Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

degrees, and sexes, ever have obtained, or ever shall obtain.' By a Bull of Clement VIII. they have all the privileges, past, present, and future of the orders which are not mendicant.' By a Bull of Gregory XIII. they enjoy all and every one of the privileges, immunities, exemptions, and rights, present and future, of all male and female mendicants; of all other religious orders . . . and generally of ALL PERSONS, as well secular as religious.' We will only mention one more Bull, the famous Bull of Gregory XIV. which

prohibits Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Cardinals, and Sovereigns themselves, from impugning, changing, or perverting the Institute, under pretence of being influenced by zeal, or any superior motives.' By this Bull the Jesuits are made independent of the Pope. 'Not only is the will of the General as good and even better than a Papal Bull, since it may invalidate any preceding Bulls for the reform of the Society, but even the date of such plenary act of re-establishment is so dependent upon him, that he may assign to it, if he please, a date anterior even to his own will.'

'Thus future Popes may spare themselves the trouble of reforming the Society and its Institute; since the established General, superior to the Popes, at all events in this particular, can re-establish such Institute and its abuses by speaking a word, without giving himself any more trouble about the Popes and their Bulls than if they had never acted!' (See History of Jesuits, chapters xxxv. xxxvi.)

Well may it be said that the Second Beast" exerciseth all the power of the First Beast before him."

CHAPTER VI.

THE JESUITS CAUSE THE EARTH AND THEM WHICH DWELL THEREIN TO WORSHIP THE POPE.

66 AND

CAUSETH THE EARTH AND THEM WHICH DWELL THEREIN TO WORSHIP THE FIRST BEAST, WHOSE DEADLY WOUND WAS HEALED."-Verse 12.

THE Jesuits, by virtue of their fourth vow, bind themselves to go whithersoever the Pope may command, in defence of the Romish faith, without requiring any thing from the Holy See for their support. Their office is to cause the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the Pope. That they may have full leisure for this active service, they are totally exempted from those functions, the performance of which is the chief business of other monks. They appear in no processions; they practise no rigorous austerities; they do not consume one-half of their time in the repetition of tedious offices. But they are required to attend to all the transactions of the world on account of the influence which these may have upon religion; they are directed to study the

dispositions of persons in high rank, and to cultivate their friendship; and by the very constitution as well as genius of the order, a spirit of action and intrigue is infused into all its members.' (Dr. Robertson.)

The Jesuits are peculiarly devoted to the See of Rome, and are the most subtle, the most powerful, and the most implacable of all the enemies of the Reformation. The celebrated Father Abraham a Sancta Clara styles them the fifth wheel to the carriage of the church, which a prudent driver ought_to take with him in case one of the others should break. By others they have been termed the life guards of the POPE. They were honoured by Servin, advocate to the Parliament of Paris, with the appellation of the Janissaries of his Holiness, with which they are said to have been highly pleased. The contrast between LUTHER and IGNATIUS is thus described by DAMIANUS, one of the first Historians of the Order :

[ocr errors]

LUTHER, like a madman, declaims against the Apostolic See: IGNATIUS every where undertakes its defence.

LUTHER withdraws from it as many as he can: as many as he can, IGNATIUS reconciles and restores to it.

[ocr errors]

All the devices and efforts of LUTHER are directed against it: IGNATIUS consecrates to it by a special vow all his own labours, and all those of his companions.

LUTHER has stripped the sacred rites of the Church of all their venerable solemnity: IGNATIUS studies to procure them reverence.

The Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mother of God, the Guardian Angels, and the Indulgences of Popes, which LUTHER attacks with so much fury, are the objects which IGNATIUS and his companions exert themselves continually to celebrate by new inventions and indefatigable industry.

[ocr errors]

TO LUTHER, that disgrace of Germany, that Epicurean Swine, that Curse of Europe, that Monster destructive to the whole earth, hateful to God and man, &c. God by his eternal decree has opposed to IGNATIUS.' (See History of Jesuits, Vol i. p. 373.)

It behoves Protestants to be especially on their guard with respect to the Jesuits, for none are such bitter enemies to Protestantism as they. The Second Beast, has been, on the whole, a faithful ally to the First. That two wild Beasts should never quarrel was not to be expected. But, though Clement XIV. was obliged to suppress the Society of Jesus on account of its turbulence and unruliness, the First Beast could not long dispense with the services of the Second. On the 7th of August, 1814, the Second Beast revived, and the Order of the Jesuits was restored by a Bull of Pope Pius VII.

The object for which the Second Beast exists is to "cause the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the First Beast, whose deadly wound was healed." The two Beasts may be sometimes at variance with each other. So were Herod and Pilate. So were the Pharisees and Sadducees of old and yet they were alike enemies to real Christianity and its divine Founder. In like manner the Catholics proper,

and the Jesuits, although in many things of very opposite sentiments and feelings, are yet mutually pledged to one common hostility with Protestants of every name, because they are equally agreed in asserting and maintaining such fundamental errors both in Religion and Policy, as Protestants can never fail to protest against so long as they retain any more than their name. In spite of all the quarrels of the Church of Rome with the Jesuits; in spite of the mutual struggle for pre-eminence which has been ever maintained between them: their agency is still too important to be overlooked or despised by that Mystical Woman of the Apocalypse who has her seat on the Seven Mountains. There is still too much in common between the two systems: their corruptions are too nearly allied, and their interests too closely interwoven, to render it a matter of small import whether the Jesuits shall be again invoked by Papal Rome as her auxiliaries, or not: the influence of light in the world is too strong-the diffusion of the Bible has become too general-and the increase of true religion, in consequence, is too certain to permit a Church which "loves darkness rather than light" to neglect all the means which lie within her reach, to establish and perpetuate her own system of ignorance and error by those friends and agents whose interests are in the main identified with her own. The present Pope (Pius VII.) could not be ignorant that the same causes which led to the formation of the Society were at this moment in active operation throughout the world, and therefore appeared to require the applica

« PoprzedniaDalej »