before my mind the noble and devout uses I mean to make of what I purloin. And may I not remove a rival or an enemy out of my path without indulging that hatred which the law denounces as murder? Yes, I may, provided I piously think the while of the good to myself, or to the Church for which the act of killing him opens the way. But if one is so wicked as to steal from sheer greed, or to kill from pure hatred, he is a base person, with such a one we will have nothing to do. But it would never do to hold one responsible for what the hands, or the feet, or the tongue may do, while the man himself is absent, in a sense,-is sitting apart, meditating on holy things. The rightness or wrongness of an action lies in the motive.

An admirable system of morality is it not? This brilliant product of the higher exegesis leaves far behind the Law given on Sinai, and the Sermon preached on the Mount. It has at last emancipated the world from the bondage of the ten commandments, and brought it into a liberty so ample and complete that nothing more can be wished for, nor, indeed, can anything wider be conceived of.

A word on the Jesuit method of swearing truly and falsely at one and the same time. Nothing would seem more difficult and yet nothing is more easy. It all lies in imagining to yourself, but not saying to others, that you did not say such a thing, or do such an act in certain circumstances, as at the North Pole, or before you were born; or inserting in your oath certain words spoken to yourself but not audible to others, which entirely change the sense of the oath. You can thus swear truly,-truly to yourself, falsely to all the rest of the world.

The three rules explained above admit of the widest possible application. Hardly is there an act a man may do in the whole course of his life which may not be changed for the worse by them. All his relations to God and to his fellow

men they invert, and, by consequence, the duties springing from them. The frauds, false swearings, purloinings, robberies, calumnies, murders, blasphemies, seductions, treasons, and all abominable crimes which would flourish under the reign of these maxims, can be easily imagined without our specifying them. These maxims would fill the world with Jesuit morality, but empty it of truth, justice, honesty, and uprightness.*

Small Arms

CHAPTER IX.

Theological and Moral Maxims of the Jesuits.

We have visited the arsenal of the Jesuits, and have surveyed with a sort of terrified wonder and awe the forces which they have called into existence, and which they here keep stored up for the prosecution of that great war in which, accounting it but a small thing that they should subdue the earth, they have proposed to themselves an aim no less lofty than to scale the heavens and bring to an end the reign of the Eternal King.

Besides these greater instruments of war, we find in this magazine a vast variety of what we may term "small arms." In these last we have the principles of the Jesuit science formulated into practical maxims, and ready for use by the rank and file of the host whenever the case or occasion may arise to which these maxims have been made applicable. The greater

*The author has given a full historical account of the Jesuits, including their Constitutions, Organization, Moral Code, &c., in the Fifteenth Book of his "History of Protestantism." He has there been careful to give the authorities on which his statements are based. He begs to refer the reader, who may wish to pursue the subject, to Vol. iii., Bk. xv., of the abovenamed work.

instruments, the principles or sources of power, to wit, are designed for the "mighties" of the Jesuit army. They only are able to wield these heavy weapons. But here are the subordinates provided for. Here are lighter arms for their feebler hands. Here is the question or case of conscience and with it the rule or maxim that regulates it. The Jesuit need never be at a loss if only ordinarily versed in the casuistry of his "Order.' He has but to ask, What does this father write? How has this doctor decided? What rule has he laid down for the solution of this case? And having ascertained the opinion of these fathers, he is to follow it. Let us run our eye over this spiritual directory, and out of a great multitude of maxims let us select a few as samples of the whole.

As regards the doctrine of sin, the Jesuits, while retaining the word, have taken away the thing. They have put sin out of the world. Following the line of the Decalogue, let us mark how one, guiding himself by their teaching, may do the forbidden act in each one of its ten commandments and yet commit no sin.

How do they fear the great and dreadful name of the Lord our God? The Jesuit Bauny, in his "Som. des Peches,"

teaches :

"If one has been hurried through passion into cursing and doing despite to his Maker, it may be determined that he has only sinned venially." If through invincible error," says Casnadi, you believe lying and blasphemy to be commanded of God, blaspheme."

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As regards duty to parents, Escobar teaches in his "Moral Theology":

"Children, if their parents, being often besought and entreated, refuse to comply, may steal away to relax their minds, as far as custom or their dispositions permit.”

"It is no injury," says Bauny, "done to the paternal power a man hath over his children for another to persuade his daughter to run

away with him, in order to a clandestine marriage against her father's consent."

As regards calumny, a wide margin indeed is allowed.

It was maintained in the public Theses of Levain, in 1645, that "it is only a venial sin to calumniate and impose false crimes, to ruin their credit who speak ill of us." "That it is not any mortal sin to calumniate falsely, to preserve one's honour, is no doubt a probable opinion," says Caramuel, " for it is maintained by above twenty grave doctors, by Gaspar Hutrado, &c., so that, if this doctrine be not probable, there is hardly such in all the body of divinity."

As regards promises, the Jesuit teaching provides that one may keep or break them as one has a mind.

"Promises oblige not," says Molina, "when a man hath no intention to engage himself when he makes them. Now, it seldom happens that a man hath that intention unless he be bound by oath or contract, so that when he says simply, I will do such a thing, it is conceived he will do it if his mind alter not; for no man will on that account deprive himself of his liberty."

Sanchez has taught a doctrine which must administer great relief to all prevaricators.

"It is permitted to use ambiguous terms, leading people to understand them in another sense from that in which we understand them ourselves."

Great latitude and licence have been extended to the administrators of justice.

"Considering justice simply in itself," says Escobar, “a judge may lawfully take a sum of money to give sentence for which of the parties he pleaseth, when both have equal right." "If a judge receive a bribe to pass a just sentence, he is bound to restore it, because he ought to do justice without a bribe; but if the judge be bribed to pass an unjust sentence, he is not obliged, in conscience, to make any restitution."

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Not less explicit is the opinion of John Baptist Taberna

“If a judge has received a bribe for passing an unjust sentence, it is probable that he may keep it. . . . This opinion is defended and maintained by fifty-eight doctors."

It would hardly be possible for one to be guilty of simony, as it has been defined by the Jesuit maxim.

"Simony," according to Valentia, "consists in the receiving of a temporal good as the just price of the spiritual; if, therefore, the temporal be demanded, not as the just price of the spiritual, but as the motive determining the man to confer, there is no simony at all, though he look on the possession of the temporal good as his end and expectation."

The case of fraudulent bankrupts has been very tenderly considered.

"May he who turns bankrupt, with a safe conscience, retain as much of his own goods as is requisite to maintain himself handsomely; ne indecore vivat? I, with Lessius, affirm he may,” says Escobar.

Even thieves have been very kindly handled by the Fathers. Vasquez, a "very grave" doctor, says

"If one saw a thief going to rob a poor man, it would be lawful to divert him from his purpose, by pointing out to him some rich individual, whom he might rob in place of the other." "It is lawful to steal, not only in extreme necessity, but also in such necessity as is hard to be endured, though it be not extreme."

The rights of the wife have received, at the hands of the Fathers, a very liberal interpretation indeed. Escobar says

"A wife may gamble, and for this purpose may pilfer money from her husband." He further concedes to her the right of having recourse to the same expedient to buy her clothes, or get other things she stands in need of.