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We also encourage you to reproduce this audio resource and to pass it on to your friends, but we only authorize this as long as the full contents of the message, including the header and trailer, is not altered in any way and as long as the audio file is given away for free. And now to SWRB's reading of The Jesuits by James Wiley, which we hope you find to be a great blessing and which we pray draws you nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him." John 14, 6. This is the Jesuits, chapter 1, by James Wiley. Protestantism had marshaled its spiritual forces a second time, and placing itself at the heart of Christendom, at a point where three great empires met. It was laboring with redoubled vigor to propagate itself on all sides. It was expelling from the air of the world that ancient superstition born of paganism and Judaism, which, like an opaque veil, had darkened the human mind. A new light was breaking on the eyes and a new life stirring in the souls of men. Schools of learning, pure churches, and free nations were springing up in different parts of Europe. while hundreds of thousands of disciples were ready by their holy lives or heroic deaths to serve that great cause which having broken their ancient fetters had made them the heirs of a new liberty and the citizens of a new world. It was clear that if let alone for only a few years Protestantism would achieve a victory so complete that it would be vain for any opposing power to think of renewing the contest. If that power which was seated in Geneva was to be withstood, and the tide of victory which was bearing it to dominion rolled back, there must be no longer delay in the measures necessary for achieving such a result." It was further clear that armies would never affect the overthrow of Protestantism. The strength of Popish Europe had been put forth to crush it, but all in vain. Protestantism had risen only the stronger from the blows which it was hoped would overwhelm it. It was plain that other weapons must be forged and other armies mustered than those which Charles and Francis had been accustomed to lead into the field. It was now that the Jesuit Corps was embodied. And it must be confessed that these new soldiers did more than all the armies of France and Spain to stem the tide of Protestant success and bind victory once more to the banners of Rome. We've seen Protestantism renew its energies. Rome too will show what she's capable of doing. As the tribes of Israel were approaching the frontier of the promised land, a wizard prophet was summoned from the east to bar the entrance by his divinations and enchantments, Balaam. As the armies of Protestantism neared their final victory, there started up the Jesuit host with a subtler casuistry and a darker divination than Balaam's. to dispute with the Reformed the possession of Christendom. We shall consider that host in its rise, its equipments, its discipline, its diffusion, and its successes. Don Inigo López de Recalde, the Ignatius Loyola of history, was the founder of the Order of Jesus, or the Jesuits. His birth was nearly contemporaneous with that of Luther. He was the youngest son of one of the highest Spanish grandees and was born in his father's castle of Loyola in the province of Guiposcoa in 1491. His youth was passed at the splendid and luxurious court of Ferdinand, the Catholic. Spain at that time was fighting to expel the Moors, whose presence on her soil she accounted at once an insult to her independence and an affront to her faith. She was ending the conflict in Spain but continuing it in Africa. The naturally ardent soul of Ignatius was set on fire by the religious fervor around him. He grew weary of the gaieties and frivolities of the court, nor could even the dalliances and adventures of Knight Errantry satisfy him. He thirsted to earn renown on the field of arms. Embarking in the war, which at that time engaged the religious enthusiasm and military chivalry of his countrymen, he soon distinguished himself by his feats of daring. Ignatius was bidding fair to take a high place among warriors and transmit to posterity a name encompassed with the halo of military glory, but with that halo only. At this stage of his career, An incident befell him which cut short his exploits on the battlefield and transferred his enthusiasm and chivalry to another sphere. It was the year 1521. Luther was uttering his famous no before the emperor and his princes and summoning as with trumpet peal Christendom to arms. It is at this moment the young Ignatius, the intrepid soldier of Spain and about to become the yet more intrepid soldier of Rome, appears before us. He is shut up in the town of Pamplona which the French are besieging. The garrison are hard-pressed and after some whispered consultations they openly propose to surrender. Ignatius deems the very thought of such a thing dishonor. He denounces the proposed act of his comrades as cowardice and, re-entering the citadel with a few companions as courageous as himself, swears to defend it to the last drop of his blood. By and by, famine leaves him no alternative save to die within the walls or to cut his way, sword in, hand through the host of the besiegers. He goes forth and joins battle with the French. As he is fighting desperately, he's struck by a musket ball, wounded dangerously in both legs, and laid senseless on the field. Ignatius had ended the last campaign he was ever to fight with the sword. His valor he was yet to display on other fields, but he would mingle no more on those which resound with the clash of arms and the roar of artillery. The bravery of the fallen warrior had won the respect of the foe. Raising him from the ground where he was fast bleeding to death, they carried him to the hospital of Pamplona and tended him with care till he was able to be conveyed in a litter to his father's castle. Thrice had he to undergo the agony of having his wounds opened. Clenching his teeth and closing his fists, he bade defiance to pain. Not a groan escaped him while under the torture of the surgeon's knife. but the tardy passage of the weeks and months, and during which he waited the slow healing of his wounds, inflicted on his ardent spirit a keener pain than had the probing knife on his quivering limbs. Fettered to his couch, he chafed at the inactivity to which he was doomed. Romances of chivalry and tales of war were brought to him to beguile the hours. These exhausted, other books were produced, but of a somewhat different character. This time it was the legends of the saints that were brought the bedrid