With a not less indulgent eye do the Fathers regard larceny on the part of servants.

Valerius Reginald teaches that "Domestics, if they take anything without consulting their masters, being rationally persuaded that it is no injustice to them, commit no crime." "Servants are excused both from sin and from restitution if they only take an equitable compensation, that is, when they are not furnished with such things for food and clothing as are usual in other houses, and which ought to be provided for similar servants." It is not all gain, however, on the part of the pilferer. The peccadillo has to be owned in the confessional, and a small sum paid for absolution.

It is hard to say what limits the Fathers have put on homicide, murder, and assassination, or whether they have put any.

The science or art of assassination is thus explained to Pascal by the Jesuit :-"By the word assassins, we understand those who have received money to murder one; and, accordingly, such as kill without any reward for the deed, but merely to oblige their friends, do not come under the category of assassins."

Again

"By the universal consent of the casuists, it is lawful to kill our calumniator, if there be no other way of averting the affront." Again

“Priests and monks may lawfully prevent those who would injure them by calumnies from carrying their ill design into effect, by putting them to death."

Again

"A priest may not only kill a slanderer, but there are certain circumstances in which it may be his duty so to do."

The right of assassination politique has been established positively by Emmanuel Sa, Alphonse Salmeron, Gregory of Valence, and Anthony Santarem.

"Either," say they, "the tyrant possesses the state by a legiti

mate right, or he has usurped it. In the first case, he ought to be deposed by a public judgment; after which, every individual may become the executor of his own will. Or the tyranny is illegitimate, and then every man of the people may kill him.”

"It is permitted to every man to kill a tyrant," says a German Jesuit, Adam Tanner; "who is such as to substance." "It is glorious to exterminate him."

Does Jesuit morality permit or sanction the murder of kings? The Jesuits, if the question should be put to them, would stoutly reply that it does not: and that, on the contrary, they condemn and abominate regicide. How then do we reconcile this with the undoubted fact that Henry III. and Henry IV. of France, and other monarchs, were assassinated by monks, who were afterwards canonised for the good deed? Nothing is easier than to reconcile the historic fact with the Jesuit denial. Whether the explanation shall be equally satisfactory to the class of persons more immediately interested, is another question. The reconcilement is this, in brief: When a king falls from his obedience to the Papal see, he falls from his legitimate right to the throne; he is deposed by the Pope, and is no longer a king. In these circumstances, his assassination is not regicide. A decree of Urban II. in the Canons, says: "We account them not to be murderers who, in the ardour of their zeal for our mother the Catholic Church, against those that are excommunicated, shall happen to kill any of them." Cardinal Tolet lays down this maxim :—“ That to kill a king that is deposed is not to kill a king, but a private person." These wholesome principles are a little more explicitly explained by the Jesuit Saurez, in his "Defence of the Catholic Faith," in which he says "that a heretical king, after sentence given against him, is absolutely deprived of his kingdom, so that he cannot possess it by any just title, but becomes a tyrant, and consequently he may be killed by any

private person." And, once more, Escobar maintains "that a man proscribed and outlawed by a temporal prince, may not be killed out of his territories; but he who is proscribed by the Pope may be killed in any part of the world, because his jurisdiction extends over all." * Father Paul, the historian of the Council of Trent, says that there were not fewer than fifty conspiracies formed against Henry IV., so that he lived in continual fear and danger of his life. The above doctrine suspends a poignard above every non-Catholic throne. It may not fall, but it is not more certain that there is such an institution as the "Chair of Peter," and such an order as the "Order of Jesus," than that such poignard hangs there, and will fall the first moment it is "expedient." The Syllabus of 1864, since pronounced infallible, tells us (Prop. liv.)—“ That kings and princes are subject to the jurisdiction of the Church." And we gather how far this "jurisdiction" may go, not only from Pius' declaration (Prop. xxiv.) "that the Church has the right to employ force," and that "she possesses temporal power, direct and indirect;" but still more from his declaration (Prop. xxiii.) that "the Roman Pontiffs never exceeded the limits of their power, nor usurped the rights of princes." This compels us to turn back to the past, with its long, sad series of tragedies-kings deposed, princes and statesmen assassinated, communities devoted to massacre, and cities given to the flames, in all of which their authors, the Popes, ever kept, Pius IX. assures us, within the limits of their just authority. We should do dishonour to our reason did we not hold that the "Church" that justifies all these atrocities in the past, is prepared to enact them over again in the future-time and place expedient.

