opinion of his penitent without caring for his own, and that, even when the probable opinion of the penitent is injurious to a neighbor, as for instance, if it is a question of not restoring what has been stolen." (The R. F. Jesuit N. Baldel — Disputes sur la Theologie Morale, Livre 4, p. 402.)

We consider such teaching from the Jesuits as a natural consequence of their principle of blind obedience.

"An opinion is probable when it is taught by a single doctor, and we may follow it." (The R. F. Jesuit Peter Nicole.)

"A man is not drunk whilst he can discriminate somebody from a cart loaded with hay." (The R. F. Jesuit Busembaum. — Theologia Moralis — Article, Gluttony.)

"Amphibologies are permitted for a just cause. Thus, as the Latin word, 'Gallus,' means either a 'cock' or a 'Frenchman,' though I have killed a Frenchman, I may answer 'no,' by understanding a 'cock.'"

"This man does not lie who says: 'I did not such a thing,' though he did, provided he fashion his negotiation as an able man ought to do." (The R. F. Jesuit Sanchez — Opera MorIalis.)

"If you believe invincibly that you are ordered to lie, lie." (The R.F. Jesuit Casnedy — Theological Judgment, p. 278.)

"You may have two confessors; the one for the mortal sins and the other for the venial, in order to keep the esteem of your customary confessor. You must, however, not remain in the mortal sin by abusing this latitude." (Common teaching of tile Theologians of the Jesuits and of other Romish Doctors.)

"According to the Jesuits, men may without scruple attack one another by detraction and slander, even they may attempt the civil and natural life of each other." (Chauvelin, Counsellor in the Parliament of Paris. — See his Memorial to the Parliament on the Principles of the Jesuits.)

"To calumniate for the preservation of one's honor is not a mortal sin." (The R. F. Jesuit Caramuel — Fundamental Theology.)

"A judge may receive money to pass according to his ar bitrary will, a sentence favorable to one of both parties, when their rights are equal."

"A judge, having been bribed to pass an unjust sentence, is not obliged to make restitution." (The R. F. Jesuit Esco bar — Moral Theology, vol. 1, Book 2.)

"A Judge may receive gifts from the parties, under the color of friendship, or of gratitude for precious justice done to them; or because they intend to oblige him to do it later, or to be more careful, or to despatch the suit," (The R. F. Jesuit Molina — Works, vol. 1, Tract 2.)

"If one cannot sell his wine according to its value, either on account of the injustice of the judge, or on account of the malice of the purchasers, he may lessen his measure, mingle some water with the wine, and sell it as wine pure and without alteration." (The R. F. Jesuit Toilet — "Des Sept Peches Mortels," p. 1027.)

"If we see a robber resolved to steal from a poor man, we may dissuade him in pointing out a rich one whom he shall rob in his stead." (The R. F. Jesuits Vasquez and Castropaolo — Tract 6; and Escobar, Tract 5.)

Question. — "Are we permitted to steal on account of our necessity?"
Answer. — "Yes, we may steal either secretly or otherwise, when we cannot supply our wants." (The R. F. Jesuit Peter Aragjon — Abridgment of the Theological Summary of Saint Thomas, pp. 214, 365.)

"A servant may, intending compensation, steal from his master; still on the condition that he will not be caught in stealing." (Confessors Manual, p. 137.)

"The domestics who believe that their wages are not worth their labor, may steal secretly from their masters." (The R. F. Jesuit Cardenas — Crisis Theologica, Diss, 23.)

"A wife may take the property of her husband when he is a gambler, in order to supply her spiritual wants, and in order that she may do as other wives do." (The R. F. Jesuit Gordonus — Universal Moral Theology, Book 5.)

"If fathers and mothers refuse money to their children, they may steal some from them."

"A child who serves his father, may rob secretly from him as much as his father should have paid a stranger." (The R. F. Jesuit Escobar — Moral Theology, vol. 4, Book 4.)

Thirty-five theologians of the Jesuits have taught theft.

"The tavern-keepers may mix wine and water together, and the farmers mingle straw and wheat, to sell these goods at the current price; provided, still, that this wine and wheat may not be worse than those which are daily sold." (The R. F. Jesuit Amedee Guimenius.)

"The revolt of a clergyman against a king is not a crime of high-treason, because he is not his subject." (The R. F. Jesuit Sa -Aphorisms- word c7ericus.)

"Who could be simple enough not to admit that, when a tyrant has endangered a nation, all means are lawful to cast off his yoke." (The R. F. Jesuit Marianna-De Rege.)

"Tis permitted to kill an aggressor in defending one's self, whoever he may be. A father may kill his son, a wife her husband, a servant his master, a layman his parish priest, a soldier his general, an inferior his superior, an accused his judge, a scholar his teacher, a subject his prince." (The R.F. Jesuit Azor — Abrege des cas de conscience, Livre 3.)

"A man is allowed to kill a false accuser, the witnesses produced by him, and the judge himself." (The R. F. Jesuit Francis Amicus — Theological Cursus, Tract 29, ch. 2.)

"A priest who commits adultery is not criminal in killing the husband who assails him." (The R. F. Jesuit Henriquez — Summary of Moral Theology, vol. 1, book 4.)

"Regularly, we may kill a man who steals from us a crown piece." (The R.F. Jesuit Escobar.)

You hold that Jesus Christ descended from heaven to redeem us. Still, in murdering a man, you send him straight to hell; since you declare that the theft of a crown-piece is a mortal sin. But we are mistaken; we forget that with your left hand you will bestow upon him absolution, and with the right you will poignard him.

Question. — "If somebody attempts to ruin my reputation by calumny, am I allowed to kill him directly?"
Answer.— "Certainly; you may fitly kill him, still not publicly to avoid scandal." (The R. F. Jesuit Airault — p. 319.)

"You may falsely accuse your enemy to take away his credit, even to kill him." (The R. F. Jesuit Guimenius 7th proposition.)

"We may kill by treachery a man banished." (The R. F. Jesuit Escobar — vol. 4, p. 148.)

"It is lawful to kill any man to save a crown." (The R. F. Jesuit Molina — vol. 3.)

Very well, Reverend Father, you are right and logical. Is not the sheep the property of the wolf? Still, you killed kings. "But only," reply you, "when they were noxious to our Order or to Papacy. When they supported us or Papacy, we declared them crowned by God, and advocated their power against the people with all our influence."

"A monk who, instead of flying, kills his aggressor, does not sin against justice, for he is not obliged to fly." (The R. R. Jesuit Lessius — Art. Obligationes Clericorum, in his Moral Theology.)

"In all cases, when any man has the right to kill another, he may, if he feels moved, authorize a neighbor to do it in his stead." (The R.F. Jesuit Busembaum; Moral Theology, vol. 1, p. 295.)

"A father may wish the death of the husband who is rough with his daughter, because he must love his daughter more than his son-in-law."

"A son is allowed to desire the death of his father, still not on account of the death but of the inheritance." (The R. F. Jesuit John Cardenas; Crisis Theologica, p. 242 published in Cologne in 1702.)

"A son may lawfully kill his father when he is noxious to society." (The R.F. Jesuit Escobar — Moral Theology, vol 4, Book 31.)

Thirty-seven theologians of the Jesuits have taught murder.

"We are allowed to kill an unjust aggressor, though he might be General, Prince, or King — innocence is always more useful than injustice — and a prince who persecutes his subjects is a wild, cruel, and noxious beast, which ought to be killed." (The R. F. Jesuit Paul Comitolo — Moral Decisions, Book 4, p. 458.)

Jesuits, explain at least in what circumstances a king will be a tyrant. If you term "tyrant" a King who does not favor you and the Pope, he certainly is not a tyrant; witness Henry VI., King of France, whom you have poignarded, and so many others whom you have immolated with iron or poison.

