THE JESUITS, AND THE PAPAL POWER IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

During the period we have just been considering, the most marked peculiarity was, the struggle between Protestantism and Romanism. It is true that objects of personal ambition also occupied the minds of princes, and many great events occurred, which were not connected with the struggles for religious liberty and light. But the great feature of the age was the insurrection of human intelligence. There was a spirit of innovation, which nothing could suppress, and this was directed, in the main, to matters of religion. The conflict was not between church and state, but between two great factions in each. "No man asked whether another belonged to the same country as himself, but whether he belonged to the same sect." Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Knox, Cranmer, and Bacon were the great pioneers in this march of innovation. They wished to explode the ideas of the middle ages, in philosophy and in religion. They made war upon the Roman Catholic Church, as the great supporter and defender of old ideas. They renounced her authority. The Roman Power in the Seventeenth Century. She summoned her friends and vassals, rallied all her forces, and, with desperate energy, resolved to put down the spirit of reform. The struggles of the Protestants in England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, alike manifested the same spirit, were produced by the same causes, and brought forth the same results. The insurrection was not suppressed.

The hostile movements of Rome, for a while, were carried on by armies, massacres, assassinations, and inquisitions. The duke of Alva\'s cruelties in the Netherlands, St. Bartholomew\'s massacre in France, inquisitorial tortures in Spain, and Smithfield burnings in England, illustrate this assertion. But more subtle and artful agents were required, especially since violence had failed. Men of simple lives, of undoubted piety, of earnest zeal, and singular disinterestedness to their cause, arose, and did what the sword and the stake could not do,—revived Catholicism, and caused a reaction to Protestantism itself. Rise of the Jesuits. These men were Jesuits, the most faithful, intrepid, and successful soldiers that ever enlisted under the banners of Rome. The rise and fortunes of this order of monks form one of the most important and interesting chapters in the history of the human race. Their victories, and the spirit which achieved them, are well worth our notice. In considering them, it must be borne in mind, that the Jesuits have exhibited traits so dissimilar and contradictory, that it is difficult to form a just judgment. While they were achieving their victories, they appeared in a totally different light from what distinguished them when they reposed on their laurels. In short, the earlier and the latter Jesuits were entirely different in their moral and social aspects, although they had the same external organization. The principles of their system were always the same. The men who defended them, at first, were marked by great virtues, but afterwards were deformed by equally as great vices. It was in the early days of Jesuitism that the events we have recorded took place. Hence our notice, at present, will be confined to the Jesuits when they were worthy of respect, and, in some things, even of admiration. Their courage, fidelity, zeal, learning, and intrepidity for half a century, have not been exaggerated.

The founder of the order was Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish gentleman of noble birth, who first appeared as a soldier at the siege of Pampeluna, where he was wounded, about the time that Luther was writing his theses, and disputing about indulgences. He amused himself, on his sick bed, by reading the lives of the saints. His enthusiastic mind was affected, and he resolved to pass from worldly to spiritual knighthood. He became a saint, after the notions of the age; that is, he fasted, wore sackcloth, lived on roots and herbs, practised austerities, retired to lonely places, and spent his time in contemplation and prayer. The people were attracted by his sanctity, and followed him in crowds. His heart burned to convert heretics; and, to prepare himself for his mission, he went to the universities, and devoted himself to study. There he made some distinguished converts, all of whom afterwards became famous. In his narrow cell, at Paris, he induced Francis Xavier, Faber, Laynez Bobadilla, and Rodriguez to embrace his views, and to form themselves into an association, for the conversion of the world. On the summit of Montmartre, these six young men, on one star-lit night, took the usual monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and solemnly devoted themselves to their new mission.

They then went to Rome, to induce the pope to constitute them a new missionary order. But they were ridiculed as fanatics. Moreover, for several centuries, there had been great opposition in Rome against the institution of new monastic orders. It was thought that there were orders enough; that the old should be reformed, not new ones created. Even St. Dominic and St. Francis had great difficulty in getting their orders instituted. But Loyola and his companions made extraordinary offers. They professed their willingness to go wherever the pope should send them, among Turks, heathens, or heretics, instantly, without condition, or reward.

