ONE is now and again asked, “Who are the Jesuits?” The question is not at all such a simple one as would be an inquiry concerning, let us say, the Socinians or Arminians. For one thing, “Jesuit” is a misnomer, inasmuch as the leader avowed by it, and the party avowing Him, are in utter disagreement. It is not so with the other errorists just mentioned. Socinians derive their name from Faustus Socinus, and one has only to ascertain what were the peculiar views of Socinus in order to have a generally accurate conception of who the Socinians are. The Arminians derive their name from James Arminius, and in their case too the name from which they derive theirs gives a tolerably correct idea of the party under consideration. Jesuits derive their name from Jesus, but it would be monstrous to suppose that the Jesuits are in their teaching in fundamental agreement with Jesus Christ. At the same time it has to be noted that even the word Jesuit is not quite to the Jesuits’ liking. They call themselves the Company or Society of Jesus, and they would like other people to do so too. Calvin is said to have been the first to reduce their high-sounding title to the form Jesuit, and ever since then such is the name by which members of this Society are generally known.
The so-called Society of Jesus ought to have been called the Society of Ignatius Loyala. That, however, is a name which the Society would by no means brook. Pope Sixtus V., in the year 1590, proposed to give this name to the Order, but his effort was quite unavailing, and the Pope himself—as the Jesuit Bellarmine is said to have prophesied—did not survive the year in which the attempt was made.
Ignatius Loyala, the founder of the Society, was born at Guipuzcoa, on the north coast of Spain, in the year 1491. He is said to have been of noble birth, and became by profession, in early manhood, a soldier. At the age of thirty he was seriously wounded, and from that date begins his religious history and historical significance. The Society which owes its being to him, and of which he was the first General, dates from the year 1533. It had only seven members to start with, and they were all, with the exception of two—a Savoyard and a Portuguese—Spaniards as to their nationality. Of the seven, only one—Faber—was an ordained priest. Shortly afterwards six others joined them. The whole company thus formed were, with the exception named, by the order of Pope Pius III., ordained to the priesthood in the year 1537. This was done by the Bishop of Arba in Italy. In that same year Loyala announced his intention of calling the fellowship thus being formed by the name, “Company of Jesus.” Three years afterwards Pius III. confirmed the company. The question suggests itself, “Why, with so many Orders already existing in the Roman Catholic Church, should this new Order now be added?” What really was the intention of Loyala and his companions in founding this Society? The fact is that they scarcely themselves knew, and when one regards the subsequent history of the Society of the Jesuits, one is disposed to conclude that the most charitable view to be taken of the affair is that the author of the idea thus coming to realisation could only be Satan, and that it was but gradually that the full significance of what was about to be undertaken was realised by the men most deeply engaged in the business.
It must be remembered at this point that the Reformation, beginning with the year 1517, when Luther nailed his theses to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, had, by the year 1540, deeply moved Europe. Nearly one-half of Western Europe—that is, of all Europe excepting Russia, Turkey, and Greece—had declared in favour of the Reformation, and the other half seemed largely as if in the balance. The Protestant religion was embraced by the Swedish nation as early as the year 1523, by the Norwegian in the year 1528, and by the Danish in the year 1536. In Germany, Luther—the great instrument used by God in bringing about the Reformation—had, by the year 1540, accomplished the best part of his work, and had himself only six years to live. Calvin, the theologian of the period, had, four years before this date, issued his monumental work, “The Christian Institutes.” Tindale, the apostle of England, as Foxe calls him, was already four years in his grave, if grave he found. He was put to death by strangling, because he had been pronounced guilty of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church, and his body was afterwards burnt at the stake. In Scotland, Hamilton and Wishart had raised the standard of reform, although it was not until seven years after the Pope’s confirmation of the Jesuit Order that Knox became publicly identified with the Protestant cause.
When Europe was thus astir about the cause of God, we cannot but think that the arch-enemy of the gospel was likely to devise means whereby, in some way, the work of Reformation might be thwarted; nor need we hesitate to say that his most potent instrument for obstructing the progress of the gospel was found in this lately-devised Order or Company. When the Society came, as it were, to consciousness, and realised its mission, it set itself to bring about, as its first great work, a counter Roman Catholic Reformation. That is to say, it sought to bring back to the Roman faith the nations that had deserted it; to confirm in that faith the nations that were wavering; and to strengthen and advance, in the Romish Church itself, the power of the Pope and the worship of the Virgin.