night. The tragedy of the early Christian martyrs passed before him as he read. Next came the monks and hermits, the Thebake deserts and the Sinaitic mountains. With an imagination on fire, he perused the story of the hunger and cold they had braved, of the self-conquest they had achieved. of the battles that they had waged with evil spirits, of the glorious vision that had been vouchsafed them, and the brilliant rewards they had gained in the lasting reverence of earth and the felicities and dignities of heaven. He panted to rival these heroes whose glory was of a kind so bright and pure that, compared with it, the renown of the battlefield was dim and sordid. His enthusiasm and ambition were as boundless as ever, but now they were directed into a new channel, Henceforward, the current of his life was changed. He had laid down a knight of the burning sword, to use the words of his biographer Vieira, but he rose up from it a saint of the burning torch. The change was a sudden and violent one and drew after it vast consequences, not to Ignatius only and the men of his own age, but to millions of the human race in all countries of the world. and in all the ages that have elapsed since. He who lay down on his bed, the fiery soldier of the Emperor, rose from it the yet more fiery soldier of the Pope. The weakness occasioned by loss of blood, the morbidity produced by long seclusion, the irritation of acute and protracted suffering, joined to a temperament highly excitable, and a mind that had fed on miracles and visions till its enthusiasm had grown into fanaticism accounts in part for the transformation which Ignatius had undergone. Though the balance of his intellect was now sadly disturbed, his shrewdness, his tenacity, and his daring remained. Set free from the fetters of calm reason, these qualities had freer scope than ever. The wing of his earthly ambition was broken, but he could take his flight heavenward. If earth was forbidden him, the celestial domains stood open, and there worthy exploits and more brilliant rewards awaited his prowess. The heart of a soldier plucked out, and that of a monk given him, Ignatius vowed before leaving his sick chamber to be the slave, the champion, the knight-errant of Mary. She was the lady of his soul, and after the manner of dutiful nights, he immediately repaired to her shrine at Montserrat, hung up his arms before her image, and spent the night in watching them. But reflecting that he was a soldier of Christ, that great monarch who had gone forth to subjugate all the earth, he resolved to eat no other food, wear no other raiment than his king had done, and endure the same hardships and vigils. Laying aside his plume, his coat of mail, his shield and sword, he donned the cloak of the mendicant. Wrapped in sordid rags, says Döller, an iron chain and prickly girdle pressing on his naked body, covered with filth, with uncombed hair and untrimmed nails, he retired to a dark mountain in the vicinity of Manresa, where was a gloomy cave in which he made his abode for some time. There he subjected himself to all the penances and mortifications of the early Anchorites, whose holiness he emulated. He wrestled with the evil spirit, talked to voices audible to no ear but his own, fasted for days on end till his weakness was such that he fell into a swoon. One day was found at the entrance of his cave lying on the ground, half dead. The cave at Manresa recalls vividly to our memory, the cell at Erfurt, the same austerities, vigils, mortifications and mental efforts and agonies which were undergone by Ignatius Loyola had but a very few years before this been passed through by Martin Luther. So far the career of the founder of the Jesuits and that of the champion of Protestantism were the same. Both had set before them a high standard of holiness. Both had all but sacrificed life to reach it. But at the point to which we have come, the courses of the two men widely diverge. Both hitherto, in their pursuit of truth and holiness, had traveled by the same road. But now we see Luther turning to the Bible, the light that shines in a dark place, the sure word of prophecy. Ignatius Loyola, on the other hand, surrenders himself to visions and revelations. As Luther went onward, the light grew only the brighter around him. He had turned his face to the sun. Ignatius had turned his gaze inward upon his own beclouded mind and verified the saying of the wise man, quote, he who wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead, end of quote. Finding him half-examinate at the mouth of his cave, sympathizing friends carried Ignatius to the town of Manresa. Continuing there the same course of penances and self-mortifications which he had pursued in solitude, his bodily weakness greatly increased, but he was more than recompensed by the greater frequency of those heavenly visions with which he now began to be favored. In Manresa, he occupied a cell in the Dominican convent, and as he was then projecting a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he began to qualify himself for this holy journey by a course of the severest penances. He scourged himself thrice a day, says Ranke. He rose up to prayer at midnight and passed seven hours of each day on his knees. It will hardly do to say that this marvelous case is merely an instance of an unstrung bodily condition and of vicious mental stimulants abundantly supplied, where the thirst for adventure and distinction was still unquenched. A closer study of the case will show that there was in it an awakening of the conscience. There was a sense of sin, its awful demerit and its fearful award. Loyola, too, would seem to have felt the terrors of death and the pains of hell. He had spent three days in Montserrat in confessing the sins of all his past life. But on a more searching review of his life, finding that he had omitted many sins, he renewed and simplified and amplified his confession at Manresa. If he found peace, it was only for a short while. Again, his sense of sin would return, and to such a pitch did his anguish rise that thoughts of self-destruction came into his mind. Approaching the window of his cell, he was about to throw himself from it, when it suddenly flashed upon him that the act was abhorrent to the Almighty, and he withdrew, crying out, Lord, I will not do aught that may offend Thee. One day he awakened us from a dream Now I know, said he to himself, that all these torments are from the assaults of Satan. I'm tossed between the promptings of the good spirit, who would have me be at peace, and the dark suggestions of the evil one, who seeks