"Every subject may kill his Prince in the case of usurpation. It is so right that the murderers of such tyrants have been in all nations highly honored. However, it is to be supposed that he is a usurper, for if he has a probable right it is sinful to kill him." (The R. F. Jesuit Martin BecanOpusculee Theologiques, p. 130.) According to you, Jesuits, a usurper is that one who is not King or Emperor by Divine right But he is King or Emperor by Divine right who has been crowned and anointed with the holy chrism, or he who favors your Order and the Pope: your history strongly induces us to believe so. Then all the other Princes are reputed usurpers and ought to be killed.

Kings, Emperors, chiefly Presidents of Republics, who govern by the free will and election of the people, and not by pretended Divine right, study this lesson and keep carefully in your mind that every one of your subjects or fellow-citizens may kill you, not only without sin, but even in the name of God, whom the Jesuits represent (at least they say so) in this world and in his church.

"A tyrant may be killed by open force and arms. However, the best way is to use fraud and stratagem, in order to preserve the country from private and public dangers." (The R. F. Jesuit Malarianna. — Reg. Institut. Liber. 6. 1.)

"The Catholics honored Garnet as a martyr. Every body has heard of the ear of wheat, upon which a drop of blood had fallen: the face of father Garnet was painted on it with the most striking likeness." (The R. F. Jesuit Feller. Dictionnaire Historique.)

However, who was this strange martyr? The principal leader of the conspiracy termed "Gunpowder Plot;" a cruel fanatic who prayed publicly in the following manner: "God destroy a perfidious nation (England); exterminate her from the land of the living, that we may joyfully pay to Jesus Christ the praises which we owe to him." Who was this Reverend Father Jesuit? A monster who, asked if it was lawful to cause the death of several innocent in killing many culpable, answered cruelly and without hesitation: "If it is useful to the Roman Catholic faith, and if the culpable are more numerous than the innocent, it is right to cause their death."

The conspirators Catesby, Greenwell, Tesmond, Garnet, and Oldercorn, had spent one year in digging a mine below the Parliament (England). They intended to blow up the Halls of the Commons and Lords, and thus kill all their members, the King and his Ministers. Moreover, the Reverend Father Jesuit Garnet made many clear and important confessions, which lie in the archives of England, signed by the hands of this regicide.

"To kill an heretical King is an action meritorious before God. Neither Henry Ill., nor Henry IV., nor the Elector of Saxony, nor Queen Elizabeth, are true sovereigns. The action of James Clement killing Henry III. was an heroical one. If it is possible to war against the Bearnais (Henry IV.), let us war; but, if we cannot war, let us kill him." (The R. F. Jesuit Guignard — who was hung — Fragment of the Suit.)

"When a Prince governs tyrannically, he may lawfully be killed by his vassals or subjects, even with aguettes and poison, in spite of the oath of faithfulness taken in his hands; this is lawful even without previous sentence or order of any judge."

"Any one may kill a usurper if there is no other way to get rid of him." (The R. F. Jesuit Emmanuel Sa.) "Certainly," exclaims the Reverend Father Jesuit Andrew Delio — "any one is allowed to kill a usurper if he can not be dethroned by other means!"

"Is it not strange that men professing to be monks, to whom I have never been and will never be noxious, daily attempt my life?" (Words of Henry IV., King of France. Memoires de Sully Ministre de Henry IV. — Tome 1, Lettre de Henry IV.)

Seventy-two of the Theologians of the Jesuits have taught regicide.

"A monk casting off his dress, does not fall under excommunication, though it might be for a shameful action; for (pp139)instance, to commit fornication, to steal, or to go more secretly to brothels." (The R. F. Jesuit Escobar — De Luxuria.)

"We may haunt the brothels to convert the prostitutes, though we will likely be exposed to sin with them. We are allowed it, even when we have already sinned with them, having been seduced by their eyes and courting." (The R. F. Jesuit Etienne Bauny. Somme des peches, p. 77.)

"Suppose that a clergyman — knowing full well, that he will be in danger in going to the room of a woman, with whom he entertains amorous relations — should be surprised in adultery by the husband, whom he kills to preserve his life or limbs, he is not irregular, and may continue his ecclesiastical functions." (The R. F. Jesuit Henriquez. — Summary of Moral Theology, work published in 1600.)

"A prostitute may justly require a salary, but she is not allowed to charge too much. A girl and a prostitute who secretly deal alike with their bodies, have the same right. A married woman is not allowed to ask money, because the benefits of her prostitution are not stipulated in the contract of marriage." (The R. F. Jesuit Gordoni — Morale Universelle, tome 11, livre 5.)

"Rape is not a circumstance grave enough in order that we must aver it when we confess; we suppose that the girl has assented to it." (The R. F. Jesuit Facundez.)

"If any one entertains criminal relations with a married woman, not because she is married, but because she is handsome — as he abstracts the circumstance of her marriage, these relations do not constitute the sin of adultery." (The R.F. Jesuit Moullet — Compendium for the use of the Ecclesiastical Seminaries.)

"The children are obliged to denounce their kindred and parents who are heretics, though knowing they will be burnt. They may either starve them to death, or kill them as enemies of humanity." (The R. F. Jesuit Escobar — Moral Theology, book 31.)

"Parents may desire the death of their children, and of any one who disturbs the Catholic church." (The R. F. Jesuit Fegelli — Practical Questions, Part 4, ch. 19.)

"The Christian and Catholic children may accuse their parents of heresy, though they foresee that they will be burnt and killed; and not only they will be allowed to refuse them food if they avert them from the Catholic faith, but they will be permitted to kill them, without sin, if they have tried to dissuade them violently from the Catholic faith." (The R. F. Jesuit Etienne Facundez — Traite sur les Commandments de l'Eglise, Tome 1, Livre 1, ch. 33 — Ouvrage publiee en 1626.)

"It is of faith that the Pope has the right to dethrone the Kings who are heretics and rebels. But a monarch dethroned by the Pope is no longer either a King or a lawful Prince: if he refuses to obey the Pope after his degradation, then he must be styled a 'tyrant,' and may be killed by the first comer — cuilibet de populo licet illun interficere." (The R. F. Jesuit Suarez — Defensio fidei, Liber 6, caput 4.)

This Suarez is the same who, next after Saint Thomas, is considered the first theologian of Catholicism; the same Doctor of whom it is said, in the history of his life, that in his youth he was without talent, but that on a certain night the blessed Mary opened prodigiously his intellect.

"The pope may kill with a word (potest verbo corporalem vitam assumere). For the right of feeding the sheep having been granted to him, was not the right of killing the wolves granted to him (potestatem lupos interficiendi)?" (The R.F. Jesuit Emmanuel Sa. — In his Theology — Questions on the Authority of the Church.)

"The pope may reprimand Kings, and punish them with death." (The R. F. Jesuit Sanctarel. — Of the Pope, ch. 30, p. 296, work published in 1625.)

"A man condemned by the Pope may be killed anywhere." (The R. F. Jesuit Lacroix — vol. 1, p. 294.)

"We may kill anywhere a man proscribed by the Pope, because the Pope has at least an indirect jurisdiction over all the world, even in temporal things." (The R. F. Jesuit Busembaum — Theologia Moralis.)

In reading these sentences of denunciation, persecution, proscription, blood, and death, we ask ourselves if the authors and apostles of these principles are not fiends with the human face. At least we feel relieved in thinking that they are denied by everybody, and looked upon as monsters in the human family. But we fall overthrown when the Roman Catholic Church answers us that they, the Jesuits, are her main soldiers, her most learned, strongest, and the most devoted supporters. We feel horrified in thinking of our ancestors, who have been victims of these principles; in thinking that citizens, friends, and kindred, denounced and drove one another to the sacerdotal prisons, and thence to the scaffolds; in thinking that husbands were butchers of their wives, and wives of their husbands: that sons starved their fathers and mothers to death, or drove them to the dungeons, under the poignard and wood-piles of Bishops, Monks, and Popes; that fathers and mothers, with hearts oppressed, drove to monacal and papal butcheries the children to whom they had given life. And all these things, Jesuits, you taught and imposed upon our ancestors, in the name of Christ the Merciful, the Redeemer; in the name of God!