Soon after the Society was confirmed we find the seven members who originally composed it situated thus:—Xavier was in the East Indies; Laynez and Faber in Germany; Salmeron, with the power of a papal legate, in Ireland; Bobadilla in Naples; Rodriguez in Spain. The General himself, as is the law too for his successors in the generalship, took up his residence in Rome. In the mysterious providence of God, the Company soon attained to tremendous power, and as a result of their mischievous activity, Europe was ere long bathed in blood.
What, it may be asked, was it that rendered their influence so far-reaching and so mischievous? To begin with, the Society had a remarkable organisation. It was distributed, we may explain, into six grades—novices, scholastics, temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows. It is generally supposed, although Jesuits deny this, that there is yet a seventh grade, composed of laymen secretly affiliated to the Society, and acting as its unsuspected emissaries. The novitiate cannot be entered on before the age of fourteen, and as a rule the final grade—that of the professed of the four vows—is not attained until the candidate has reached the age of forty-five. Only a small percentage ever reach the final grade, but it is they alone, we are told, who constitute the real core of the body, and from among them its officers are all taken. In the process of this long training, those to whom the work is entrusted have ample opportunities of ascertaining the kind of work for which each candidate is specially fitted, and various are the functions to which appointments are made. Some become Church dignitaries; some, teachers; others, editors of newspapers, etc. The Society may be supposed to know in what profession its own interests can be best served.
Then, again, the power vested in their General is almost unexampled in any society. In relation to him every member is taught “to consider himself like a dead body, which has no longer either will or opinion; like the statue which is turned every way at will, and does not offer any resistance; like a stick in the hand of an old man, who uses it at pleasure and lays it down anywhere, as is convenient to him.” The General is appointed for life, and holds in his hands the appointment of all the other officers, the only check on the absoluteness of his rule being a Consultative Council of six, with whom he is surrounded, and the reason of whose existence is the recognised possibility of the General himself proving unfaithful to the interests of the Society. To him, through superiors of colleges and through provincials, reports from every part of the world concerning anything or everything touching the Jesuits’ plans, are regularly and periodically made. It is not, therefore, without reason that the General of the Jesuits gets the name of the “Black Pope,” the epithet “Black,” however—by which he is distinguished from the real, sometimes called “White” Pope—referring not to any supposed difference in moral condition, but merely to a matter of dress. With such an organisation it has been well said that the Jesuit Order “is a naked sword whose hilt is at Rome and whose point is everywhere.”
Then, again, this marvellously-organised Company spare no pains to ingratiate themselves with unsuspecting people. For example, very early in the Society’s history they attached almost everywhere to their numerous colleges or houses, schools wherein, to all and sundry, secular education as good as could then be obtained, was given free. The sixteenth century was a time in which thirst for knowledge seems to have become general, and free education was a much-appreciated novelty. There can be no doubt that by this means the Jesuits gained themselves much support. Still, further, their casuists and confessors are found to have developed a system of morals which seems to make the attainment of heaven easy to men of the world, if only they remain members of the Roman Church.
I shall here only, in the briefest way, indicate what is involved in their oft-heard-of principles—the justification of means by ends, mental reservation, and probabilism. According to the first of these, an act which, to the unsophisticated moral sense, appears sinful or even atrociously wicked, may, if committed for a good end—say the advancement of the Romish cause—be reckoned praiseworthy. According to the theory of mental reservation, they taught the lawfulness in some circumstances of giving answers designed to deceive inquirers, the person questioned being directed to utter only in his heart the most essential part of the reply. Thus, if one in possession of riches were asked for alms, he might justifiably say that he had nothing, when what he meant was that he had nothing which he was inclined to dispose of at the time. The saddest aspect of this business was their teaching the lawfulness of confirming such equivocation with an oath. By probabilism is meant that part of their teaching according to which it was held that, if so much as one of their doctors taught the lawfulness of any course of procedure, a confessor was bound to give the benefit of this to persons coming to him for confession, and to discharge them, even although, to the confessor himself, the course under consideration was self-evidently sinful.