continually to terrify me. I'll have done with this warfare. I'll forget my past life. I'll open these wounds not again. Now Luther, in the midst of tempest, is terrible. had come to a similar resolution, awaking us from a frightful dream, he lifted up his eyes and saw one who had borne his sins upon his cross. And like the mariner who clings amid the surging billows to the rock, Luther was at peace because he had anchored his soul on an almighty foundation. But, says Ranke, speaking of Loyola, and the course he had now resolved to pursue, this was not so much the restoration of his peace as a resolution. It was an engagement entered into by the will rather than a conviction to which the submission of the will is inevitable. It required no aid from scripture. It was based on the belief that he entertained of an immediate connection between himself and the world of spirits. This would never have satisfied Luther. No inspirations, no visions would Luther admit. All were, in his opinion alike, injurious. He would have the simple, written, indubitable word of God alone. From the hour that Ignatius resolved to think no more of his sins, his spiritual horizon began, as he believed, to clear up. All his gloomy terrors receded with the past which he had consigned to oblivion. His bitter tears were dried up and his heavy sighs no longer resounded through the convent halls. He was taken, he felt, into more intimate communion with God. The heavens were opened that he might have a clearer insight into divine mysteries. True, the Spirit had revealed these things in the morning of the world through chosen and accredited channels, and inscribed them on the page of inspiration that all might learn them from that infallible source. But Ignatius did not search for these mysteries in the Bible. Favored above the sons of men, he received them, as he thought, in revelations made specially to himself. Alas, his hour had come and passed, and the gate that would have ushered him in amid celestial realities and joys was shut. and henceforward he must dwell amid fantasies and dreams. It was intimated to him one day that he should yet see the Savior in person. He had not long to wait for the promised revelation. At mass his eyes were opened and he saw the incarnate God in the host. What farther proof did he need of transubstantiation seeing the whole process had been shown to him? A short while thereafter, the Virgin revealed herself with equal plainness to his bodily eyes. Not fewer than 30 such visits did Loyola receive. One day, as he sat on the steps of the Church of St. Dominic at Manresa, singing a hymn to Mary, he suddenly fell into a reverie and had the symbol of the ineffable mystery of the Trinity shown to him under the figure of three keys of a musical instrument. He sobbed for very joy and entering the church began publishing the miracle. On another occasion, as he walked along the banks of the Lobregat that waters Manresa, he sat down and fixing his eyes intently on the stream, many divine mysteries became apparent to him, such as other men, says his biographer Muffrey, can with great difficulty understand. After much reading, long vigils, study. This narration places us beside the respective springs of Protestantism and Ultramontanism. The source from which the one is seen to issue is the word of God. To it, Luther swore fealty, and before it, he hung up his sword like a true knight when he received ordination. The other is seen to be the product of a clouded yet proud and ambitious imagination. and a wayward will, and therewith have corresponded the fruits as the past three centuries bear witness. The one principle has gathered around it a noble host clad in the panoply of purity and truth. In the wake of the other has come the dark army of the Jesuits. Chapter two, Loyola's first disciples. Among the wonderful things shown to Ignatius Loyola by special revelation was a vision of two great camps. The center of the one was placed at Babylon. Over it there floated the gloomy ensign of the Prince of Darkness. The Heavenly King had erected his standard on Mount Zion and made Jerusalem his headquarters. In the war of which these two camps were the symbols and the issues of which were to be grand beyond all former precedent, Loyola was chosen, he believed, to be one of the chief captains. He longed to place himself at the center of action. The way thither was long. Wide oceans and gloomy deserts had to be traversed, and hostile tribes passed through. But he had an iron will, a boundless enthusiasm, and what was more, a divine call. For such it seemed to him in his delusion. He set out penniless in 1523 Begging his bread by the way, he arrived at Barcelona. There he embarked in a ship which landed him on the shore of Italy. Thus, traveling on foot after long months and innumerable hardships, he entered in safely the gates of Jerusalem. But the reception that awaited him in the holy city was not such as he had fondly anticipated. His rags, his uncombed locks, which almost hid his emaciated features, but ill accorded with the magnificence of the errand which had brought him to that shore. Loyola thought of doing in his single person what the armies of the Crusaders had failed to do by their combined strength. The head of the Romanists in Jerusalem saw in him rather the mendicant than the warrior, and fearing doubtless that should he offer battle to the Crescent, he was more likely to provoke a tempest of Turkish fanaticism than drive back the hordes of the infidel, he commanded him to desist under the threat of excommunication. Thus withstood Loyola, returned to Barcelona, which he reached in 1524. Derision and insults awaited his arrival in his native Spain. His countrymen failed to see the grand aims he cherished beneath his rags, nor could they divine the splendid career and the immortality of fame which were to emerge from this present squalor and debasement. But not for one moment did Loyola's own faith falter in his great destiny. He had the art, but known only to those fated to act a great part, of converting impediments into helps and extracting new experience and fresh courage from disappointment. His repulsion from the holy fields had taught him that Christendom, and not Asia, was the predestined scene of his warfare, and that he was to do battle not with the infidels of the East, but with the ever-growing hosts of heretics in Europe. But to meet the Protestant on his own ground and to fight him with his own weapons was a still more difficult task than to convert the Saracen. He felt that meanwhile he was destitute of the necessary qualifications, but it