Upon this charge, we beg leave to present our readers with the following short exculpatory observations.

1. It is certain that the belief of the pope's right to direct supreme temporal power was once prevalent in every state, and among every description of men in christendom. This opinion the jesuits did not introduce; they found it fully established: it would therefore be monstrous to attribute the origination of it to them.

2. Especially as, so far from introducing, they were the first who opposed it. Bellarmine, one of their most eminent lights, absolutely denied, that the pope, by divine right, possessed directly, out of his own state, any temporal power: he taught that the temporal power of the pope was merely indirect, being confined to a right of exercising a temporal power, or of causing it to be exercised, when this was absolutely necessary to effect a great spiritual good, or to prevent a great spiritual evil. This was a considerable reduction of the power ascribed, till that time, to the pope; and it gave great offence to the Roman see*.

3. Even this mitigated doctrine was never taught by the jesuits in any state by the government of which it was not avowedly tolerated. It was tolerated, and the jesuits therefore taught it, in Rome, Spain, Germany, Hungary. Poland, and several states of Italy: but it was not tolerated, and the

• "Ayant pris un sentiment mitoyen touchant le pretendu pouvoir du pape sur le temporel des rois, il ne plut ni à Rome "ni en France."-L'Advocat, art. Ballarmine.

jesuits therefore did not teach it, in France, or the Venetian states.

4. Where it was formally proscribed by the state, it was formally disclaimed by the jesuits. Several instances of this will be produced in the following section *.

5. To this,-England unhappily forms an exception. There, the deposing doctrine was proscribed by the state; and, for a period, much too long,was not disavowed, either by the jesuits or the general body of the clergy: but the cause of this protracted delay of the disavowal, is its excuse. The heap of sanguinary, penal, and disabling laws, enacted by Elizabeth, and the three first princes of the house of Stuart, against the catholics, drove all persons intended for the priesthood, to the territories of the pope or the Spanish monarch. This rendered them, in a great measure, dependent, for their subsistence and education, on those powers; they were therefore taught the doctrines of their schools. This circumstance we may lament, but no person of candour who does lament it, will ever be inattentive to its exculpating cause.

"

"

6. He will also acknowledge, that no sooner did England cease to be cruel, than every idea of the pope's temporal power began to vanish. The catholics crowded to take the oaths prescribed by the acts of 1778, 1791, and 1793; and the jesuits

* See the excellent defence of the society against this charge, in father Griffet's Réponse aux Assertions, vol. iii. ch. ii. art. 2.

took them as readily and unreservedly as the others*.

7. It should be added, that the constitutions of the order most explicitly prohibited to its members every kind of interference in state concerns, or temporal matters; and that this was specially prohibited by Aquaviva, general of the order, to the English jesuits: therefore, if Persons or any other

* After all, the indirect power of the pope, though a doc. trine absolutely insupportable in argument, was not found to be in practice quite so mischievous as it is generally described. It had even this advantage, that, on several occasions, during the boisterous governments of the feudal princes, it often proved an useful restraint, in the absence of every other, both on the king and the great nobility, and protected the lower ranks of society from their violence and oppression. Add to this,that, when the pope proceeded to extremities against any sovereign, the clergy generally rallied round the monarch, and the people adhered to the clergy. This produced a suspence of aggression:-the pontiff had time to think of his rashness, the monarch of his violence; and some expedient was devised which led to good.

Contraries often meet in extremes.-Many a bitter word has been applied to the deposing doctrine of Persons and Mariana; but it bears a nearer affinity to the whiggish doctrine of resistance, than is generally supposed. The whigs maintain that the people, where there is an extreme abuse of power, of which abuse, the people themselves are to be the judges, may dethrone the offending monarch. The good fathers assigned the same power to the people, in the same extreme case, but contended that, if there were any doubts of the existence of the extremity, the pope should be the judge. Of the two systems, when all christendom was catholic, was not the last, speaking comparatively, the least objectionable?

individual offended in this respect, the offence was his own, the order was blameless.

8. It is idle to pursue the subject further. To quarrel with the jesuits of the nineteenth century because some of the order advocated the pope's temporal power in the reign of queen Elizabeth, or her immediate successor, is as preposterous, as to charge the present presbyterians with maintaining the lawfulness of religious persecution, because Calvin consigned Servetus to the flames, and Beza lauded him; or to impute the belief of sorcery to his majesty's present judges, because lord Hale convicted some witches capitally in the seventeenth century; or to impute the doctrine of passive obedience to the present bishops, because the divine right of kings was maintained by some of their predecessors in the eighteenth*.

* " I mention this oversight," says the late learned Richard Porson,-in one of his letters to Travis, in which he speaks of a mistake of an eminent writer," merely to strengthen an "opinion which I have long entertained and will always reso"lutely defend, that all men are liable to error."-If the writer of these pages might be permitted to add his aphorism to that of Mr. Porson, he would, to use the language of that gentleman, say, that, "it is an opinion, which he has long "entertained, and will always resolutely defend, that no "man is so bad as his polemic adversary describes him."

LXXV. 8.

Their alleged Exemption from the Civil Power in consequence of Papal Bulls and Briefs.

We have now to notice the charge brought against the jesuits from the bulls and briefs, by which popes have affected to exempt the jesuits from the civil power.

But these bulls and briefs, so far as they have this tendency, make no part of the institute of the society. In the Apologie de l'Institût des Jésuites, one of their standard works of defence*, this is explicitly asserted. The author of it proves, by numerous examples, that, while the jesuits would rather die, than give up their institute, they resign, without reserve, all claims to these exemptions, when they are repugnant to the laws of any country in which they settle.

Thus,-in 1611, 1626 and 1713, they recognized the absolute civil independence of the sovereign on the pope, in solemn instruments, signed by them, with every legal formality, and entered on the records of the parliament of Paris.

In a former part of this work, the writer has mentioned the declaration of the Gallican clergy in 1682. The first article of it proclaims the absolute civil independence of the sovereign on the pope. Now, these articles were taught in all the schools of the French jesuits, and in 1757 and 1761 they formally and explicitly avowed their adherence to

Tom. ii. c. 27.