In reading the summary of the doctrines which the Jesuits have held and taught — which they still hold and teach; in reflecting on their principles, so impious, so inhuman, so immoral, so obscene, so intolerant, and so anti Christian, you likely were astonished, and thought that the writers who taught and professed such doctrines were the villians of the Society of Jesus: but you were mistaken. These writers have been always, and still are, considered the main Theologians and the light of the Society. Their Theology is taught now to all the secular clergy in the Ecclesiastical Seminaries, and applied by all the priests in their ministry; not only in a few countries but all over the Roman Catholic world. The Pope himself has beatified several of the aforesaid Theologians of the Jesuits.

These Theologians have been always and still are oracles among the Jesuits. All these Reverend Fathers, in preaching, in writing, in confessing, in short, in exercising the sacerdotal ministry, have followed and still follow their teaching, all their doctrines, except a few points of morals which the Pope, in order to delude the people, politically has condemned. I notwithstanding can solemnly assure you, that from my relations with the Jesuits, my sacerdotal ministry, chiefly that of confession, they certainly hold, practise, and apply all these doctrines.

Perhaps you will ask me if these principles have been approved by all the Society of Jesus. I answer to your question in quoting this article of their rule: "No volume shall be published by one of the members without a previous approbation of the Superiors."

Therefore, Americans, we must necessarily infer that the whole society of Jesus is responsible for the principles contained in the books published by its Theologians, and for all their consequences.

"Do the Jesuits," continue you, "proclaim actually from the pulpit these principles?"
Certainly not. They are too artful to show what they are, especially when in the minority.
"Do the Jesuits," ask you, "apply their immoral principles in confessing?" I feel sorry to be obliged to answer: yes.

We have related summarily, how the Jesuits are educated or rather moulded during their noviciate — what doctrines they have held, taught, and still hold and teach. Let us, at present, group, summarily, some facts of their history. We say some facts, for several volumes might scarcely contain the details of their crimes.

Paris was the first cradle of the Order of the Jesuits. Saint Ignatius Loyola, a man unfortunately too famous for mankind's welfare, was its founder. Having exalted the ambitious and fanatical views of Francis Xavier, Peter Le Fevre, James Laynez, Rodriguez, they united with each other by vows in the Church Montmartre, near Paris. Soon after they came to Rome; exposed their aim, designs, and plans to the Pope, and promised to add a fourth vow to those of poverty, chastity, and obedience, namely, that of obeying him and his successors on the throne of Saint Peter.

The Pope Paul III. accepted their proposal, and introduced them into the political life, by approving and confirming them as a religious body under the calling of "Society of Jesus," with the Bull "Regiminis militantis Ecclesie."

They inflamed talented but fanatical and inexperienced youth; and thus won a great many proselytes. To overcome difficulties, they applied the principle, which henceforth was to be their favorite one, "Divide et regna," "Divide and you shall reign." They sowed discord and hatred among families, provinces, nations, Kings and Emperors whom by intrigues they succeeded in surrounding. They disturbed chiefly all Germany in wearing all sorts of masks, playing all parts, stirring up all the popular passions against the Protestants, and still feigning to calm the parties.

The Jesuits displayed under the aforesaid circumstances, a hypocrisy so mean and so artful, that in Bavaria they declared expressly, in order to deceive the Protestants, that they intended to restore the former Christian faith; and that Saint Ignatius had solicited and obtained an introduction to Luther, by the intercourse of Paquier, the celebrated lawyer of the University of Paris.

At the same time, the Jesuits excited the Pope and the temporal powers against the Reformation. The Reverend Fathers Jesuits Bobadilla and Lejay, who, nearly at the same moment were troubling by the lowest duplicity the Diet of Ratisbonne, and the religious conferences moved there from Worms, were the letters and responsible Papal agents of this important and machiavelistic mission.

The Pope Paul III., appointed as Theologians of his holiness, for the council of Trent, the Revered Fathers Jesuits Laynez and Sallneton. Thus he rewarded the Jesuits for the solemn vow of obedience to the Papacy, taken by their Society. However, the principal end of the Pope in choosing these Fathers, was to find in them devoted and able creatures; deadly enemies of Protestantism, and zealous defenders of the papal usurpations against a great many Bishops opposed to them.

The Jesuits appreciating all the advantages of such a proposal, and chiefly knowing that it was a sure title to the highest favors and privileges of the Popes, through whom they might become rid of the jurisdiction of the Bishops, accepted it gratefully, and sent to the council the Fathers Laynez and Salmeron, who fulfilled heartily and successfully their mission.

The Jesuits had not been mistaken in their hopes, the Popes after a short while, granted them the famous Bulls; which emancipated them from all Episcopal jurisdiction, and excommunicated even the laymen who would dare contradict their rules.

The Reverend Father Jesuit Bobadilla, by cringing and flattery, became confidential confessor and director of Ferdinand I. By him he governed Germany from 1541, to 1549. Fortunately for that country which he disturbed, and by the political and religious dissensions which he formented, impoverished, he trusted too much in his influence over the mind of the Emperor. Having plotted and thwarted the interim of Charles, he fell from his power, and was finally disgraced.

The Jesuits surrounded the fanatic Duke of Bavaria, who was displeased on account of the interim; excited him against Ferdinand I., and were authorized bv him to teach at Ingolstadt. The Reverend Father Jesuit Cassius, who had been appointed Provincial in Germany, and who was to be, during about thirty years, so noxious to that country, was their leader and head of these intrigues.

Ferdinand was obliged to yield. He called them in Vienna to stop — at least said he — the ruin of the Romish Church. He appointed the Reverend Father Jesuit Canisius Visitor of the University of Vienna. If Maximilian II., was threatened to be poisoned, as it is ascertained from the writers of the two parties, this crime took place at this epoch, and was ascribed to the vengeance and policy of the Jesuits.

In 1554 the Jesuits had invaded all classes of society, and alarmed all powers; so thick, so powerfully they had grown up. And, in what manner? By artful policy, in changing with circumstances; in by turns, flattering, lying, slandering, stooping, threatening, promising; in one word, in handling masterly the deepest hypocrisy.

In France the Jesuits succeeded in gaining the protection of the Cardinal De Loraine, and by his interference, obtained from the king, Henry II., the right of collecting money, building chapels and opening colleges all over the territory of France. The third of August, the Parliament alarmed, decreed that the letters patent of Henry II. and the Brief of the Pope Julius III. should be communicated to the Bishop of Paris, and to the Faculty of Theology.

"Considering;"
1. "That the new 'Society' attributes to itself the strange name of 'Society of Jesus.' "
2. "That it admits indifferently in its bosom, every kind of people, bastards, rascals...."
3. "That it has neither rules nor constitutions, nor the manners and behavior which discriminate the monks from the laymen."
4. "That it obtained many privileges, liberties and indemnities; principally relative to the administration of sacraments, thus damaging the Bishops, Clergy, Lords, Princes, citizens and Universities................"

The Faculty of Theology passed on the first of December of the same year, the following Decree:

"The Faculty of Theology considering:"
1. "That the Society of Jesus dishonors the Monastical and Religious Orders, of which it enfeebles the discipline by its want of the pious practices, which generate fervor and keep up virtue."

2. "That it causes the transgression of the vows, escapes from submission to the Prelates; dispossesses unjustly the ecclesiastical Lords and others of their rights; generates in the civil and religious governments, disturbance, complaints, dissensions, lawsuits, contentions, jealousies, rebellions, and divisions of every kind."

"Declares for all these motives, that the aforesaid Society is dangerous to religion; to the church which it disturbs; to the monastical discipline which it enfeebles; and that it is organized rather for the ruin than for the edification of the faithful.."