was not too late to acquire them. Though a man of 35, he put himself to school at Barcelona, and there, seated amid the youth of the city, he prosecuted the study of Latin. Having acquired some mastery of this tongue, he removed in 1526 to the University of Alcala to commence theology. In a little space, he began to preach. Discovering a vast zeal in the propagation of his tenets, and no little success in making disciples, male and female, The Inquisition, deeming both the man and his aim somewhat mysterious, arrested him. The order of the Jesuits was on the point of being nipped in the bud, but finding in Loyola no heretical bias, the fathers dismissed him on his promise of holding his peace. He repaired to Salamanca, but there too he encountered similar obstacles. It was not agreeable thus to champ the curb of privilege and canonical authority, but administered to him a wholesome discipline. It sharpened his circumspection and shrewdness without in the least abating his ardor. Holding fast by his grand purpose, he quitted his native land and repairing in 1528 to Paris, entered himself as a student in the College of St. Barbara. In the world of Paris, he became more practical. but the flame of his enthusiasm still burned on. Through penance, through study, through ecstatic visions and occasional checks, he pursued with unshaken faith and unquenched resolution his celestial calling as the leader of a mighty spiritual army of which he was to be the creator and which was to wage victorious battle with the hosts of Protestantism. Loyola's residence in Paris, which was from 1528 to 1535, coincides with the period of greatest religious excitement in the French capital. Discussions were at that time of hourly occurrence in the streets, in the halls of the Sorbonne, and at the royal table. Loyola must have witnessed all the stirring and tragic scenes we've already described. He may have stood by the stake of of Berquin. He had seen with indignation, doubtless, the saloons of the Louvre open for the Protestant sermon. He had felt the great shock which France received from the placards and taken part, it may be, in the bloody rites of her great day of expiation. It's easy to see how amid excitements like these Loyola's zeal would burn stronger than every hour, but his ardor did not hurry him into action till all was ready. The blow he meditated was great, and time, patience, and skill were necessary to prepare the instruments by whom he was to inflict it. It chanced that two young students shared with Loyola his rooms in the College of St. Barbara. The one was Peter Fabre from Savoy. His youth had been passed amid his father's flocks. The majesty of the silent mountains had sublimed his natural piety into enthusiasm and one night on bended knee under the star bestudied vault he devoted himself to God in a life of study. The other companion of Loyola was Francis Xavier of Papaluna in Navarre. For 500 years his ancestors had been renowned as warriors and his ambition was by becoming a scholar to enhance the fame of his house by adding to its glory in arms the yet pure glory of learning. These two, the humble Savoyard and the highborn Navarrese, Loyola had resolved should be his first disciples. As the artist selects his block, and with skillful eye and plastic hand bestows touch after touch of the chisel, till at last the superfluous parts are cleared away, and the statue stands forth so complete and perfect in its symmetry that the dead stone seems to breathe, so did the future general of the Jesuit army proceed to mold and fashion his two companions, Fabre and Xavier. The former was soft and pliable, easily took the shape which the master hand sought to communicate. The other was obdurate, like the rocks of his native mountains, but The patience and genius of Loyola finally triumphed over his pride of family and haughtiness of spirit. He first of all won their affection by certain disinterested services. He next excited their admiration by the loftiness of his own asceticism. He then imparted to them his grand project and fired them with the ambition of sharing with him in the accomplishment of it. Having brought them thus far, he entered them on a course of discipline, the design of which was to give them those hearty qualities of body and soul which would enable them to fulfill their lofty vocation as leaders in an army. Every soldier in which was to be tried and hardened in the fire as he himself had been. He exacted of them frequent confession. He was equally rigid as regarded their participation in the Eucharist. The one exercise trained them in submission, the other fed the flame of their zeal, and thus the two cardinal qualities which Loyola demanded in all his followers were developed side by side. Severe bodily mortifications were also enjoined upon them. Three days and three nights did he compel them to fast. During the severest winters, when carriages might be seen to traverse the frozen Seine, He would not permit Fabre the slightest relaxation of discipline. Thus it was that he mortified their pride, taught them to despise wealth, schooled them to brave danger and contemn luxury, and inured them to cold hunger and toil. In short, he made them dead to every passion save that of the holy war in which they were to bear arms. A beginning had been made. The first recruits had been enrolled in that army which was speedily to swell into a mighty host and unfurl its gloomy ensigns and win its dismal triumphs in every land. We can imagine Loyola's joy as he contemplated these two men, fashioned so perfectly in his own likeness. The same master artificer who had molded these two could form others, in short, any number. The list was soon enlarged by the addition of four other disciples. Their names, obscure then, but in later years to shine with a fiery splendor, were Jacob Lanez, Alfonso Samoran, Nicholas Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriguez. The first three were Spaniards. The fourth was a Portuguese. They were seven in all. but the accession of two others increased them to nine, and now they resolved on taking their first step. On the 15th of August, 1534, Loyola, followed by his nine companions, entered the subterranean chapel of the Church of Montmartre at Paris, and mass being said by Fabre, who had received priest's orders, The company, after the usual vow of chastity and poverty, took a solemn oath to dedicate their lives to the conversion of the Saracens, or should circumstances make that attempt impossible, to lay themselves and their services unreservedly at the feet of the Pope. They sealed their oath by now receiving