IN the Free Presbyterian Magazine for October attention was drawn to the harm done to the British Merchant Service through the surrender to the Irish Free State of ports, in the south and west of Ireland, which cannot now be used by the British Navy owing to the fact that Eire has chosen to remain neutral. This has been asserted to be part of the work of the Jesuits in their tireless efforts to bring Britain into submission to the Pope, and a little knowledge of the character, history and aims of the Society ought to convince any unbiased person that they are quite capable of such dastardly work.
The Jesuits, or as they are sometimes called, The Society of Jesus, came into existence in 1540. Their founder, Ignatius Loyala, obtained in that year a Bull from the Pope establishing the Order, and from the very beginning they have never scrupled to use every means, no matter how foul, in order to advance the pretensions of the Papacy. They continually mix in politics, and from their great influence throughout the world, they succeed to a very large extent in shaping the politics of every country in such a way that it will be to their own advantage. This had reached such an alarming extent that in 1773 they were banished from France and a Bull procured from the Pope for their suppression. The Church of Rome, however, found it too useful an organisation to ban it for long, and, consequently, we find it being restored in 1814.
They can accommodate themselves to all sorts of places and circumstances, and can deny their religion and even curse it, if that is going to materially advance the Society or the Church to which they belong. The Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D., in his book on Rome and Civil Liberty, says: “There is not a shape the Jesuits cannot put on; and consequently there is not a place into which they cannot penetrate. They can sit unseen in Synod and General Assembly; they can enter unheard the monarch’s closet and statesman’s cabinet; they can assemble unsuspected around the Council Board. They ply every trade, and speak every tongue. In the pedlar, in the artisan, in the litterateur, in the tutor, in my lady’s lady, in my lord’s valet, we find an affiliated member of the Society. They dwell in all the lands of earth, and they profess all the creeds of earth. They are found sitting beneath the palm-trees of the tropics, and wandering amid the snows of the pole. They pray to Confucius in China; they venerate the cow in India; they wash in the Ganges with the Brahman; they adore the fire with the Parsee; they swear by the Prophet with the Mussulman, whirl in the dance with the Dervish, and abominate swine’s flesh with the Jew. They have in past times execrated the Pope with the Lutheran, and sworn the Solemn League and Covenant with the Covenanter. Their organisation is wonderful. While controlling the greatest matters, the smallest are not overlooked by them. With equal ease they put forth their power in crushing an obscure individual, or in hurling a statesman from power, and burying a monarch beneath the ruins of his throne and kingdom.” The foregoing quotation from such an eminent man as Dr. Wylie gives one a good idea of how complete the organisation of the Jesuits is, so that no opportunity can be lost by them of bringing down everything that would stand in opposition to the Man of Sin, and now a glance at their history shows the part which they have played in bringing their organised forces to bear on the history of nations.
In a short article like this it is impossible even to mention all the Jesuit plots that have been set on foot in order to bring Britain under the heel of the Pope. The reader may be directed to the excellent work on the Jesuits in Great Britain by Walter Walsh, where he gives a detailed and authenticated account of these plots. We shall in the meantime mention but one case in point, The Spanish Armada. Mr. Thomas Graves Law, who had been a priest at the Brompton Oratory, London, says: “Allen and Parsons, the respective heads of the two missionary bodies, Secular and Jesuit, were the soul of the new enterprise. When Philip procrastinated, or the Pope was cautiously counting the cost, it was these men who passionately entreated and goaded them to war, drew up plans of campaign, named the Catholics in England who would fly to the foreign standard, promised moral aid from the priests, and assured the invaders of success. The foreign Princes seemed to depend for their information far more upon the reports of the Jesuits than upon those of their ambassadors.” Thus we see how much the Jesuits had a hand in bringing troubles on our native land in the past, and being, as they are, part of a Church whose proud boast is that she never changes, what was true of them in the past must, of necessity, be true of them at the present time.
It is not merely in our country that Jesuit intrigue has caused danger and discord. All countries have had their own share of it. In 1853, when British intercession was sought in connection with the civil war which broke out among the cantons of Switzerland, the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston, said in a discussion on the subject in the House of Commons: “The cause—the original cause of the conflict were the Jesuits. It was their presence in Switzerland, it was their aggressive proceedings in the Protestant cantons, which produced that war with regard to which our mediation was asked for; and it appeared to me that the only natural mode of putting an end to that war, was to remove the object and cause of it. It was in that spirit that we proposed the Jesuits should be withdrawn. That I did, when making that proposal, state the reasons which induced me to make it, is undoubtedly true. I stated that it was my belief that the presence of the Jesuits in any country, Catholic or Protestant, was likely to disturb the political and social peace of that country. I maintain that opinion still, and I don’t shrink from its avowal.” These are the words of a gentleman who had deep insight into the troubles which abounded in his own day and well has he pointed out the plague-spot which was the cause of them.
From their past history and what is known of them in our own day, one cannot form a very high opinion of the Order. Their aim, as has been stated already, is to bring Protestant Britain under the power of the Pope. No cost is too great and no means are too vile in order to attain that object. They are the sappers whose work is to undermine the British Constitution and who have already been too successful in taking away many of the bulwarks which defended the Protestant religion in this land. They have entered into the British Parliament and into the highest offices of the Government, some as Romanists but many disguised as Protestants. They have secured for the Roman Catholic religion advantages which Rome abused in other days and are in many ways binding us as a nation with chains and fetters which may prove too strong for us to break, and which are already putting us to serious disadvantages. Our inability to use the ports of Queenstown, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly because of Irish neutrality is causing us much damage to life and property, and putting us in a very difficult position in our war against the submarine menace. The ingenuity displayed in getting these ports handed over to the Irish Free State contrary to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty is worthy of the Jesuits, and we believe when the history of this war will be impartially written that evidence will be forthcoming which will lay the whole blame at their door.
The opinion has been expressed by some that this war will develop into a “war of religion,” but the candid opinion of some is that it is already a war of religion in the sense that it is a diabolical effort on the part of the Church of Rome to overthrow Protestantism. It serves the purpose of the Pope well enough to have Mussolini sometimes at variance with the Vatican, and to have Hitler butchering Roman Catholics in Poland. These are but small springs in the elaborate machinery which has been devised to get Britain involved, and if possible overthrown. There is much need to-day, if Protestant Britain is to maintain her civil and religious liberties, that she would act on the proposal of Lord Palmerston to the Swiss cantons, that the Jesuits should be withdrawn. As a nation we are fighting the most brutal enemy that ever appeared in the history of time, and we are doing it under the great, the unspeakable disadvantage of being embraced by the strangle-hold of Jesuitism. As it is our disadvantage it is our sin, for we have given them an asylum when other nations forced them into exile, and that sin was committed in the full blaze of that light which past history has put on their career and their aims. We have thus forgotten the many deliverances which God wrought for us as a nation in the past and we suffer ourselves to fall into the hands of our cruel and crafty enemies. God is still expostulating with us as He was with Jerusalem of old and saying, “Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee: lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.”