Many years before the Jesuits had invaded Portugal and Spain. In Portugal they had been, at first, extraordinarily influential. In Spain, Charles V. who had pondered the consequences of the power of the Jesuits, had not favored them. Melchior Cano, a Dominican, who was undoubtedly the most celebrated Doctor of the University of Salamanca, had denounced them publicly as forerunners of Anti-christ. Don Martinex Cilicio, Archbishop of Toledo, had expelled them from Ascala, and the people of Sarragossa, from their city. In 1556, the Jesuits availed themselves of a circumstance with the greatest ability. Donna Maria of Portugal having died, they engaged the young King of Naples, Sicilia, and Low Countries, to marry the daughter of Henry VIII. of England. They withal invited Charles V., under the pretext of the salvation of his soul being at stake, to abdicate his crown. They sent to London, to solicit the hand of the daughter of Henry, Edmond Campion, who, afterwards convicted of high treason, was condemned to be tortured and beheaded in London, on the 28th of November, 1581. By this compliance and political intrigue, the Jesuits gained the gratitude and confidence of Philip II., and began to rule Spain. At the (pp155) same time, they founded colleges in Ingolstadt and Vienna.

The Jesuits tried to obtain more credit by profane and sacred means. To adorn their Order with a pretended divine seal, they published everywhere that God empowered them to perform miracles — but being careful to say that these miracles happened in far distant countries, but their existence might be controlled. They proclaimed from the pulpit, in their writings, in the parlors, in their colleges, in every manner and everywhere, that India, where they had missionaries, was a country which God blessed; that there all civilized or uncivilized kingdoms, provinces and colonies, resounded with the supernatural deeds, with which God had favored their apostle Francis Xavier, during and after his life. They extolled to the skies chiefly the following miracles: Read the relation of these miracles and many others in the lives of Saint Francis Xavier by the R. F. Jesuits Turselin and Bouhours.

Father Cogordan had little difficulty in persuading the Queen of France that the Jesuits were the appointed force for checking Protestantism. The Parlement was ordered to register the letters of Henry II., authorising the Jesuits. The courageous lawyers refused once more, and the whole of the faculties of the university joined in an emphatic condemnation of the Jesuits and their privileges.

The Parliament of Paris ordered that the Jesuits should sue for their Institute in the great Council of Trent. The tenth of October, John Prevost, Rector of the University (France), was compelled to forbid them to teach, because they excited and misled youth. Then they asked to be incorporated in the University, but they entangled so much the conditions of their admission, that their petition was disregarded.

See, "Annales de la Societe des Soi-dissant Jesuits, ou, Recueil historique et chronologique de toutes les pieces ecrites, contre les Jesuites." Edition in 4 volumes. In this work are related the most authentic and official pieces written, decreed, and published about the Jesuits. This work being a living condemnation and sentence against them, they have spent a good deal of money to cause all the copies to disappear, but many remain in the public libraries of France.

Francis II. had died at the close of 1560, and Catherine de Medici, the virtual ruler, was entirely won to the Jesuit view. But the Huguenots, led by the Prince de Conde and Admiral de Coligny, were so powerful that sober Catholic opinion favoured concession to them in the interest of peace : a policy which the Jesuits ruthlessly opposed wherever the Catholics were still in the majority. The Colloquy at Poissy was doubly interesting to the Jesuits, and Lainez went in person to secure their aims ; he was to obtain the recognition of the Society and to prevent the reconciliation of Catholics and Huguenots. Unhappily he succeeded in both designs. The Colloquy opened in July, when a small group of the abler Huguenot confronted six cardinals and forty bishops and archbishops, under the eyes of the King and Queen. When, after a few sittings, it was seen that concessions must be made to the "heretics" — (Protestants, Huguenots), Lainez delivered a fiery and eloquent discourse against this proposed sacrilege. Catherine de Medici trembled, and would attend no more sittings. The Colloquy ended in a futile wrangle of Lainez and the Huguenots, and France, thanks very largely to Lainez, went on her way toward the "St. Bartholomew Massacre".

In Bavaria (Germany), Albert V. was heavily burdened with debt, and it is something more than a coincidence that, the moment he admitted the Jesuits, the Vatican made him a large grant out of ecclesiastical funds; it is even clearer that the Jesuits were chiefly responsible for the persecution of Protestants.

In Trent there was no longer the least hope of persuading the Reformers to attend the sittings, and it now remained for the Church to decide what modifications it would adopt in order to meet the Protestant indictment. The northern monarchs, confronted with the task of reconciling large Catholic and Protestant populations, were disposed to make concessions, and their clergy were at least eager to verify the arrogant claims and moderate the extravagance of the papal court. This policy was opposed by Italy, Spain, and the Papacy, and the Jesuits were the most violent partisans of the ultramontane attitude. Even the wealth and luxury of the Roman court, which had been so largely responsible for the schism, found in the person of Lainez an eloquent defender. He was able to return to Rome with an assurance that the Catholic States made no concession, while the northern prelates had to retire to their seats with grave foreboding of bloody struggle.

In France, the Jesuits seduced Les Guizes in flattering and promising them support in their political and ambitious views. So powerfully protected, they corrupted the celebrated lawyer Versoris and attacked the University. In spite of the talent of the famous Pasquier, and or his well-grounded leading: in spite of the Parliament; even in spite of the will of the people, they were authorized in all their plans to monopolize the public instruction.

When the Cardinal-Protector of the Society died in 1564, Pope Pius IV. undertook that office himself, as if to intimidate its critics. Shortly afterwards he appointed a commission of cardinals and prelates to consider the establishment of a seminary at Rome, and they recommended that the Jesuits should have charge of it. The proposal inflamed the Roman critics of the Society, and the scandals of Montepulciano and Milan and all the other scandals were fiercely discussed, however, the Pope held firm.

The most notable feature of the Portuguese province was the early interference of the Jesuits in politics. The primitive design of avoiding politics and forbidding Jesuits to frequent the courts of princes had first been set aside by Ignatius himself, and was quite inconsistent with the general idea of obtaining the favour of the rich and powerful. In Portugal the court was now dominated by Jesuits; Father Miguel de Torres was confessor of the Queen-Regent Catherine, Father Gonzales‘ da Camara confessor of the young King Sebastian, and Father Leo Henriquez confessor of Cardinal Dom Henry, the King’s grand-uncle.

A very grave domestic quarrel arose in the Spanish Castilian province. Lainez had sent Father Natalis from Rome to inspect the province, and the Castilian Provincial, Father Araoz (nephew of Ignatius), discovered that Natalis had secret instructions to destroy his position at court. Araoz, the oldest Jesuit in Spain, and a favourite at court, had won a position of comfort and power which was certainly not consistent with the personal ideal of the Society. When, however, they endeavoured to dislodge him, he took a drastic revenge on the Roman authorities. Natalis was collecting and sending to Rome a good deal of money, when an instruction was suddenly issued from the court pointing out that it was against the laws of the kingdom to send money abroad or send men to study in other countries. This order was openly attributed by the Jesuits to the influence of Father Araoz. An angry quarrel ensued, and one of the friends of Araoz produced the secret instructions which Lainez had given to Natalis and some father had stolen. We need not enlarge on this quarrel. It is more interesting to note that the Jesuits urged that their action in sending money to Rome did not come under the royal order since the Church has no frontiers. For some years the affairs of the Society in Spain remained in a very troubled condition, in spite of their great prosperity.

In Belgium, the misdeeds of the Jesuits were so hideous and so subversive, that Arias Montanus wrote to Philip II., King of Spain, assuring him that the deluge of their works of destruction covered all society. He entreated him to take some measures to stop, or at least paralyze the jesuitical power, and proposing a series of instructions, which should be executed by the Governor of these disturbed provinces.

At the same time, Catharine of Austria complained urgently and bitterly in a letter to Borgia, against the enormities of the Jesuits, who, she said had revealed her confession, and profaned criminally the most respectable and sacred things.

