"The Romish Church hath absolved subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and "princes from their oaths, contracts, and promises made to their subjects; hath de"posed kings and given their crowns to others; hath violated public faith; hath ex**cited wars; hath set nation against nation; hath established Inquisitions; hath en"couraged massacres and assassinations; hath slain millions; purely for the support "of its own religion, and for the destruction of those who dissent from it."

DR. JORTIN.

OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE ABOLITION OF THE ORDER OF JESUITS IN 1773, AND ITS RECENT RESTORATION.

We fully intended printing the Papal Bull of July 21st, 1773, suppressing the society of Jesuits, in which we know that the objections to the continuance of the order, and the charges brought agaist it, are set forth in detail; that our readers might, at leisure, compare this instrument with the Bull lately published restoring the condemned order. We naturally concluded that we should find the Bull of Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) in the Annual Register; but, to our surprise, it is not there recorded. On a moment's recollection, however, our surprise subsided. Mr. Burke, educated by Roman Catholics, if not by Jesuits themselves, the compiler of the historical department of the Annual Register, had a preponderant authority in getting up the whole of that work for publication. It may not be uninstructive, and may let us see how history is tinged, and doubtless has been tinged in all ages, by the prejudices, or peculiarities of sentiment, which have taken possession of historians. Mr. Burke, in 1773, had not attained that "something of prophetic strain," which the experience of lengthened years conferred upon him. He thought, "good easy man," that the reduction of the Papal power was making rapid progress, that it was decaying very fast, and that ere long only the skeleton of Popery would remain. "The total abolition of the Jesuits (says he, An. Reg. vol. 16, p. 9,) after they had for above VOL. III. [Prot. Adv. Dec. 1814.]

two hundred years made so much noise, and by their intrigues created so much confusion in the world, [the Italics here and elsewhere in these extracts are our's] though it has been so long expected, [the Pope deliberated upon it four years; see our last, p. 63,] is so remarkable an event, that it will stamp the present year as a distinguished æra. The reduction of the ecclesiatical power is now become so general in all the Roman Catholic states, that it is no longer a particularity in any one; and those encroachments which a few years ago would have made the greatest noise, and have been considered as matters of the most alarming nature, are now passed over as matters of course." So it seems that the abolition of the Jesuits, which was to stamp 1773 as a distinguished era, was only regarded as a matter of course! The suppression of the Jesuits, a measure forced upon the Pope, by many sovereigns, and particularly by those of the house of Bourbon, (convinced of the dangers resulting to the world from the existence of the order,) could never be deemed, as it never ought to have been reckoned, a matter of course. The Pope risked almost every thing, certainly the possession of his temporal dominions, to preserve the order; and only suppressed it when he was compelled to issue a Bull for that purpose. Mr. Burke himself (An. Reg. p. 54,) admits this; he informs us that "the court of Rome, after the imminent dangers it had run, through the obstinacy, or constancy which ever it may be termed, [this is a way of writing frequently adopted by Mr. Gibbon,] of the late Pope [Benedict XIV.] has, under the guidance of the present [Ganganelli] at length submitted to the united power of the house of Bourbon, by the FINAL suppression of the order of Jesuits. Indeed it does not seem, that any thing less than the death of the late Pontiff, and the prudent acquiescence of the present, could have preserved even the territorial possessions of that state, which had so long governed Italy, and in a great measure given the law to Europe." William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, who died in 1572, aged 97 years, after having enjoyed places of honour and profit under Henry VIII, Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was asked how he had contrived to retain his situations during those tumultuous times when so many changes took place in church and state? the old man answered by being a willow, and not an oak!" What perhaps was constitutional in Paulet, has long been systematic in the Popes. They know how to bend beneath a storm. For years they can droop the head, and kiss the very earth, like the Salix Babylonica, but, when the storm has passed away, with astonishing powers of resiliency they erect their crest and proudly attempt to invade the very skies. In 1773, Clement XIV. abandons the Jesuits to the indignation of the sovereigns of Europe;

but the suppression was not, as the Historian says, final; for in 1814, Fius VII, having, by a rare fate, braved, unharmed, the fury of Buonaparte, and having survived the wreck of the tyrant's fortunes, fearing nothing, as it should seem, from the present race of sovereigns,-calls the Jesuits once more into action, in hope, no doubt, to profit by their intrigues. Mr. Burke, (for we never heard his writing the History of Europe in the Annual Register denied) like a philosophical historian, indulges in some reflections (p. 9,) which we shall lay before our readers by way of shewing them, at least, the vanity of human judgment, and how a man of genius and refined intellect may be mistaken in his opinions and the " foregone conclusions" which he occasionally hazards." As there seems (he goes on) to be a fashion in all things, even in virtues and vices so it appears in nothing more remarkably, than in ecclesiastical affairs. While it was the mode of the times, to confer honours, power, and possessions upon the church, she was overwhelmed with them; piety degenerated into a vice; and private men ruined their families, and kings their countries, only to make her too rich and too powerful. When this unnatural power and grandeur had produced the distempers incident to them, and it was thought necessary to pluck off the adventitious plumage, the tide of fashion took the contrary course with equal rapidity, and seems now to proceed with an eagerness that threatens to leave only the skeleton behind."-This mixt metaphor by no means savours of Mr. Burke. Feathers are not plucked off by tides, and if a bird should be denuded of its plumage by a tide, the loss of its feathers would not reduce it to a skeleton. The writer's meaning, however, is obvious enough; and Popery is by no means in that abject, powerless state into which it was supposed in 1773 to be rapidly declining. The Jesuits are re-established, and new vigour has been communicated to the monastic orders in general. The Pope has dared to excommunicate the most dreadful enemy that, in this age, he could have encountered. It should seem that Buonaparte is at this moment making suit to him to annul the sentence of excommunication under which he lies. The papal power has lately agitated, very severely, the realm of Great Britain, -the whole of the United Kingdom. Its partizans assert, that it is not altered a tittle, nor has declined a jot ;-that it is "immortal and unchanged." Recovered from the temporary obscuration which it suffered forty years ago, they assert that it shines out with the splendour which belongs to it; that Protestantism must suffer an eclipse; that our religion, a novelty, (though ancient as primæval Christianity) must fall, and that only the memory of the mischiefs it has occasioned [to the corruptions of the Romish church,] will remain. They demand an unconditional emancipa

