abound, still would not the sinner be justified, if it were not for the infinite mercy of God, and the infinite merits and satisfaction of his Son*.

CHAP. LXXV.

SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS.

IN the history of the society of Jesus, all English catholics have an interest: invaluable and numerous are the services which the English, members of it have rendered them, by their colleges, their missionary labours, their excellent writings, and their exemplary lives.

The rise and first progress of the society have been noticed:-we shall now briefly mention, I. Its progressive extension: II. The mode of instruction and education used by the members of the society: III. Their missions in Paraguay: IV. Their mission in China: V. Their antichristian and anticatholic adversaries: VI. Their catholic adversaries: VII. Their alleged advocation of the pope's divine right to temporal power in spiritual concerns: VIII. Their alleged exemption from the civil power, in consequence of papal bulls and briefs: IX. The dissolution of the society: X. And their restoration.

* The author of the Letters, to which the writer has referred in this article, was father Scheffmacker, a jesuit, at Strasburgh, The reader of them, whatever be his creed, will be delighted with their truly christian politeness, their elegance, and their perspicuity.

LXXV. 1.

The progressive Extension of the Order.

ST. IGNATIUS survived the approbation of his institute no longer than sixteen years: but, during this short period, St. Francis Xavier, and his companions, had converted thirty nations to the faith of Christ, and baptised, with their own hands, a million of idolaters: above one hundred schools, under the direction of the jesuits, had been founded in Italy, in Germany, in Portugal, and Spain; and incessant applications were received for others. The whole catholic world was delighted with the good that was done, and the good that was promised: “Let us not despair," said cardinal Commendon, one of the brightest ornaments of the sixteenth century, on his return from his German legation," all difficulties that impede the pro

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gress of religion and virtue, may be overcome by "the means of the fathers of the society of Jesus. "This is the opinion of his imperial majesty, of "the princes, and even of the people of Germany. "What these fathers have already done, shows "what may be expected from their zeal. Their

exemplary lives, their sermons, their colleges, "have supported and will ever support religion. * Multiply then the jesuits, multiply their colleges "and their academies; you will find that the "fruits, which religion will gather from them, will "exceed your expectations." The advice was universally accepted; the church and state of every

catholic nation called for the jesuits. In 1537, when St. Ignatius presented himself and his companions to the pope, their number did not exceed six; at the expiration of the first century of the order, it reached nineteen thousand.

LXXV. 2.

Their Mode of Instruction and Education.

OF Socrates, it was said, that he brought down philosophy from the heavens to common life of the jesuits, it may be truly said, that, in imitation of their divine model, they made the knowledge of religion and the practice of it familiar to every rank and order of society. They spread themselves over towns and over villages, to teach the catechism to children, in their very earliest days; to afford them more solid instruction, as their years increased; and to prepare them, at a more advanced age, for the sacrament of the holy table. To excite them to devotion, and to confirm them in their good resolutions, they established certain devotional practices, which impressed them with religious feelings; and formed religious associations, which, by uniting several in the observance of the same pious exercises, excited emulation, restrained the wandering, animated the tepid, and inflamed the fervent. Their schools were equally open to the noble and the ignoble, to the wealthy and the poor. were subject to the same discipline; rose at the same early hour, were fed by the same plain diet,— received the same instruction, might attain the same

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rewards, and were subject to the same punishments. Surveying the school, the refectory, or the playgarden of a Loyolan college, no person could distinguish a boy of sixteen quarters from a peasant's son. At the college de Clermont, the grand Condé said his lesson and did every other exercise, in the ranks, as a common boy.-His impetuous mind, which, at a future time, disdained and burst through every restraint, showed all its fire, but burned with regulated heat, while he remained within the walls of Clermont. It may be added, that, through life he preserved his affection for the society, and that, in his last very edifying hours, he was attended by one of its fathers.

It is admitted, that the jesuits were singularly pleasing to their scholars. "Their polite manners, says M. de Chateaubriand, "banished from their "lessons the tone of pedantry, so displeasing to youth. As most of the professors were men of

letters, whose company was sought by the world "at large, their disciples thought themselves in a

polite academy; friendships were formed between "them and their masters, which ever afterwards "subsisted for their mutual good."

No attachment could exceed that of a boy brought up under them, to his master. "I myself," says "one of the authors of the Réponse aux Assertions, speaking of their final banishment from France, "was present at the moment of the separation of "the scholars from their masters in the college de "Louis le Grand. Stupified with grief, they tore themselves, either in silent sorrow, or with tears

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"and sobs, from the embraces of their masters. Our enemies know that I exaggerate nothing. They themselves beheld it, and it increased their "irritations: they comforted themselves by hoping "that, in time, the impression would die away."

But the zeal of the jesuits was not confined to the catechism or the college. The pulpits resounded with their predication; confessionals abounded with their penitents; the sacred tables with their disciples, and repentance and resignation flocked with them, at all hours, into hospitals and prisons. They had their ascetics and their contemplatives; but the devotion of common life,-that devotion, in describing and inculcating which, in his "Intro"duction to a Devout Life," St. Francis of Sales was so eminently successful,-the jesuits had a particular talent in disseminating. The most useful of all pious practices, but, till then, too much confined to the cloister, pious meditations on the life of Christ, on the four last things, and the motives of loving or fearing God, they adapted to the most ordinary capacities. The exercises of St. Ignatius, a course of meditations composed by him for the general use of the faithful, are equally suited to the highest and the meanest capacities; no one has yet read them without fruit.

Simple and easy exercises of piety," says the cardinal de Baussêt, "familiar instructions, proportioned to every condition, and nowise inter"fering with the labours or duties of society, served "to uphold, in every state of life, that regularity of 66 manners, that spirit of order and subordination,