the host. The day was chosen because it was the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin, and the place because it was consecrated to Mary, the queen of saints and angels, from whom, as Loyola firmly believed, he had received his mission. The army thus enrolled was little, and it was great. It was little when counted, and it was great when weighed. In sublimity of aim and strength of faith, using the term in its mundane sense, it wielded a power before which nothing on earth, one principle accepted. and should be able to stand. To foster the growth of this infant Hercules, Loyola had prepared beforehand his book entitled Spiritual Exercises. This is a body of rules for teaching men how to conduct the work of their conversion. It consists of four grand meditations and the penitent retiring into solitude is to occupy absorbingly his mind on each in succession during the space of the rising and setting of seven suns. It may be fitly styled a journey from the gates of destruction to the gates of paradise, mapped out in stages so that it might be gone in the short period of four weeks. There are a few more remarkable books in the world. It combines the self-denial and mortification of the Brahmin with the asceticism of the anchorite, the ecstasies of the schoolmen. It professes like the Quran to be a revelation. The book of Exercises says a Jesuit was truly written by the finger of God and delivered to Ignatius by the Holy Mother of God." End of quote. The spiritual exercises, we have said, was a body of rules by following which one could effect upon himself that great change which in biblical and theological language is termed conversion. The book displayed on the part of its author great knowledge of the human heart. The method prescribed was an adroit imitation of that process of conviction, of alarm, of enlightenment, and of peace. through which the Holy Spirit leads the soul that undergoes that change in very deed. This divine transformation was at that hour taking place in thousands of instances in the Protestant world. Loyola, like the magicians of old who strove to rival Moses, wrought with his enchantments to produce the same miracle. Let us observe how he proceeded. The person was, first of all, to go aside from the world. by entirely isolating himself from all the affairs of life. In the solemn stillness of his chamber, he was to engage in four meditations each day, the first at daybreak, the last at midnight. To assist the action of the imagination on the soul, the room was to be artificially darkened, and on its walls were to be suspended pictures of hell and other horrors. Sin, death, and judgment were exclusively to occupy the thoughts of the penitent during the first week of his seclusion. He was to ponder upon them till, in a sense, he beheld the vast conflagration of hell, its wailings, shrieks, and blasphemies, felt the worm of conscience, and, fine, touched those fires by whose contact the souls of the reprobate are scorched. The second week, he was to withdraw his eye from these dreadful spectacles and fix it upon the incarnation. It's no longer the wailings of the lost that fill the ears. He sits in his darkened chamber. It's the song of the angel announcing the birth of the child and Mary acquiescing in the work of redemption. At the feet of the Trinity, he is directed to pour out the expression of the gratitude and praise with which continued meditation on these themes causes his soul to overflow. The third week is to witness the solemn act of the soul's enrollment in the army of that great captain who bowed the heavens and came down in his incarnation. Two cities are before the devotee, Jerusalem and Babylon. In which will he choose to dwell? Two standards are displayed in his sight. Under which will he fight? Here, a broad and brave pennant floats freely on the wind. Its golden folds bear the motto, Pride, Honor, Riches. Here is another, but how unlike the motto inscribed upon it, Poverty, Shame, Humility. on all sides resounds the cry to arms. He must make his choice and he must make it now for the seventh son of his third week is hastening to the setting. It is under the banner of poverty that he elects to win the incorruptible crown. Now comes the fourth and last week and with it there comes a great change in the subjects of his meditation, He is to dismiss all gloomy ideas, all images of terror. The gates of Hades are to be closed and those of a new life opened. It is morning with him. It is a springtime that has come to him and he is to surround himself with light and flowers and odors. It's the Sabbath of a spiritual creation. He is to rest, to taste in that rest the prelude the everlasting joys, this mood of mind he is to cultivate while seven sons rise and set upon him. He's now perfected and fit to fight in the army of the great captain. A not-unsimilar course of mental discipline, as our history has already shown, did Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin pass through before they became captains in the army of Christ. They began in a horror of great darkness. Through that cloud there broke upon the revelation of the crucified. Throwing the arms of their faith around the tree of expiation and clinging to it, they entered into peace and tasted the joys to come. How like, yet how unlike, are these two courses? In the one, the penitent finds a savior on whom he leans. In the other, he lays hold on a rule by which he works, and works as methodically and regularly as a piece of machinery. Beginning on a certain day, he finishes like stroke of clock, duly as the seventh sun of the fourth week is sinking below the horizon. We trace in the one the action of the imagination, fostering one overmastering passion into strength until the person becomes capable of attempting the most daring enterprises, and enduring the most dreadful sufferings. In the other, we behold the intervention of a divine agent who plants in the soul a new principle and then seduces a new life. The war in which Loyola and his nine companions enrolled themselves when on the 15th of August, 1534, they made their vow in the Church of Montmartre was to be waged against the Saracens of the East. They acted so far on their original design as to proceed to Venice, where they learned that their project was meanwhile impracticable. The war, which had just broken out between the Republic and the port, had closed the gates of Asia. They took this as an intimation that the field of their operations was to be in the Western world. Returning on their path, they now directed their steps towards Rome. In every town through which