CHAP.

VI.

sailles before he showed much activity.* Bonrepaux had raised himself from obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had exhibited as a clerk in the department of th marine, and was esteemed an adept in the mystery of mercantile politics. At the close of the year 1685, he was sent to London charged with several special commissions of high inportance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards; and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian: his stature was dwarfish: his countenance was ludicrously ugly; and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth and figure, he was soon known as a pleasing companion and as a skilful diplomatist. He contrived, while flirting with the Duchess of Mazarin. discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evremond. and corresponding with La Fontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge of English politics. His skill in maritime affairs recommended him to James, who had, during many years. paid close attention to the business of the Admiralty, and understood that business as well as he was capable of understanding anything. They conversed every day long and freely about the state of the shipping and the dockyards. The result of this intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and vigilant Frenchman conceived a great contempt for the King's abilities and character. The world, he said, had much overrated his Britannic Majesty, who had less capacity than Charles, and not more virtue.†

The two envoys of Lewis, though pursuing one object, very judiciously took different paths. They made a partition of the court. Bonrepaux lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester's adherents. Barillon's connections were chiefly with the opposite faction. The consequence was that they sometimes saw the same event in different points of view.

*See his later correspondence, passim; Saint Evremond, passim; and Madame de Sévigné's Letters in the beginning of 1689. See also the instructions to Tallard after the peace of Ryswick, in the

French archives.

+ Saint Simon, Mémoires, 1697, 1719; Saint Evremond; La Fontaine; Bonrepaux to Scignelay, Feb. 1686

Jan. 28.
Feb. 7.

CHAP.

VI.

and the Order of

Jesus op

best account now extant of the contest which at this agitated Whitehall is to be found in their despatches. s each of the two parties at the court of James had the The Pope ort of foreign princes, so each had also the support of an esiastical authority to which the King paid great deference. Supreme Pontiff was for legal and moderate courses; his sentiments were expressed by the Nuncio and by the ir Apostolic.* On the other side was a body of which the ht balanced even the weight of the Papacy, the mighty er of Jesus.

hat at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, →, as it seemed, inseparably allied, should have been opposed ach other, is a most important and remarkable circumice. During a period of little less than a thousand years regular clergy had been the chief support of the Holy

posed to

each other.

By that See they had been protected from episcopal rference; and the protection which they had received had a amply repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that Bishop of Rome would have been merely the honorary sident of a vast aristocracy of prelates. It was by the aid he Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh was enabled to tend at once against the Franconian Cæsars and against secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the Albisian sectaries. Three centuries later the Pontificate, ex- The Order ed to new dangers more formidable than had ever before of Jesus. eatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which was mated by intense enthusiasm and organised with exquisite 1. When the Jesuits came to the rescue, they found the acy in extreme peril: but from that moment the tide of tle turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole eration, carried all before it, was stopped in its progress, I rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores he Baltic. Before the Order had existed a hundred years, ad filled the whole world with memorials of great things e and suffered for the faith. No religious community ld produce a list of men so variously distinguished: none 1 extended its operations over so vast a space: yet in none

Adda, Nov. 1, Dec., and Dec. 1. 5. In these despatches Adda gives ng reasons for compromising matters bolishing the penal laws and leaving He calls the quarrel with the liament a "gran disgrazia." He re

test.

peatedly hints that the King might, by
a constitutional policy, have obtained
much for the Roman Catholics, and
that the attempt to relieve them illegally
is likely to bring great calamities on
them.

СНАР.
VI.

had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Roman Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity . had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common cause, unreasoning obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwellingplace or his vocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians under the Southern Cross not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the

lic places, showed him what he had to expect, he went
out remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor is this
pic spirit yet extinct. When, in our own time, a new and
ible pestilence passed round the globe, when, in some
it cities, fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society
ether, when the secular clergy had forsaken their flocks,
en medical succour was not to be purchased by gold, when
strongest natural affections had yielded to the love of life,
n then the Jesuit was found by the pallet which bishop
I curate, physician and nurse, father and mother, had de-
ted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of
fession, and holding up to the last, before the expiring
itent, the image of the expiring Redeemer.

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-
rotion which were characteristic of the Society, great vices
re mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation,
it the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless
his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regard-
s of truth and of mercy; that no means which could promote
› interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that
the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest
his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious
>ts recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced;
at, constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he
longed, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy
freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy of order.
e mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved
the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of many
ustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real.
e had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to
duce the world under her laws; but he had done so by relax-
g her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling
elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine
ecept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was
neath the average level of human nature. He gloried in
ultitudes of converts who had been baptised in the remote
gions of the East: but it was reported that from some of
hose converts the facts on which the whole theology of the
ospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that
hers were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down
efore the images of false gods, while internally repeating
aters and Aves. Nor was it only in heathen countries
at such arts were said to be practised. It was not

CHAP.

VI.

CHAP.
VI.

strange that people of all ranks, and especially of the highest
ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples;
for from those confessionals none went discontented away.
There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so
much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spi-
ritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church.
If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the
saintly tones of the primitive fathers: but with that large part
of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy
when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them
from doing wrong, he followed a different system. Since he
could not reclaim them from vice, it was his business to save
them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dis-
pensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of
casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and printed
with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doc-
trines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the
bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his
goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he
might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pan-
dar was assured that a Christian man might innocently earn
his living by carrying letters and messages between married
women and their gallants. The high spirited and punctilious
gentlemen of France were gratified by a decision in favour of
duelling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and baser
modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, with-
out any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To
deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value
of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if
society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed
any security, it was because common sense and common hu-
manity restrained men from doing what the Order of Jesus
assured them that they might with a safe conscience do.
So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character
of these celebrated brethren; and the intermixture was the
secret of their gigantic power. That power could never have
belonged to mere hypocrites. It could never have belonged
to rigid moralists. It was to be attained only by men sincerely
enthusiastic in the pursuit of a great end, and at the same time
unscrupulous as to the choice of means.

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to the Pope. Their mission had been not less to quell all mutiny within the Church than to repel the hostility