How could the pope refuse to license them? His empire was in danger; Luther was in the midst of his victories; the power of ideas and truth was shaking to its centre the pontifical throne; all the old orders had become degenerate and inefficient, and the pope did not know where to look for efficient support. The venerable Benedictines were revelling in the wealth of their splendid abbeys, while the Dominicans and the Franciscans had become itinerant vagabonds, peddling relics and indulgences, and forgetful of those stern duties and virtues which originally characterized them. All the monks were inexhaustible subjects of sarcasm and mockery. They even made scholasticism ridiculous, and the papal dogmas contemptible. Erasmus laughed at them, and Luther mocked them. They were sensual, lazy, ignorant, and corrupt. The pope did not want such soldiers. But the followers of Loyola were full of ardor, talent, and zeal; willing to do any thing for a sinking cause; able to do any thing, so far as human will can avail. And they did not disappoint the pope. Rapid Spread of the Jesuit Order. Great additions were made. They increased with marvellous rapidity. The zealous, devout, and energetic, throughout all ranks in the Catholic church, joined them. They spread into all lands. They became the confessors of kings, the teachers of youth, the most popular preachers, the most successful missionaries. In sixteen years after the scene of Montmartre, Loyola had established his society in the affections and confidence of Catholic Europe, against the voice of universities, the fears of monarchs, and the jealousy of the other monastic orders. In sixteen years, from the condition of a ridiculed fanatic, whose voice, however, would have been disregarded a century earlier or later, he became one of the most powerful dignitaries of the church, influencing the councils of the Vatican, moving the minds of kings, controlling the souls of a numerous fraternity, and making his power felt, even in the courts of Japan and China. Before he died, his spiritual sons had planted their missionary stations amid Peruvian mines, amid the marts of the African slave trade, in the islands of the Indian Ocean, and in the cities of Japan and China. Nay, his followers had secured the most important chairs in the universities of Europe, and had become confessors to the most powerful monarchs, teachers in the best schools of Christendom, and preachers in its principal pulpits. They had become an organization, instinct with life, endued with energy and will, and forming a body which could outwatch Argus with his hundred eyes, and outwork Briareus with his hundred arms. It had forty thousand eyes open upon every cabinet and private family in Europe, and forty thousand arms extended over the necks of both sovereigns and people. It had become a mighty power in the world, inseparably connected with the education and the religion of the age, the prime mover of all political affairs, the grand prop of absolute monarchies, the last hope of the papal hierarchy.

The sudden Rapid Spread of the Jesuits. growth and enormous resources of the "Society of Jesus" impress us with feelings of amazement and awe. We almost attribute them to the agency of mysterious powers, and forget the operations of natural causes. The history of society shows that no body of men ever obtained a wide-spread ascendency, except by the exercise of remarkable qualities of mind and heart. And this is the reason why the Jesuits prospered. When Catholic Europe saw young men, born to fortune and honors, voluntarily surrendering their rank and goods, devoting themselves to religious duties, spending their days in hospitals and schools, wandering, as missionaries, into the most unknown and dangerous parts of the world, exciting the young to study, making great attainments in all departments of literature and science, and shedding a light, wherever they went, by their genius and disinterestedness, it was natural that they would be received as preachers, teachers, and confessors. That they were characterized, during the first fifty years, by such excellencies, has never been denied. The Jesuit missionary called forth the praises of Baxter, and the panegyric of Leibnitz. He went forth, without fear, to encounter the most dreaded dangers. Martyrdom was nothing to him, for he knew that the altar, which might stream with his blood, would, in after times, be a cherished monument of his fame, and an impressive emblem of the power of his religion. Francis Xavier, one of the first converts of Loyola, a Spaniard of rank, traversed a tract of more than twice the circumference of the globe, preaching, disputing, and baptizing, until seventy thousand converts attested the fruits of his mission. In perils, fastings, and fatigues, was the life of this remarkable man passed, to convert the heathen world; and his labors have never been equalled, as a missionary, except by the apostle Paul. But China and Japan were not the only scenes of the enterprises of Jesuit missionaries. As early as 1634, they penetrated into Canada, and, shortly after to the sources of the Mississippi and the prairies of Illinois. "My companion," said the fearless Marquette, "is an envoy of France, to discover new countries; but I am an ambassador of God, to enlighten them with the gospel." But of all the missions of the Jesuits, those in Paraguay were the most successful. They there gathered together, in reductions, or villages, three hundred thousand Indians, and these were bound together by a common interest, were controlled by a paternal authority, taught useful arts, and trained to enjoy the blessings of civilization. On the distant banks of the La Plata, while the Spanish colonists were hunting the Mexicans and Peruvians with bloodhounds, or the English slave traders were consigning to eternal bondage the unhappy Africans, the Jesuits were realizing the ideal paradise of More—a Utopia, where no murders or robberies were committed, and where the blessed flowers of peace and harmony bloomed in a garden of almost primeval loveliness.

In that age, the Extraordinary Virtues of the Older Jesuits. Jesuit excelled in any work to which he devoted his attention. He was not only an intrepid missionary, but a most successful teacher. Into the work of education he entered heart and soul. He taught gratuitously, without any crabbed harshness, and with a view to gain the heart. He entered into the feelings of his pupils, and taught them to subdue their tempers, and avoid quarrels and oaths. He excited them to enthusiasm, perceived their merits, and rewarded the successful with presents and favors. Hence the schools of the Jesuits were the best in Europe, and were highly praised even by the Protestants. The Jesuits were even more popular as preachers than they were as teachers; and they were equally prized as confessors. They were so successful and so respected, that they soon obtained an ascendency in Europe. Veneration secured wealth, and their establishments gradually became magnificently endowed. But all their influence was directed to one single end—to the building up of the power of the popes, whose obedient ............