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joicing from his present position, he must be regarded as expressing, not merely his own, but the sentiments and opinions of the hierarchy of the United States, when he gives the preference to the condition of Europe during the Middle Ages-when ignorance, superstition, and degradation were almost universal among the populations-over that in which the people of this country now are. Blind and passive submission to the priesthood then prevailed throughout all the ranks of society; therefore, the people were abundantly happy! They were so ignorant as not to know that they were in bondage; therefore, they were models of contentment! The masses were in the lowest poverty, while the nobility reveled in wealth and luxury; therefore, they were in a state of blissful humility! They left the popes and their myriads of priestly dependents to do as they pleased, and to bid defiance to all human laws; therefore, they had reached the point of the highest "moral elevation!" Who can account for such strange hallucination of thought as this? How is it possible for a man to persuade himself, or be persuaded by others, to believe that this country would be improved, and the people carried to higher moral and political elevation, if the existing condition of our affairs were destroyed, and that which existed in the Middle Ages substituted? Certainly, no such thought can dwell long in the minds of any but those whose blind devotion shuts out the light from their reason. And yet, to bring about precisely that result, all the energies of the Roman Catholic Church, in so far as the papacy can direct them, are now assiduously and untiringly directed. Possibly, those who are aiding in this work in the United States are merely laboring under honest delusion, in the conviction that it may be done by peaceful means, or that the people can be persuaded to give up to foreign dictation those national blessings which have always constituted their highest pride. But this they must and do know that what they labor for with so much diligence can only be accomplished by overthrowing our Protestant institutions, destroying our Protestant Christianity, and upheaving, from its foundation, our Protestant form of government.

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CHAPTER IV.

Papal Hopes of Success in the United States.-The Jesuits.-Their Character. Their Expulsion by Roman Catholic Governments.-Their Suppression by Clement XIV.-Causes of it.-His Bull.-Expelled from Russia. -Causes of it.-Their Restoration by Pius VII.-Their Support of Monarchy. The Order not Religious.-Its Constitution.-Its Authors.-They Denounce Protestantism as Infidelity.-They Threaten the Inquisition.Movements during the Rebellion.-Napoleon III, and Pius IX.-Intolerance of the Latter.—Precedents of Kings Humiliated by the Popes.

GREGORY XVI., whose pontificate commenced in 1831, was the first pope who seemed encouraged by the idea that the papacy would ultimately establish itself in the United States. His chief reliance, as the means of realizing this hope, was upon the Jesuits, upon whose entire devotion to the principles of absolutism he could confidently rely. Prepared at all times to labor for the suppression of freedom, and trained in a faith which allows to the individual no personal right of thought or action, they were both ready and willing agents in the work of assailing our popular institutions. With them no form of government has the divine approval unless founded upon the principles of monarchy. They es pecially abhor that form which confers equality of civil and political rights, which denies the authority of privileged classes, and forbids the establishment of ecclesiasticism.

This wonderful society-the most wonderful the world has ever known-had been suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV., after a tedious and thorough personal investigation of all the accusations against it. By this act of condemnation, which was made at the instance of the leading Roman Catholic powers, such a degree of odium was stamped upon its character that the people everywhere held it in execration. Its despotic principles and immoral teachings were alike condemned, except by those who, like Gregory XVI., saw that, in the compactness of its organization and the unity of its purpose, it possessed important elements of

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strength, which it was always willing to employ in building up the papal structure. There is no more instructive chapter in history than that which records the events connected with its suppression by the pope. The expulsion of the order from France, Spain, Portugal, and Sicily-all Roman Catholic governments-the hesitation of Clement, his careful and deliberate investigation of the charges made against it, and the overwhelming proofs which forced him to conclusions he had manifestly endeavored to avoid, all go to show an amount of turpitude which is without parallel elsewhere. The pope was reluctant to fix the pontifical censure upon it, because it had received the sanction of a number of his predecessors; but as an honest and sincere Christian-which is not denied, except by the Jesuits-he felt himself constrained, by a sense of duty to the Church and the world, to declare its unworthiness. And, in doing so, he satisfied the Roman Catholic governments against which treason had been plotted by its members, and restored quiet, for a time, to the Church.