they passed on their way to the eternal city, they left behind them an immense reputation for sanctity by their labors in the hospitals and their earnest addresses to the populace on the streets. As they drew nigh to Rome and the hearts of some of his companions were beginning to despond, Loyola was cheered by a vision in which Christ appeared and said to him, In Rome will I be gracious unto thee. The hopes this vision inspired were not to be disappointed. Entering the gates of the capital of Christendom and throwing themselves at the feet of Paul, the third Pope, they met a most gracious reception. The Pope hailed their offer of assistance as most opportune. Mighty dangers at that hour threatened the papacy. And with a half of Europe in revolt, and the old monkish orders become incapable. This new and unexpected age seemed sent by heaven. The rules and constitution of the new order were drafted and ultimately approved by the Pope. Two peculiarities in the constitution of the proposed order specially recommended it in the eyes of Paul III. The first was its vow of unconditional obedience. The Society swore to obey the Pope as an army obeys its general. It was not canonical but military obedience which its members offered him. They would go to whatsoever place at whatsoever time and on whatsoever errand he should be pleased to order them. They were, in short, to be not so much monks as soldiers. The second peculiarity was that their services were to be wholly gratuitous. Never would they ask so much as a penny from the papal sea. It was resolved that the new order should bear the name of the Company of Jesus. Loyola modestly declined the honor of being accounted its founder. Christ himself, he affirmed, had dictated to him its constitution in his cave at Manresa. He was its real founder. Whose name then could it so appropriately bear as his? The bull constituting it was issued on the 27th of September 1540 and was entitled Regimini Militantes Ecclesiae and bore that the persons it enrolled into an army were to bear the standard of the cross and to wield the arms of God to serve the only Lord and the Roman pontiff, his vicar on earth. The Latin words mean raised to the government of the church militant. Chapter Three, Organization and Training of the Jesuits. The long-delayed wishes of Loyola had been realized and his efforts, abortive in the past, had now at length been crowned with success. The papal bull had given formal existence to the order. What Christ had done in heaven, his vicar had ratified on the earth. But Loyola was too wise to think that all had been accomplished. He knew that he was only at the beginning of his labors. In the little band around him, he saw but the nucleus of an army that would multiply and expand to one day it should be as the stars in multitude and bear the standard of victory to every land on earth. The gates of the East were meanwhile closed against him, but the Western world would not always set limits to the triumphs of his spiritual arms. He would yet subjugate both hemispheres and extend the dominion of Rome from the rising to the setting sun. Such were the schemes that Loyola, who hid under his mendicant's cloak an ambition vast as Alexander's, was at that moment revolving. Assembling his comrades one day about this time, he addressed them, his biographer tells us, in a long speech, saying, ought we not to conclude that we are called to win to God not only a single nation, a single country, but all nations, all the kingdoms of the world. An army to conquer the world Loyola was forming, but he knew that nothing is stronger than its weakest part. Therefore the soundness of every link, the thorough discipline and tried fidelity of every soldier in this mighty host was with him an essential point. That could be secured only by making each individual before enrolling himself pass through an ordeal that should sift and try and harden him to the utmost. But first the company of Jesus had to elect a head The dignity was offered to Loyola. He modestly declined the post as Julius Caesar did the diadem. After four days spent in prayer and penance, his disciples returned and humbly supplicated him to be their chief. Ignatius, viewing this as an intimation of the will of God, consented. He was the first general of the order. Few royal scepters bring with them such an amount of real power as this election bestowed on Loyola. The day would come when the tiara itself would bow before that yet mightier authority, which was represented by the cap of the general of the Jesuits. The second step was to frame the constitutions of the society. In this labor, Loyola accepted the aid of Linnaeus, the ablest of his converts, Seeing it was at God's command that Ignatius had planted the tree of Jesuitism in the spiritual vineyard, it was to be expected that the constitutions of the company would proceed from the same high source. The constitutions were declared to be a revelation from God, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This gave them absolute authority over the members and paved the way for the substitution of the Constitution and canons of the Society of Jesus in the room of Christianity itself. These canons and instructions were not published. They were not communicated to all the members of the Society even. They were made known to a few only, in all their extent to a very few. They took care to print them in their own college at Rome or in their college at Prague. And if it happened that they were printed elsewhere, they secured and destroyed the edition. I cannot discover, says M. de la Charlotteis, that the constitutions of the Jesuits have ever been seen or examined by any tribunal whatsoever, secular or ecclesiastic, by any sovereign, not even by the Court of Chancery of Prague, when permission was asked to print them. They have taken all sorts of precautions to keep them a secret," end of quote. For a century they were concealed from the knowledge of the world and it was an accident which at last dragged them into the light from the darkness in which they had so long been buried. It is not easy, perhaps it is not possible, to say what number of volumes the Constitutions of the Jesuits form Louis-René de la Chalottes, Procurator General of King Louis XV, in his Report on the Constitutions of the Jesuits, given in to the Parliament of Bretagne, speaks of 50 volumes folio. Now that was in the year 1761, or 221 years after the founding of the order. This code, then enormous, must be greatly more so now. Seeing every bull and brief of the Pope addressed to the society, every edict of its general is so much