tion (as they term it) from the wise restrictions under which our ancestors were compelled, on a principle of self-defence, to lay them; they demand seats in the legislature, and a share in the administration of the government. Mr. Burke's skeleton is a most energetic assemblage of dry bones." It is terrible to look upon. But, after all, we cannot allow that it is a skeleton. The oratorical historian described what filled his mind's eye" in a fine phrenzy rolling ;" but Popery never has undergone the maceration which he contemplated, it never came under the scientific hands of an articulator to he hung on wires, and to continue in a pendant posture;-it is still a living monster; its fibres are firm, its muscles powerful, its cartilages unimpaired, its tendons tough. Let any man treat it as dead and defunct, he will soon feel its grasp, its eyes will gleam with horrible " speculation," and its tongue will utter curses both loud and deep,"-for it has not forgotten how to excommunicate -how to anathematize. It is curious to see how the historian seems to labour in order to avoid recording in the Annual Register, as he ought to have done, the bull of suppression. He talks about it, but he does not record it. "The Pope's Bull (he tells us, p. 55,) for the suppression of the Jesuits is a writing of an enormous length, and loaded with precedents to shew the supreme authority exercised by former Popes, in the reformation or total abolition of other religious orders." "The charges against the Jesuits are loose and voluminous, and seem in general rather to comprehend a recapitulation of all the complaints that have been made against them from their first institution, without regard to the proofs that were brought in their support, or the decisions that were passed upon them, than of direct accusations. Thus are enumerated, early dissentions among themselves, and quarrels with other orders, as well as the secular clergy, with the public schools, academies, and universities, together with disputes that arose upon the authority assumed or exercised by their general, and with the princes in whose countries they were received [what a pugnacious, what a troublesome set of beings!] with a long bead-roll [nothing more !] of such general matters, without any particular observations on their nature, causes, or issue;" &c. What an impracticable thing is TRUTH! After all this Verbiage, it will not be hidden or overlaid; but shews us a glimpse of its honest countenance. "Some other - matters (continues the historian) are of more importance. It appears, that so early as the year 1606, their rage for intermeddling in public and political affairs, was already become so prevalent and notorious, and some consequences that attended it, bore so fatal an aspect to the order, that they were obliged to pass a decree amongst themselves, which, to give it greater efficacy, they had inserted in a brief by Pope Paul V., to

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forbid their members from interfering under any pretence in public affairs for the future. This remedy, as well as all others, is said to have been ineffectual, and they are charged with an insatiable avidity for temporal possessions, with disturbing the peace of the church in Europe, Africa, and America; of [with] giving scandal in their missions, as well by quarrelling with other missionaries, and by invading their rights, as by the practice of idolatrous ceremonies in certain places, in contempt of those approved by the church. Their doctrines are also attacked, and they are charged with giving uses and applications to certain maxims, which are proscribed as scandalous and contradictory to good morals: and [are accused] of having adopted dangerous opinions, in matters of the greatest moment and importance, with respect to the preserving of the purity and integrity of the doctrines contained in the gospel; and which are said to have been productive of great evils and dangers to the church, as well as to some particular states."-Although the bull for their suppression is not preserved for our consideration in the Annual Register, the historian of that work has here stated, out of a bead roll of loose charges, quite enough to apologize for Ganganelli's conduct in putting an end to the order-a final end to it, as he hoped, and the historian believed.-We shall endeavour to procure a copy of the smothered bull of suppression nevertheless, and enable our readers ere long to compare it with the recent bull of revival.-In the mean time we shall state a circumstance or two which attended the putting of the bull in force at Rome. " On Aug. 16th, 1773. a detachment of Corsican soldiers (An. Reg. for that year, p 132,) went to each of the colleges, in that city, and to other houses of the Jesuits, with the following prelates-Messrs. Macedonio, Alfani, Sesale, Zaccheri, Dionigi, Archetti, Riganti, Passionei, Foggoni, and Della Porta. The soldiers having taken post both within and without these respective houses, the above deputies assembled the community, and caused to be read to them, by the notaries nominated for that purpose, the brief which occasioned their [the prelates'] commission, and the bull of their suppression. After which they successively put the seal on the archives, chests of silver plate, and of provisions. They then left the soldiers in the said houses and colleges, to have an eye over those individuals, who in the space of eight days were to quit the habit of their order. The Jesuits commenced from this morning to give up their schools, and are no longer to exercise the functions of their ministry." The historian of the Ann. Reg. says, (p. 57,)—" the riches which were found in their houses and colleges, whether in specie, plate, or jewels, were very inconsiderable;”—but the department of the work, called the Chronicle, informs us (p. 142,) in an article dated Rome, Sept. 12, that,