All these maxims were wrought out with an ultimate view to the aggrandisement of the Society, but they had not been so mischievous in their results had not the Jesuits adopted another principle which I am about to name, viz., that to the Romish Church belongs, by divine right, the prerogative of disposing of everything according to its will in Church and State; that the nation or people that refuse to yield to this claim are thereby outlawed; and that, therefore, no one can henceforth sin against them. Those are the ruinous principles upon which the Jesuits have worked all along the course of their history. Nor is it anything short of infatuation for one to imagine that in this respect they have changed for the better. One of the latest books of importance written by a Jesuit is The Institutions of Public Ecclesiastical Law, by Marianus de Luca, Professor in the Gregorian University of Rome. Of course all Jesuit books have the sanction of the Order. This book comes to us with the additional sanction of having received the warm commendation of the late Pope Leo XIII.—a Pope whom many were blind enough to regard as a generously-minded man. Now, this is what Marianus says—I quote from Dr. C. H. H. Wright’s translation, a work for which the translator deserves the thanks of his countrymen—”One who broke away from the authority of the Church was outlawed, so that all men were given the power of killing him with immunity.” “Capital punishment the Church justly inflicts on heretics, as is shown by all the controversialists against the innovators.” Scores of quotations equally injurious to the reputation of the Jesuits as peacemakers might be extracted from these Institutes of Marianus, for the man seems to throw off all reserve and, as if anticipating, through Jesuit intrigue, another carnage in Europe, boldly enunciates the principles which ought to reconcile the Roman Catholic mind to such a consummation.
All the factors now alluded to are to be taken into account if one is to have any adequate apprehension of the manner in which Jesuitism works, and of the causes which contribute to its success, but I daresay it is a shallow philosophy that imagines that it can explain the results of Jesuitism without taking account of the power and influence, in connection therewith, of the Spirit of the Power of the Air, the Dragon of the Apocalypse. In this regard I may refer to a case of Jesuitic influence which is to some extent of a literary nature, but with which, whenever I think of it, I cannot but associate the idea of Satanic agency, such are the subtlety and power evinced in the whole matter. In spite of themselves, let it be observed, Jesuits cannot help feeling that they are being wounded by the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, nor is there any portion of that Word which has been felt more painfully by them than the book of Revelation. For, in the eloquent words of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, “God has, in this divine book, broken the magic spells of the Church of Rome; He has taken the wand of enchantment from her hand; He has lifted the mask from her face; and with His divine hand He has written her true character in large letters, and has planted her title on her forehead, to be seen and read of all: ‘Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.'” Now, all this is felt in its full force only when the book of Revelation is held, as it has been rightly held by the great body of commentators throughout the ages, as giving prophetic delineation of the combats and divers experiences of the Church of God throughout her history, from the days of the apostles to the second advent. But a student of the book of Revelation has to learn that, besides this historical school of interpretation, there are now-a-days other two schools of interpretation which, between them, claim a large number of disciples. One of them is the Preterist School. According to this school the book of Revelation refers to nothing later than the fourth century of our era. The other is the Futurist School, and according to it the book of Revelation refers only to things yet in the future. To the Preterist School belongs a very large number of Rationalist divines on the continent of Europe. To the Futurist belongs a goodly number of interpreters, particularly from among the “Brethren.” It is plain that, if the view of either Preterists or Futurists be adopted, past Papal history is untouched, and the Jesuits are saved the painful discipline of being exposed as a company with whom the Lamb is for ever waging war. Now, the interesting thing in this connection is that they were themselves Jesuits who set the example both of Preterist and Futurist interpretation; Alascar being the father of the Preterist School, and Ribera of the Futurist. These two men, in order to save their own skin, have been the means of decoying off, to the wrong rails, perhaps the greater number of the commentators who within recent years have written on the book of Revelation. The men thus decoyed are—many of them—learned, and quite unsuspecting of the trap that was laid for them. Some of them are probably pious. But could the Jesuit device have been so successful had there not been at work the powerful influence of the prince of the power of the air? I trow not.
I have made a long digression in order to explain underlying principles, and thus show how it was possible for the Jesuit Order to influence the nations, as it has undoubtedly now for a long time been doing.
J. R. M.
(To be Continued.)