FROM

"THE BIBLE, I SAY THE BIBLE, ONLY, IS THE RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS."--CHILLINGWORTH.
VOL. I.	PITTSBURGH, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1844.	NO. 2.

      The order of Jesuits, of the Society of Jesus, one of the most celebrated of the Monastic orders of the Romish Church, was founded in the year 1530, by Ignatius Loyola. This remarkable person, at first a soldier, and afterwards a priest, combined in his character all the military courage, intrepidity and spirit of command of the former, with the craft and bigoted zeal of the latter. He proposed a plan of the constitution and laws of his new order, which he affirmed to have been suggested by the immediate inspiration of Heaven, and appealed to the Roman Pontiff, Paul III., for the sanction of his authority, to confirm the institution. Its avowed object was to extend the authority of the Pope, and the dominion of the Church of Rome throughout the world. The Reformation having recently inflicted a severe blow upon the papal authority, and wrested from Rome some of the fairest provinces, the tempting offer of this new ally to sustain the tottering power was not to be resisted. The reigning Pontiff instantly confirmed by his bull, the institution of the Jesuits, granted the most ample privileges to the members of the society, and appointed Loyola to be the first General of the order.

      It was a fundamental maxim of the Jesuits, from their first institution, to conceal the rules of their order in impenetrable mystery. They never communicated them, even to the greater part of their own members; and refused to produce them when requested by Courts of Justice. During the persecutions, however, which have been carried on against them in Portugal and France, the Jesuits have produced the mysterious volumes of their institute, the Monita Secreta.--These authentic records enable us to investigate and delineate, with certainty and precision, the principles of their government, and the sources of their power.

      The primary object of the society was to establish a universal, although secret, empire, over the entire globe, of which the General at Rome should be the sovereign. Kings themselves were to be its subjects, and savage, barbarous and civilized nations, alike, controlled by its subtle and omnipresent power. It sought to make the governments of all nations; and every class of society, and every individual member of society, high or low, subservient to its authority, and purposes; and all this wide spread machinery of government--this stupendous and fearful power, was to be employed to establish the Pope's authority, to bind the nations to the footstool of papal despotism. The members of the society, and their countless minions swarmed the world, insinuating themselves into every department of society, and secretly establishing their ascendancy over all classes of men. The general of the order boasted to the Duke de Busaac, "From this chamber, sir, I not only govern Paris, but China; and not only China, but the whole world, without any one knowing how I do it." That the Jesuits might have full leisure for the active service required of them, they were exempted from the usual functions of other monks. They were not required to spend their time in the numberless mummeries of the Romish worship.--They attended no processions, and practised no austerities. They neither chanted nor prayed. "They cannot sing," said their enemies, "for birds of prey never do."

      The maxims of policy adopted by this celebrated order, were, like its constitution, remarkable for their union of laxity and rigor. They were in no degree shackled by prejudice, superstition or real religion. Expediency, in its most simple and licentious form, was the basis of their morals, and their principles and practices were uniformly accommodated to the circumstances in which they were placed. The paramount principle of the order, from which none of its members ever swerved, was simply this, that its interests were to be promoted by all possible means, at all possible expense. In order to acquire more easily an ascendancy over persons of rank and power, they propagated a system of the most relaxed morality, which accommodated itself to the passions of men, justified their vices, and authorized almost every action which the most audacious or crafty politician would wish to perpetrate. To persons of stricter principles they studied to recommend themselves by the purity of their lives, and sometimes by the austerity of their doctrines. While sufficiently compliant in the treatment of immoral practices, they were generally rigidly severe in exacting a strict orthodoxy in opinions. "They are a sort of people," said the abbe Boileau, "who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue." They adopted the same spirit of accommodation in their missionary undertakings; and their christianity, chameleon-like. readily assumed the color of every religion where it happened to be introduced. They freely permitted their converts to retain a full proportion of the old superstitions, and suppressed, without hesitation, any point in the new faith which was likely to bear hard on their prejudice or propensities. They proceeded to still greater lengths; and besides suppressing the truths of revelation, devised the most absurd falsehoods, to be used for attracting disciples, or even to be taught as parts of Christianity. One of them in India produced a pedigree to prove his own descent from Brama; and another in America assured a native chief that Christ had been a valiant and victorious warrior, who in the space of three years had scalped an incredible number of men, women and children. It was, in fact, their own authority, not the authority of true religion, which they wished to establish; and Christianity was generally as little known, when they quitted the foreign scenes of their labors, as when they entered there.

      So formidable did this ambitious and grasping society become, to the rights and safety of nations, that they were expelled from England in 1604; from Venice in 1606; from Portugal in 1759; and from Spain in 1767; the example of Spain was soon followed by Ferdinand VI. of Naples, and by the prince of Parma. Repudiated, by the kingdoms in which it had been fostered, and universally detested, this band of conspirators against the rights of man, was at last entirely suppressed by an order of Pope Clement XIV. in 1773.

      In August, 1814, a bull was issued by Pope Pius VII., restoring this formidable order to all their former privileges, and calling upon all Catholic princes to afford them protection and encouragement. This act of their revival is expressed in all the solemnity of papal authority; and even affirmed to be above the recall or revision of any judge, with whatever power he may be clothed. The number of Jesuits at present in Europe and America, amounts to several thousand. Their general resides at Rome. In Italy, including Sicily, there are seven hundred, who possess eighteen colleges for the instruction of youth. It cannot be doubted--it is well known--that these emissaries and secret propagators of despotism have scattered themselves widely over these United States. Our free country, where the people themselves possess the governing power, presents too tempting a field for the exercise of Jesuitical policy, craft, dissimulation, avarice and ambition, to be overlooked or neglected by this vigilant and grasping ally of the Pope. It is too obvious that the Jesuits have formed the magnificent scheme of presenting, as a splendid offering at the shrine of their pontifical master, our glorious country, redeemed from the savage by our protestant fathers, and bequeathed to their sons with the precious legacy of civil and religious freedom, and the protestant bible, the bulwark of both. An achievement, worthy the fame of their ancient order--worthy the craft and ghostly prowess of the successions of Ignatius Loyola, and which, well might encircle their names with a glory that would eclipse the lustre of his. The institution of the Jesuits, originated to oppose the progress of Protestantism, has been its most indefatigable and successful enemy. The sentence of their abolition was passed by the senates, and monarchs, and statesmen, and divines, of nearly all religions, and of almost every civilized country, in the world. Almost every land has been stained and torn by their crimes; and almost every land bears on its public records the most solemn protests against their existence. The revival of this formidable order, its rapidly extending power, its recent persecution of the protestants of France, and its successful hostility to Protestantism. In the Sandwich Islands, and especially its bold and obvious strides to power in our own land, justly alarm the fears, and excite the vigilance of all Protestants. Humanity itself is startled at the reappearance of this common enemy of man.

F.      

["The Jesuits." The Protestant Unionist, 1 (November 6, 1844): 5.]

      Robert H. Forrester's "The Jesuits" was first published in The Protestant Unionist, Vol. 1, No. 2, November 6, 1844. The electronic version of the essay has been produced from microfilm of the newspaper.

      Pagination in the electronic version has been represented by placing the page number in brackets following the last complete word on the printed page. Inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and typography have been retained.

      Addenda and corrigenda are earnestly solicited.

Ernie Stefanik
Derry, PA

Created 5 February 2002.
Updated 2 July 2003.