* Can. Excom. Caus. 23, qu. 5, c. 4. Tolet-Instr. Sacerd., lib. iv. c. 48. Saurez-Def. Fid. Cath., lib. vi. c. 4 and 14.

We give at full length, the process said to be used by the Jesuits in consecrating regicides, extracted from a process printed at Delft, by John Andrew (Bruce's Free Thoughts, p. 155). It shows with what solemn and awful forms they consecrate murder and murderers; and scruple not to invoke the Holiest and most dread names to overawe the reason, stupify the conscience, and kindle into a raging flame the fanaticism of their unhappy tool, and so fortify him for the deed he has been chosen to do. While harnessing him for the blackest acts of hell, they have the art to persuade him that he is being joined in fellowship with the cherubim and seraphim of heaven.

"The person persuaded by the Jesuits to assassinate a king or prince, is brought by them into a secret chapel, where they have prepared upon an altar a great dagger wrapt up in linen cloth, together with an Agnus Dei: drawing it out of the sheath they besprinkle it with holy water, and fasten to the hilt several consecrated beads of coral, pronouncing this indulgence, that as many blows as the murderer shall give with it to the prince, he shall deliver so many souls from purgatory. After this ceremony they put the dagger into the parricide's hand, and recommend it to him thus :-Thou chosen son of God, take the sword of Jephthah, the sword of Sampson, the sword of David wherewith he cut off the head of Goliah, the sword of Gideon, the sword of Judith, the sword of the Maccabees, the sword of Pope Julius II. wherewith he cut off the lives of several princes his enemies, filling whole cities with slaughter and blood;-Go, and let prudence go along with thy courage. Let God give new strength to thine arm.' After which, they fall down on their knees, and the superior of the Jesuits pronounces the following exorcism :-'Come, ye cherubims, ye seraphims, thrones and powers! Come, ye holy angels, and fill up this blessed vessel with an immortal glory! Do ye present him every day with the crown of the blessed Virgin Mary, of the holy patriarchs and martyrs. We do not look upon him now as one of ours, but as one belonging to you. And thou, O God! who art terrible and

invincible, and hast inspired him, in prayer and meditation, to kill the tyrant and heretic, for to give his crown to a Catholic king; comfort, we beseech thee, the heart of him we have consecrated to this office. Strengthen his arm, that he may execute his enterprise. Clothe him with the armour of thy Divine power, that, having performed his design, he may escape the hands of those who shall go in pursuit of him. Give him wings, that his holy members may fly away from the power of impious heretics. Replenish his soul with joy, comfort, and light, by which his body, having banished all fear, may be upheld and animated in the midst of dangers and torments.' This exorcism being ended, they bring the parricide before another altar, whereto hangs an image of James Clement, a Dominican friar, who with a venomous knife killed King Henry III. This image is surrounded with angels who protect and bring him to heaven. The Jesuits show it him, and put afterwards a crown upon his head, saying, 'Lord! regard here the arm and the executor of thy justice: let all the saints arise, bow, and yield to him the most honourable place amongst them.' Afterwards he is permitted to speak to none but to four Jesuits deputed to keep him company. They are not wanting to tell him oft, that they perceive a Divine light that surrounds him, and is the cause why they bow to him, kiss his hands and feet, and consider him no more as a man but as a saint; nay, they make a show as if they envied the great honour and glory attending him, and say, sighing, 'Oh that God had been pleased to make choice of us instead of you, and given us so much grace, that, as you, we might be translated into heaven without going into purgatory.”

CHAPTER X.

The Organisation of the Jesuits.

LOYOLA, to whom the Papacy owes so much for the help he rendered it in its hour of sorest need, took his recruits one by one, as we have seen, and passed them through an ordeal,