more added to a legislation that is continually augmenting. We doubt whether any member of the Order is found bold enough to undertake a complete study of them, or ingenious enough to reconcile all their contradictions and inconsistencies. Prudently abstaining from venturing into a labyrinth, from which he may never emerge, he simply asks, not what do the constitutions say, but what does the general command? Practically, the will of his chief is the code of the Jesuit. We shall first consider the powers of the general. The original bull of Paul III, constituting the company, gave to Ignatius di Leola, with nine priests, his companions, the power to make constitutions and particular rules and also to alter them. The legislative power thus rested in the hands of the general and his company, that is, in a congregation representing them. But when Loyola died and Lénaiz succeeded him as general, one of his first acts was to assemble a congregation and cause it to be decided that the general only had the right to make rules, only the general. This crowned the autocracy of the General, for while he has the power of legislating for all others, no one may legislate for him. He acts without control, without responsibility, without law. It is true that in certain cases the society may depose the General, but it cannot exercise its powers unless it be assembled, and the General alone can assemble the congregation. The whole order with all its authority is in fact comprised in him. In virtue of his prerogative, the general can command and regulate everything in the society. He may make special constitutions for the advantage of the society and he may alter them, abrogate them, make new ones, dating them at any time he pleases. These new rules must be regarded as confirmed by apostolic authority, not merely from the time they were made, but the time they are dated. The general assigns to all provincials, superiors, and members of the society of whatever grade, the powers they are to exercise, the places where they are to labor, the missions they are to discharge, and he may annul or confirm their acts at his pleasure. He has the right to nominate provincials and rectors, to admit or exclude members, to say what preferred dignity they are or not to accept, to change the destination of legacies. Though to give money to his relatives exposes him to deposition, he may, quote, yet give alms to any amount that he may deem conducive to the glory of God, end quote. He's invested, moreover, with the entire government and regulation of the colleges of the society. He may institute missions in all parts of the world. When commanding in the name of Jesus Christ and in virtue of obedience, he commands under the penalty of mortal and venial sin. From his orders, there's no appeal to the Pope. He can release from vows. He can examine into the consciences of the members. but it's useless to particularize, the general is the society. The general alone, we have said, has power to make laws, ordinances, and declarations. This power is theoretically bounded, though practically absolute. It's been declared that everything essential, substantia institutionis, to the society is immutable. therefore removed beyond the power of the general, but it has never yet been determined what things belong to the essence of the Institute. Many attempts have been made to solve this question, but no solution that is comprehensible has ever been arrived at. And so long as this question remains without an answer, the powers of the general will remain without a limit. Well, let us next attend to the organization of the society. The Jesuit monarchy covers the globe. At its head, as we have said, is a sovereign who rules over all, but is himself ruled over by no one. First come six grand divisions termed assistanzen, satrapies or princedoms. These comprehend the space stretching from the Indus to the Mediterranean, more particularly India, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Sicily, Poland, and Lithuania. Outside this area, the Jesuits have established missions. The heads of these six divisions act as coadjutors to their general. They're his staff or cabinet. These six great divisions are subdivided into 37 provinces. Over each province is placed a chief, termed a provincial. The provinces are again subdivided into a variety of houses or establishments. First come the houses of the professed, presided over by their provost. Next come the colleges or houses of the novices and scholars presided over by their rector or superior. Where these cannot be established, residences are erected for the accommodation of the priests who perambulate the district preaching and hearing confessions. Lastly, it may be mentioned mission houses in which Jesuits live unnoticed. as secular clergy, but seeking by all possible means to promote the interests of the society. From his chamber in Rome, the eye of the general surveys the world of Jesuitism to its farthest bounds. There's nothing done in it which he does not see. There's nothing spoken in it which he does not hear. It becomes us to note the means by which this almost superhuman intelligence is acquired. Every year, a list of the houses and members of the society with the name, talents, virtues, and failings of each is laid before the general. In addition to the annual report, every one of the 37 provincials must send him a report monthly of the state of his province. He must inform him minutely of its political and ecclesiastical condition. Every superior of a college must report once every three months. The heads of houses of residents and houses of novitiates must do the same. In short, from every quarter of his vast dominions comes a monthly and a tri-monthly report. If the matter reported on has reference to persons outside the Society, the Constitutions direct that the Provincials and Superiors shall write to the General in cipher. Such precautions are taken against enemies, says Chalotes. Is the system of the Jesuits inimical to all governments? Thus to the general of the Jesuits, the world lies naked and open. He sees by a thousand eyes. He hears by a thousand ears. And when he has a behest to execute, he can select the fittest agent from an innumerable host, all of whom are ready to do his bidding. The past history The good and evil qualities of every member of the society, his talents, his dispositions, his inclinations, his tastes, his secret thoughts have all been strictly examined, minutely chronicled and laid before the eye of the general. It's the same as if he were present in person and had seen and conversed with each. All