In 1571, Jesuit General Borgia was requested by the Pope Pius V to undertake an important mission. The steady advance of the Turks upon a divided Christendom alarmed the Pope, and he wished to unite the Catholic monarchs for the purpose of defence. His nephew, Cardinal Alessandrini, was to visit the courts of Spain, Portugal, and France, and Borgia was invited to accompany him.

Cardinal Alessandrini and Jesuit General Borgia reached the French court, at Blois, in the first month of 1572. France declared itself unable to join in the crusade against the Turk, and Charles’s sister, Mary of Valois, was promised to Henri de BCarn instead of to Sebastian of Spain, as the Pope wished. On 24th August of that year took place the horrible massacre which lays an eternal stain on the memory of Catherine de Medici. Since the Jesuits had influence with Catherine, we have to consider whether they may have been implicated in the barbaric slaughter. In one day alone between 50,000 and 100,000 Huguenots (French Protestants) were massacred in Paris during the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre. Pope Gregory XIII received the news with great rejoicing and, in grand procession, went to the Church of St. Louis to give thanks. He ordered the papal mint to strike coins in commemoration of the massacre. The coin depicted an angel with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, before whom a band of Huguenots, with horror on their faces, are fleeing. The inscription "Ugonottorum Stranges 1572" ("The Slaughter of the Huguenots 1572") appeared on the coin.

In France, the Jesuits directed by Gregory XIII., that Pope who celebrated so solemnly in Rome the news of the massacre of the Protestants all over the kingdom, the Jesuits, say I, advised the counsellors of Charles IX., and of Catherine De Medicis. It was in their lurking house at Paris that these counsellors deliberated during the mournful night of the massacre, known under the name "Massacre de la Saint Barthelemy."

At the same time, as the Jesuits had previously stoked Germany, stirred up the Catholics who were in the majority against the Protestants who were in the minority, two armies were organised, frightful battles fought, and blood ran everywhere.

We read in the 2nd volume, page 613, edition octavo of the History of France by Anquetil, a Roman Catholic priest who died in the Roman communion, who, thereby, is undoubtedly not chargeable with partiality when he avers some too visible misdeeds of Bishops, Jesuits, and Popes:
TRANSLATION. — "In Rome, the news of the death of General Coligny was received most joyfully. The cannon was fired. Bon-fires were kindled as for the most fortunate events. A solemn mass of thanksgiving was celebrated, at which mass the Pope Gregory XIII. assisted, with the splendor given by this Court to the ceremonies considered by it as worth solemnization."

Jesuit General Borgia dies a few weeks after returning to Rome (1st October 1572). Polanco, one of the ablest administrators at the Roman centre, was appointed Vicar-General of the order. He fixed the election for the next General for April, and in the early spring the most famous officers of the army began to come in from their remote battlefields. The new Pope, Gregory XIII., had intervened. “How many Spanish Generals have you had?” he asked, when the older Jesuits came to greet him. All three had been Spaniards. “How many votes have the Spaniards amongst you?” he then asked. Quite enough to elect a Spaniard once more, as they were bent on doing ; and the man on whom they had fixed their thoughts was the gifted and energetic Polanco. But Polanco was descended from converted Jews, a class disliked by high-born Spaniards, and Kings Philip and Sebastian had written to ask the Pope to prevent him from being elected. On the morning of the election he sent a cardinal to tell them that they must not elect a Spaniard. They still expostulated; but Gregory insisted, and Mercurian, a mild and mediocre old man, was made General. Being a Belgian, he was at least a subject of Spain.

The Jesuits would announce lectures on the same subjects and at the same hours as those of the university, and, as always, charged no fees. This was one of the chief grievances of the universities, especially as the Jesuits palpably trusted to obtain control of the universities themselves. Another grievance, which we have noticed in the Parisian indictment, is that they somehow acquired the property of older religious orders.

The principles of the Reformation had been cordially received in Sweden, and it seemed to King John III. that peace could be secured only by some kind of compromise between the old faith and the new. John was, however, married to the sister of the Queen of Poland, and the Jesuits, who were sternly forbidden to enter the kingdom, saw in this a means of outwitting the vigilant Protestants in Sweden. The combination of women and Jesuits was the supreme agency in checking the progress of the Reformation in Europe.

In 1576 a young Norwegian presented himself to the Protestant clergy of Stockholm, and said that, having spent some years at southern universities, he would like a place as professor in the new college they were forming. He begged that they would recommend him to the king, and they did, so that he secured the appointment. It was the Jesuit Father Nicolai, who had, as John knew, been sent from Rome with instructions to perpetrate this amazing fraud. Nicolai must certainly have lied to the Protestant authorities about his beliefs, in order to obtain a place as teacher of theology in a Protestant college. When we reflect that he acted on instructions from Rome, and that no Jesuit or pro-Jesuit writer seems to see anything reprehensible in his conduct, we feel that Jesuit diplomacy had already reached a stage which it would be impolite to characterise in plain English. Nicolai seems to have held his chair of Lutheran theology for a considerable time. There were those who scented heresy in his lectures, but they were promptly expelled, and Nicolai even became rector of the college.

In 1565 there were ten Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade in Japan (circumventing their own Society rules), until a few years before his death, in the interest of the Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives.

The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an “apostolic” character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.

Saint Charles ?orronieo, Archbishop of Milan, wrote to his apostolical pronotary and agent in Rome, complaining about the undertakings, enormities, and rascalities of the Jesuits in that city. He ordered him to claim from the Pope a sentence against them. He did not succeed, for they were too powerful in Rome, the too beloved idols of Papacy. Pius IV. had told an ambassador of Portugal, that the Jesuits were his troops.

Mercurian the Jesuit General died in the summer of 1580, just forty years after the establishment of the Society. Assuredly a remarkable advance had been made in those four decades. The ten Jesuits had become a formidable army of 5000 (including novices and lay-brothers), fighting heresy in the boudoirs of queens and the market-places of Germany, educating hundreds of thousands of youths, all over Europe, in a fanatical zeal for the papacy, extending its influence through the laity by means of sodalities and confraternities, pouring out a vast literature, from the blistering pamphlet to the ponderous folio volume, relating to the great religious controversy, wearing the garb of the beggar or the silk of the noble as occasion needed, speaking a hundred tongues, and sending scores of men yearly to lands whence they would never return and where fever or the axe awaited them. They were the backbone of the counter-Reformation, formidable alike by the simple and austere devotion of some, the brilliance and learning of others, and the unscrupulousness of yet others in the service of the Church. And every man, and every movement of every man, was registered in that central bureau at Rome, where four sagacious heads directed the strategy and tactics of this planet-scattered regiment.

They definitely differed, corporately, from all other religious bodies in the diplomatic nature of their action. Every variety of man was found in their ranks : the austere flagellant (who caused himself bodily harm as did Jesuit General Borgia) and the genial courtier, the man who served the poor because they were poor, and the man who served them in order to edify the rich; the man who flung himself with a smile into the arms of death, and the man who loved disguises and the adventurous evasion of death, the saint and the sinner, the peasant, the noble, and the scholar.

Father Oliver Manares had been appointed Vicar-General, and had announced the election for the spring of 1581. We remember Manares as the fortunate discoverer of Huguenot plots at Paris (these plots whether fabricated or not served the Jesuits remarkably well), and then as successfully ousting Father Palmio from the position of chief assistant to Mercurian. He had made his way to the steps of the throne, and the more religious brethren were now startled to find him shamelessly canvassing for votes, in spite of the stern prohibition in their Constitutions. Four of the older fathers were at once appointed to investigate the charge against him. Bobadilla, impetuous and masterful still in his old age, was one of the four, but he expressed his resentment of the charge against his friend so strongly before the inquiry opened that they had, with great difficulty, to remove him from the commission ; and, when the commissioners found Manares guilty, he made very sore trouble in the house.