In his pontifical brief, Clement XIV. averred that the Jesuit "maxims" were "scandalous, and manifestly contrary to good morals;" that the society had bred "revolts and intestine troubles in some of the Catholic states;" that, by means of its practices, "complaints and quarrels were multiplied. on every side; in some places dangerous seditions arose, tumults, discords, dissensions, scandals, which, weakening or entirely breaking the bonds of Christian charity, excited the faithful to all the rage of party hatreds and animosities;" that the kings most devoted to the Church-to wit, those of France, Spain, Portugal, and Sicily-had "found themselves reduced to the necessity of expelling and driving from their states, kingdoms, and provinces these very Companions of Jesus," which they were compelled to do as a step "necessary in order to prevent the Christians from rising one against another, and from massacring each other in the very bosom. of our common mother, the Holy Church;" and that, as the Church could never 66 recover a firm and durable peace so long as the said society subsisted," he, therefore, was constrained to annul and extinguish it "forever," to "abrogate all the prerogatives which had been granted to them by their

general and other superiors in virtue of the privileges obtained from the sovereign pontiffs," and to announce to the Christian world that his pontifical act of suppression "should forever and to all eternity be valid, permanent, and efficacious," and be "inviolably observed" by all the faithful everywhere.(')

The Jesuits, by the immoral tendency of their doctrines and the many enormities perpetrated by them against gov ernments, society, and individuals, had become so unpopular throughout Europe that their suppression gave great and almost universal satisfaction. It was especially approved by all sincere Christians, because they saw that it removed from the Church a load which was surely dragging it down. And those who, without belonging to the order, had been educated by it, were constrained to approve the act, because it was done by an infallible pope, who could not err! This sentiment of approval became stronger in proportion as the practices and policy of the order became better known. The public were then enabled to see how entirely at variance its practices were with its professions. Although one of the articles of their constitution forbade the members of the or

() "History of the Jesuits," by Nicolini, pp. 387 to 406, where the brief of the pope is published at length; "History of the Jesuits," by Steinmetz, p. 612; "History of the Popes," by Cormenin, vol. ii., p. 397.

This celebrated bull of the pope is called "Dominus ac Redemptor," and that Clement was exceedingly reluctant to issue it is beyond all question. In a letter written by him in 1768, before he became pope, and while he was Cardinal Ganganelli, he expressed the opinion that if the Jesuits had, not been so 66 'obstinate" as to refuse any reformation, the differences with them "might have been brought to a happy issue."-Letters of Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli). To which are affixed anecdotes of his life, translated from the French of Lottin Le Jeune, vol. ii., p. 201. After he became pope, and when it became his duty to investigate the complaints against the society, he wrote to a Portuguese lord, saying: "I shall do nothing until I have examined, weighed, and judged according to the laws of justice and truth. May God forbid that any human consideration should influence my decision! I have already a sufficiently severe account to render to God, without charging my conscience with the addition of a new crime; and it would be an enormous one to proscribe a religious order upon rumors and prejudices, or even upon suspicions. I shall not forget that, in rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, I ought to render to God the things that are God's."-Ibid., pp. 224, 225.

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der from the acceptance of any dignity, and another recommended holy poverty as the bulwark of religion, yet there were among them 24 cardinals, 6 electors of the empire, 19 princes, 21 archbishops, and 121 titular bishops; and their aggregate wealth amounted to 40,000,000 pounds sterlingthe enormous sum of $200,000,000! Their general, Lorenzo Ricci, was arrested, and thrown into prison in the castle of St. Angelo at Rome, charged with an attempt to stir up a revolt against the papal authority-with plotting treason against the Church and the pope within the consecrated walls of the Vatican. Besides his confession that he had been in secret correspondence with the Prussian monarch, the other evidences of his guilt were so convincing that his imprisonment lasted until 1775, when he was relieved from it only by death. The passions of the order were, of course, aroused to exceeding violence-even to such an excess that the pope himself, although the infallible “vicar of Christ," did not escape their vengeance. They published malicious libels against him, charging that he had been guilty of simony in procuring his election, and calling him by the opprobrious name of Antichrist! They became so impassioned in their attacks upon him, that, when his death occurred, during the next year, under very suspicious circumstances, they were charged with having procured it by poison!(")

(3) The question whether or not Pope Clement XIV. was poisoned by the Jesuits has given rise to much acrimonious discussion. On one side it is confidently asserted that he was; while, on the other, it is stoutly denied. It is said that, after his death, "his body turned instantly black, and appeared in a state of putrefaction, which induced the people present to impute his death to the effect of poison; and it was very generally reported that he had fallen a sacrifice to the resentment of the Jesuits."-Letters of Pope Clement XIV., etc., by Le Jeune, vol. .i., p. 45. St. Priest says that "the scientific men who were called in to embalm his body found the features livid, the lips black, the abdomen inflated, the limbs emaciated, and covered with violet spots; the size of the heart was much diminished, and all the muscles detached and decomposed in the spine. They filled the body with perfumes and aromatic substances; but nothing would dispel the mephitic exhalations. The entrails burst the vessels in which they were deposited: and when his pontifical robes were taken from his body, a great portion of the skin adhered to them. The hair of his head remained entire upon the velvet pillows upon which he rested, and with the slightest friction his nails fell off."-Apud Nicolini, pp. 417, 418. Cardinal De Bernis, who had been