ranks, from the nobleman to the day laborer, all trades, from the opulent banker to the shoemaker and porter, all professions, from the stolled dignitary and the learned professor to the cowled mendicant, all grades of literary men, from the philosopher, the mathematician, and the historian, to the schoolmaster and the reporter on the provincial newspaper, are enrolled in the society, marshaled, and in continual attendance before their chief stand this host. so large in numbers and so various in gifts. At his word they go, and at his word they come, speeding over seas and mountains, across frozen steppes or burning plains on his errand. Pestilence or battle or death may lie on his path, the Jesuit's obedience is not less prompt. Selecting one, the General sends him to the Royal Cabinet. Making choice of another, he opens to him the door of Parliament, A third he enrolls in a political club. A fourth he places in the pulpit of a church whose creed he professes that he may betray it. A fifth he commands to mingle in the saloons of the literati. A sixth he sends to act his part in the evangelical conference. A seventh he seats beside the domestic hearth. And an eighth he sends afar off to barbarous tribes where speaking a strange tongue and wearing a rough garment, he executes amidst hardships and perils the will of his superior. There is no disguise which the Jesuit will not wear, no art he will not employ, no motive he will not feign, no creed he will not profess, provided only he can acquit himself as a true soldier in the Jesuit army and accomplish the work on which he has been sent forth. We have men, exclaimed a general exultingly, as he glanced over the long roll of philosophers, orators, statesmen, and scholars who stood before him, ready to serve him in the state or in the church, in the camp or in the school, at home or abroad. We have men for martyrdom, if they be required. No one can be enrolled in the Society of Jesus till he has undergone a severe and long-continued course of training. Let's glance at the several grades of that great army and the preparatory discipline in the case of each. There are four classes of Jesuits. We begin with the lowest. The novitiates are the first in order of admission, the last in dignity. When one presents himself for admission into the order, a strict scrutiny takes place into his talents, his disposition, his family, his former life. And if it is seen that he is not likely to be of service to the society, he is at once dismissed. If his fitness appears probable, he is received into the house of primary probation. Here he is forbidden all intercourse with the servants within and his relations outside the house. A compend of the institutions is submitted for his consideration, the full body of laws and regulations being withheld from him as yet. If he possesses property, he is told that he must give it to the poor, that is, to the society. His tact and address, his sound judgment and business talent, his health and bodily vigor are all closely watched and noted. Above all, his obedience is subjected to severe experiment. If he acquits himself on the trial to the satisfaction of his examiners, he receives the sacrament and is advanced to the house of second probation. Here, the discipline is of a yet severer kind. The novitiate first devotes a certain period to confession of sins, meditation. He next fulfills a course of service in the hospitals, learning humility by helping the poor and ministering at the beds of the sick. To further his advance in this grace, he next spends a certain term in begging his bread from door to door. Thus he learns to live on the coarsest fare and to sleep on the hardest couch. To perfect himself in the virtue of self-abnegation, he next discharges for a while the most humiliating and repulsive offices in the house in which he lives. And now This course of service ended. He's invited to show his powers of operating on others by communicating instructions to boys in Christian doctrine, by hearing confessions, and by preaching in public. This course is to last two years, unless the superior should see fit to shorten it on the ground of greater zeal or superior talent. A period of probation at an end The candidate for admission into the Order of Jesuits is to present himself before the Superior, furnished with certificates from those under whose eye he has fulfilled his six experimenta, or trials, as to the manner in which he has acquitted himself. If the testimonial should prove satisfactory to the Superior, the novitiate is enrolled, not as yet in the company of the Jesuits, but among the indifference. He is presumed to have no choice as regards the place he is to occupy in the august core he aspires to enter. He leaves that entirely to the decision of the superior. He is equally ready to stand at the head of or at the foot of the body, to discharge the most menial or the most dignified service, to play his part in the saloons of the great, encompassed by luxury and splendor, or to discharge his mission in the hovels of the poor, in the midst of misery and filth. To remain at home or to go to the ends of the earth, to have a preference, though unexpressed, is to fall into deadly sin. Obedience is not only the letter of his vow, it is the lesson that his training has written on his heart. This further trial gone through, the approved novitiate may now take the three simple vows, poverty, chastity, and obedience, which with certain modifications he must ever after renew twice every year. The novitiate is now admitted into the class of scholars. The Jesuits have colleges of their own, amply endowed by wealthy devotees, and to one of these the novitiate is sent to receive instruction in the higher mysteries of the society. His intellectual powers are here more severely tested and trained, and according to the genius and subtlety he may display, and his progress in his studies, so is the post assigned him in due time in the order. The qualities to be desired and commended in the scholars, says the Constitutions, are acuteness of talent, brilliancy of example, and soundness of body. They are to be chosen men, picked from the flower of the troop, and the General has absolute power in admitting or dismissing them according to his expectations of their utility in promoting the designs of the Institute. Having finished his course, first as a simple scholar and secondly as an approved scholar, he renews his three vows and passes into the third class, or coadjutors. Still Waters Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. 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