In the end Manares was persuaded to forego his right of nomination, and Father Acquaviva was elected as Jesuit General. Claude Acquaviva was one of the youngest of the electors, he was only thirty-seven years old and was distinguished for his high birth. He was to rule the Society during the next thirty-four years during that dangerous period when its desire for wealth and power, in the service of God, led it into the dark ways of political intrigue and the accumulation of earthly treasure.

In 1580, an English Jesuit, Father Robert Parsons, opened that stirring chapter of Jesuit history which culminated with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Since the beginning of the Reformation in England a number of Catholic students had gone abroad, and many of them had entered the Jesuit novitiate in Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Parson was a Somersetshire man of the yeoman class At Louvain he met Father William Good, who induced him to go through the exercises, and he entered the Society at Rome in 1575. He was ordained priest, and made English confessor at St. Peter’s in 1578. Edmund Campion, who was the son of a London bookseller and a brilliant Fellow of St. John’s (Oxford), had meantime joined the Society and was at Prague. He had known Parsons at Oxford, and they corresponded when they both became Jesuits. Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion were instrumental in opening the mission of 1580.

In April of 1580, Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, (who was summoned from Prague) set out on foot, with nine secular priests and a Jesuit lay-brother, Ralph Emerson, for Rheims. Parsons learned at Rheims that a mission of by no means a pacific character had at the same time been sent to Ireland, and we know that a third mission, also of a political nature, was sent to Scotland, to prepare the way for a French invasion. The English authorities had spies all over Europe, and long before these men reached Rheims a pen-portrait of each of them was being studied and distributed to the pursuivants at Westminster. There had as yet been little enforcement of the penal laws, in spite of the Pope’s unhappy interference with the loyalty of English Catholics. It was well known that mass was said in more than one house in London, and that many a quiet manor-house sheltered nuns and priests, but there was little disposition to persecute on account of belief, and as yet little inclination of the Catholics to active disloyalty. To admit Jesuits was a different matter. What did even the Catholics of France and Spain say of them ? And when this coming of the Jesuits coincided with a political activity of Guise and the Papacy against the English throne, it was inevitable that the authorities should decide to be vigilant and stringent.

At St. Omer’s Parsons and Campion learned that their names and descriptions were known in London, and officers were on the watch for them, but they continued on and planned their campaign. The news soon spread through the Catholic world that two Jesuits were in England. Each was provided with two horses and two suits and a servant by a wealthy young Englishman named George Gilbert, and they bade farewell to each other and set out to make their way, separately, through the legions of spies and officers. The two met again at Uxbridge in October, when Queen Elizabeth had issued a third proclamation against them, and the search was being pressed vigorously. Parsons saw much of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, even living in the embassy as a servant for a time; we may confidently date the idea of a Spanish invasion of England around this time. The general rule of his Society, and presumably a most explicit command laid on him by Jesuit General Mercurian when he left Rome, forbade him to meddle with politics. Somewhere out of London he set up his press, and infuriated the Council by disseminating books. Hundreds of arrests were made, the rack was busy at the Tower of London, and the laws were made more drastic. Two other Jesuits, Cottam and Bosgrave, who attempted to join them, were arrested at once and put in the Tower; while the Irish Jesuit, O’Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Cork.

Returning to England in the spring of 1581 Jesuit Father Robert Parsons moved his secret printing press to Dame Stonor’s park near Henley, where Jesuit Father Edmund Campion came to control the printing of his Ten Reasons: a Latin work, not hampered by modesty, which greatly stirred the Protestant divines of the time. On the 11th of July these two Jesuit comrades parted, for the last time; Campion was caught at Lyford in Berkshire about a week afterwards. He had imprudently returned to a house at which he had ministered, and the officers closed round it. For a day and a night Campion lay hidden in the “priest’s hole,” but the officers at last discovered him, and sent him to London, conspicuously labelled “Campion the seditious Jesuit.” We will not linger over the racking, the thrusting of spikes between his fingers and nails, and the other horrible devices by which the Council sought to extract a betrayal of others; though we might remind those who, like Cretineau-Joly, speak of these things as the hideous inventions of Protestant hatred, that these appalling instruments were, on the contrary, already stained with Protestant blood. One of the two secular priests who were condemned to die with him, Father Briant, was admitted by him to the Society the night before the execution, and died a Jesuit. Father Cottam was executed in the following May (1582). Parsons went to France the following March. He remained at Rouen, smuggling English books from there into England and doing all that he could to press the Scottish enterprise. He was in constant correspondence with Spanish ambassador Mendoza and the Duke of Guise, who would help in the enterprise.

The Jesuits were expelled from Bourges, Rouen, and Tournon (France,) where they had opened colleges; were discredited in Monomotapa, suspected and threatened in London after the execution of Campion, Skerwin, Briant; and expelled from Anvers for having disturbed Gand, a city of the Low Countries.

The Reverend Father Sammier was deputed to the Princes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, to induce them to unite against France. The record of the Germanic provinces is chiefly remarkable for the extension into Poland and an attempt to penetrate Russia. The Jesuits had entered Poland under Stephen Bathori, and made such progress in twenty years that men spoke bitterly of their “fortified palaces,” and saw with regret that nearly the whole education of the nobility was in their hands. In one college (Pultusk) they boasted that they had four hundred youths of noble birth.

From Paris Jesuit Father Robert Parsons had made a swift journey, on horseback, to Madrid, where he greatly impressed Philip II. By this time, at least, Parsons deliberately advocated the transfer of the English crown to Philip, and was therefore a traitor to his country and to the rules of his Society. He obtained from Philip a large sum of money for James of Scotland. King Philip II of Spain had been king consort of England until the death in 1558 of his wife, Queen Mary I of England, and he took exception to the policies pursued by her successor, Elizabeth I.

Pope Gregory XIII is best known for his reformation of the calendar, producing the Gregorian calendar with the aid of Jesuit priest/astronomer Christopher Clavius. The reason for the reform is that the average length of the year in the Julian Calendar was too long, and the date of the actual Vernal Equinox had slowly slipped to March 10, whereas the calculation of the Easter date of Easter still followed the traditional date of March 21. This was rectified by following the observations of Clavius and Johannes Kepler, and the calendar was changed when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day after October 4, 1582 would be October 15, 1582. He issued the papal bull Inter gravissimas to promulgate the new calendar on February 24, 1582. On October 15, 1582, this calendar replaced the Julian calendar, in use since 45 BC, and has become universally used today.

The Catholic countries of Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy complied. France, some states of the Dutch Republic and various Catholic states in Germany and Switzerland (both countries were religiously split) followed suit within a year or two, and Hungary followed in 1587. Denmark, the remaining states of the Dutch Republic, and the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland adopted the Gregorian reform in 1700-1701. By this time, the calendar trailed the seasons by 11 days. Great Britain (and its American colonies) finally followed suit in 1752, and Wednesday, September 2, 1752 was immediately followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752; they were joined by the last Protestant holdout, Sweden, on March 1, 1753. The Gregorian Calendar was instituted in Russia by the communists in 1917, and the last Eastern Orthodox country to accept the calendar was Greece in 1923. While some Eastern Orthodox national churches have accepted the Gregorian Calendar dates for "fixed" feasts (feasts that occur on the same date every year), the dates of all movable feasts (such as Easter which falls on a different day each year) are still calculated in the Eastern Orthodox Churches by reference to the Julian Calendar.

A severe illness kept Jesuit Father Robert Parsons for some months in Spain, but he was back at Paris in May 1583. During the summer he was in close correspondence with Guise and d’Alencon, who were now advocating and plotting the assassination of Elizabeth as the simplest solution of the situation. In spite of the protests of the French Jesuits he continued to pursue his plots. The French dukes withdrew from the enterprise, and the Spanish King was now quite willing to move, if the Pope would be generous with funds.

Beginning of the Chinese mission. The repeated failures to gain admission drove the Jesuits to fresh expedients, and a few of their more learned members applied themselves to a thorough study of Chinese culture and religion. The first and most distinguished of these was Father Ricci, whom we find living in Chao Hing, and astonishing the local mandarins with his learning.

The murderer of the Prince of Orange, Balthazar Gerard, declared that four Jesuits of Treves, to whom he had revealed his project, had encouraged him in assuring him, that if he fell and died in his pious design, he should be a martyr.

By the intrigues of the Jesuits, the Princes of Guise and Philip II., King of Spain, united — on the first of December, against the Protestants of France and those of the Low Countries, for the double purpose of crowning King of France the Cardinal Bourbon, after the death of Henry III., and of banishing all the heretical Princes. At the same time, the Jesuits being immensely rich, forestalled the victuals, famished France and preached rebellion against the King Henry III.

Philip II. of Spain, in collusion with the Jesuits, definitely overrode the prejudice of the Flemings and legally established the Jesuits in Belgium. They at once became so bold that we find the Governor of Luxemburg levying taxes on the citizens for the erection of Jesuit houses: a project which caused such an outbreak of anger that they had to retreat from the province. The University of Louvain continued to disdain and assail them.

The Spanish fathers had looked upon the Jesuit generalship almost as an hereditary right, and had resented the election of Mercurian and Acquaviva. This feeling is so wholly opposed to the religious ideal of the Society that we at once suspect a serious decay of the character of the Spanish Jesuits, and we have some remarkable evidence of it. This was due to material prosperity and the lack of serious work and heretical neighbours. Mariana, the famous advocate of regicide, was moved to discredit the Roman authorities by showing the corruption into which they had allowed his own province to fall, and his Tratado del Govierno de da Compania de Jesus gives us a very candid picture of the Spanish houses. It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. The fathers own large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets — Mariana says that the “enjoyments” of his colleagues are “excessive and scandalous.” They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded with debt, yet at Mariana’s own house at Toledo the expenditure per head is about d50 a year : a very comfortable sum for the time and place, for a community pledged to poverty. This grave account of the Spanish province — is sober and convincing, yet grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession.

Jesuit General Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much as possible away from their native countries. In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quit the Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. — One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent. A great sensation was caused when upon investigation the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society. Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio at Madrid to intervene. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy of Sixtus V. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if the whole case were not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of Pope Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. “Company of Jesus!” Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard ; “Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads ?” (It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.) The Pope at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices. Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified — and would die at the death of Sixtus V.

In England the Jesuits organised and directed a new conspiracy, not to try again to kill Queen Elizabeth, but to dethrone her, and to crown in her stead Mary Stuart.

During these few years there is no room for doubt about the aim of Jesuit Father Robert Parsons. We have it repeatedly in his own words that he worked to seat King Philip of Spain on the throne of England, and he shrewdly advised Philip to conceal his intention, from the English Catholics, Scotland, France, and the Papacy, until his expedition was successful. The death of Mary Stuart did not disturb him, and he gradually discarded the idea of attacking through Scotland. King Philip of Spain was to make a direct attack, and the English Catholics were to be instructed to look to Philip, not as a future king, but as restorer of the faith. The Spanish Armada, or the "Great Enterprise" as Philip called it, sailed from Spain in July 1588. The fleet of 130 ships contained 28 real warships. Throughout the whole of its journey from Spain to the east side of the English Channel, the Armada faced few problems from the English Navy. But it hit real problems when it had to anchor off the coast of Flanders, where the Duke of Parma's army of tercios would stand ready for an invasion of the south-east of England. All the world knows the result. The great Armada (with several Jesuits on board) sank to the bottom of the Channel, and Parsons had the mortification of learning that even Catholics had loyally taken arms to repel the Spaniard. It is estimated that only 67-80 ships out of 130 returned to Spain. Over 20,000 Spanish sailors and soldiers were killed. Throughout the whole campaign the English lost no ships and only 100 men in battle. However, between 6 and 8 thousand English sailors and troops died from disease (dysentery and typhus mostly) during the time the Armada was in English water.

When we turn to France and to England we have a valuable illustration of the way in which the command to seek power, for the glory of God, evolves what is known as the political Jesuit. Assuredly in the sixteenth century there was no clean division of the religious and political spheres. But the complaint against the Jesuits is that their authorities ostentatiously forbid political action, yet permit and encourage their subjects secretly to pursue it, and even in ways that are unworthy of religious ideals; that, in short, the Jesuit approaches the field under the white flag of political neutrality, employs weapons which are condemned in civilised warfare, and then denies that he interfered.

Henry III. still feebly occupied the French throne, but it was a question how long he would, and the legitimate heir to the throne was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholics were naturally alarmed and formed the League to “protect their interests”; its specific aim was, as every man in France knew, to secure the throne for the Catholic Henry of Guise. Here was a situation entirely to the taste of the more ardent and adventurous of the Jesuits, and they marched valiantly under the banners of the League, and fluttered about the Catholic courts of Europe in the interest of Guise. The Provincial, Claude Matthieu, earned the name of the “Courier of the League” from his many journeys in support of it. Father Henri Sammier traversed Italy and Spain, and penetrated Germany and England, to further its aim. He had a large wardrobe of disguises, which he wore with the grace of an actor, and he is said by the contemporary lawyer Pasquier to have been as familiar with dice and cards as with his breviary. Edmund Hay, the Scottish Jesuit and tender champion of Mary Stuart, lent his fervent aid to the cause. The Jesuit house at Paris was still used for the secret meetings of the League, and no one questions that the aim of the League was to prevent the accession of the legitimate heir to the throne. Indeed, at the next dramatic turn of French affairs all this was made plain to everybody.

In 1588 Guise was invited to Paris and acclaimed there with such wild rejoicing that Henry III. fled to Blois, and shortly afterwards Guise and his cardinal brother were invited to Blois and foully murdered there by Henry. The League now shook its banners in the breeze, and Henry was execrated from a hundred pulpits. When he went on to defy the Pope and form an alliance with Henry of Navarre, who advanced rapidly on Paris, Catholic feeling rose to a fanatical pitch, and Henry III. in turn was assassinated by the Dominican monk Jacques Clement at Stint Cloud, the first of August, 1589. The Jesuits were assuredly not the only preachers to applaud this murder, but they were amongst the first to perceive, and the loudest to declare, that if a king may be dispatched by private hand for a crime, he may certainly be removed when he meditates the far graver misdeed of plunging a nation into heresy.

Father Commolet, the superior of the Jesuit house at Paris and a distinguished preacher, called from his pulpit for “a second Ehud” to remove Henry of Navarre. Father Mariana, who shortly afterwards wrote his famous De Rege, hailed the assassin as “the eternal glory of France” and spoke of this “memorable spectacle, calculated to teach princes that godless enterprises do not go unpunished.” The Reverend Father Jesuit Molina, Theologian of the Jesuits, wrote on these circumstances: "Murder was atoned by murder; and the manes of the Duke of Guises unjustly killed, were avenged by the effusion of the royal blood." There is no need to discuss the abstract question whether the Jesuits taught tyrannicide. Cretineau-Joly himself quotes fourteen Jesuit theologians of the time who permitted the assassination of kings, to say nothing of more or less obscure writers.

It was not until the assassination of King Henry IV. in 1610 that Acquaviva, anxious to save the French Jesuits from expulsion, forbade his subjects to teach the dangerous doctrine. Even then he wrote at first to the French Jesuits alone, and it was only when the cry of indignation was echoed in other countries that he made the order general. Henry of Navarre invested Paris and laid siege to it, without question the Jesuits were amongst the most ardent advocates of resistance to him. A curious incident of the siege is worth quoting. Food became painfully scarce, and half-famished citizens struggled over the possession of cats and rats, but the inmates of the religious houses remained sleek and comfortable. The civic authorities ordered an inspection of their houses, and a rich store of food was found there. In the later trial before Parlement they admitted that the crown-jewels were deposited in their house during the siege, and that the chiefs of the League met there.

Sixtus had brooded over the singular mass of Jesuit documents submitted to him, and in 1590 he intimated that he was going to make a drastic and comprehensive reform. The name of the Society must be changed; the date of taking the vows and the classification of the members of the Society must be altered; the regulations in regard to “fraternal correction” (the euphemism in the Jesuit rules for spying and talebearing) and obedience must be modified; and the directions which virtually compelled novices to leave their property to the Society, while nominally advising them to leave it to the poor,. must be abolished. Acquaviva entered upon this desperate struggle — there never was the slightest question of Jesuits yielding to Popes on any point — with that cold and dogged resolution which alone could thwart the fiery energy of Sixtus V. At first he tried long and respectful argument with the Pope, and induced the Emperor, the King of Poland, and the Duke of Bavaria to pray that there should be no alteration in the character of the Society. Sixtus smiled grimly, and ordered Cardinal Caraffa to proceed with the revision of their Constitutions. They then fastened on the cardinal, and Sixtus was infuriated to find that Caraffa made no progress. He knew that they were hoping to see him die before he could formulate his reforms, and he entrusted the work to four theologians, whose sentiments he knew. They drew up a formidable indictment of the Constitutions, but it had to pass the Sacred College — and Acquaviva took care that it did not pass.

We need not enter into all the details of this fourth attempt in half a century to evade the most positive and sincere commands of the Pope. It was a race with death, and the most determined and unscrupulous efforts were made by the Jesuits to prevent the Pope from reaching his goal before death overtook him. As the cardinals still thwarted him, he sent a stern personal order to Acquaviva to change the name of his Society. He was not far from death, but the General was told that there could be no more shiftiness ; he might, however, ask for the change instead of having it imposed on him. He signed the petition and the Pope drew up his decree. Pope Sixtus died before he could publish it.

(Counting Sixtus — 5 Popes within the span of 2 years) — After ruling for only two weeks Pope Urban VII. died, then Pope Gregory XIV. came to the throne and restored the tranquillity of Acquaviva and his Jesuit colleagues. The title of their Society was solemnly confirmed, and the subsidies of their colleges were again granted. But Pope Gregory XIV also had a brief reign (about 1 year), his successor Innocent IX (October-November 1591) passed even more quickly from the papal throne, and at the beginning of 1592 Clement VIII. succeeded to the tiara.

Aquaviva, General of the Jesuits, obtained from the Pope Gregory XIII., a Bull putting them beyond all civil and spiritual authorities, and compelling these authorities under pain of excommunication, to admit and practise all the contents of this Bull.

We give an abridgment of the cases in which this excommunication is incurred:

Patrick Cullen, by the instigation of the Jesuit Holte, went to England, intending to murder Queen Elizabeth, but he did not succeed.

In these last few years the Jesuits overran the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, Bohemia, Baden, and most of the south-German States. Throughout the whole Germanic world their procedure was of much the same character. Afew worthy and powerful men like Canisius would secure the opening of the doors to the Society, and a host of less religious fathers would then intrigue for funds to build colleges and educate the young, and organise the Catholic laity in enthusiastic confraternities or sodalities. Partly by these methods, but very largely by their great skill in securing the ear of princes, they not only greatly strengthened the surviving Catholic populations, but they undoubtedly regained much territory from the Reformers.

The Reverend Father Varade, Rector of the Jesuits at Paris, excited Barriere to kill Henry IV., King of France. As proof, this murderer has asserted this declaration in his testament.

The Jesuit Holte excited Williams and Yorck, young Jesuits, to murder the Queen of England, and in order to fortify them for the execution of this crime, bestowed upon them the holy communion. They fortunately did not succeed, and this wicked man was hung with Henry Garnet.

The Jesuits were amongst the last in Paris to fan the dying embers of the Catholic League, and at length, in March 1594, Henry of Navarre entered Paris and received the crown. John Chatel tried to kill Henry IV. on the 27th of December 1594, he had for accomplice the Reverend Father Jesuit Guignard. John Chatel stabbed the King with a knife, but by God's providence he was wounded but slightly. Chastel had been educated at the Jesuit college before going to the university (he was nineteen years old), and he had conferred with his former professor, Father Gueret, a few days before the attempt. Another piece of evidence, of a very inflammatory nature, was put before the court. The authorities had raided the Jesuit college and found in the rector’s room a quantity of the League literature which Henry had rigorously commanded to be destroyed. In particular, there were papers in the writing of the rector, Father Guignard, which cast the most violentabuse on Henry and demanded his death. They had been written five years before, but the retention of them was considered a very serious sign of the hidden feeling of the Jesuits.

For this attempted regicide Father Guignard was executed by hanging , Father Gueret tortured, and all members of the Society were ordered to quit France within three days. "Such a circumstance," writes Anquetil, a Roman Catholic priest, in his History of France, vol. 3, p. 199, "was attributed to the lessons of the Jesuits. They were seized and critically questioned. Many seditious books having been found (pp165) in their convent, and many facts and circumstances having been charged upon them, John Guignard was condemned to be hung. All the other Jesuits were expelled forever from France. From the proceeds of their confiscated property a large stone pyramid, bearing the sentence against the “pernicious sect,” was erected at Paris. Within ten years the hated pyramid was demolished, and the Jesuits had regained their prestige."

Jesuit Father Robert Parsons now devoted himself to proving that the Infanta was the heir to the crown of England. That is the idea of the book, A Conference on the Succession, which he published, anonymously, in 1594: a year after the fifth General Congregation of his Society had once more sternly decreed that no Jesuit must meddle with politics.

A Japanese was examining a map of the earth on which the vast possessions of Spain were shown. He asked a Spanish pilot how his master had obtained this enormous territory, and the man imprudently replied that Philip first sent missionaries into a country to prepare it for subjection, then armies. The remark was reported to the Emperor, and he fell upon the missionaries with a just charge that they had violated his prohibition of the practice of the Christian cult. A number of Jesuits and Franciscans were crucified, and thousands — the Jesuits say 20,000 — of the native Christians testified to the sincerity of their belief by embracing martyrdom. The Protestant Dutch traders were, however, now displacing the Portuguese and Spanish, and repeating to the Japanese those dark opinions of the political intrigues of the Jesuits which were current in their own land. Once more the decree of extermination went forth, and by the year of the death of Acquaviva (1615) the mission was nearly extinct.

The Jesuits cause the murder of Maurice de Nassau, and were expelled from Holland, having been expelled from France, they cringed, promised, and intrigued; thus gained over Lesdiquiere, and by his intercession were forgiven. Henry IV. let them come again into the kingdom, at least, tacitly. Surprising thing! This great warrior, this destyoyer of the League, feared those men of whom he said: "They have correspondences and familiaries everywhere, above all, a great ability and artfulness for bending and directing minds according to their will."

A Belgian, Peter Panne, a cooper of Ypres, was arrested at Leyden for a design on the life of Maurice of Nassau, and he made a lengthy and circumstantial “confession,” in which he accused the Jesuits of Douai of egging him to commit the murder. In the following year, however, Jesuit Father Coster undertook the defence of his colleagues, and their apologists maintain that he has completely demolished the charge. Witnesses flatly denied the story told by Panne of his and their movements, and the unofficial judges then drew up statements to the effect that the Jesuits were innocent. At first sight it would seem that we ought at once to prefer the testimony of these numerous witnesses to that of Panne; but when we reflect on the Jesuit doctrine of mental reservation, we must admit that the word of these witnesses, provided by the Jesuits, is not to be taken at its superficial value. According to the Jesuit theologians, witnesses might give absolutely false answers, and confirm them by the most sacred oaths, to judges or others, if they felt that the inquirer had no right to learn the truth from them.

I.	Jesuits of the short gown.
II.	The Novices.
III.	The Approved Scholars.
IV.	The Temporal Coadjutors or Lay Friars.
V.	The Spiritual Coadjutors.
VI.	The Professed.
VII.	The General.