jugglers, and mediciners, they perambulated the country, haranguing at fairs, acting passion-plays, mingling in mobs, throwing out incentives to riot; and the outcome of these violences was not unfrequently the wrecking of a Protestant chapel, and the enforced flight of its pastor.

If they could not drive away a Protestant minister, they assailed him with lampoons and calumnies. The peace of cities was now in their power, and when the public order was disturbed, the magistrates had to come with a bribe in their hand and solicit the good fathers to interpose their authority and allay the tumult. By these arts they made themselves at last the rulers of Poland. Its prosperity and trade decayed; its military spirit ebbed away; its political influence was extinguished; and the neighbouring powers rushed upon it, conquered, and ultimately partitioned it.

When the German countries, and in particular, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, had by these intrigues been disunited. and split into factions, the Jesuits adventured on the last and crowning step. They brought in the armies of the Catholic League, and set up the Inquisition. After this the work was not long adoing. The tragedies that followed belong to the historian. They are among the saddest scenes in European story. The flourishing Protestantism of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and Transylvania, first smitten by armies, was finally trodden out by inquisitors. The wide space between the Elbe and the Carpathians, the theatre, till that destruction fell upon it, of art, of letters, of cities, and of men, was converted into a comparative desert. Cities sacked, fields covered with the slain, Protestant churches in flames, the gallows groaning under its load of victims, scaffolds swimming in blood, and chained gangs on their way to the galleys, such were the spectacles which presented themselves throughout that wide expanse, offering appalling testimony to the unsparing vengeance

which the Jesuits can execute on those who sin against the "Church" by the profession of an obnoxious creed.

Having finished in the east of Europe, the sons of Loyola turned their attention to the west, where the Reformation from its centre in Geneva was extending itself over the countries of France, Switzerland, England, Scotland, and the Low Countries. We must follow them thither.

CHAPTER XII.

Intrigues of the Jesuits in England, &c.

We begin with Sweden. In 1576, at a critical moment in the reformation of that country, two Jesuits, Florentius Feyet and Lawrence Nicolai, arrived at Stockholm. They gave themselves out for Lutheran ministers. They came furnished with a license to preach high Calvinism, with the view of bringing back the Swedish flocks to the deserted fold of Rome. The strangers, who spoke an elegant Latinity, appeared very devout, and the simple, unsuspicious pastors admitted them into their pulpits. At the university of Upsala, they spread out their nets, and by lectures, disputations, and conversations, succeeded in bringing back, now one, now another to the Romish faith.

Cardinal Hosius, the leading Jesuit of Poland, instructed them "to extol faith to the skies, to declare that works without faith were profitless; to preach Christ as the only Saviour, and His sacrifice on the cross as the only sacrifice that saves. This accomplished, some way would afterwards be found of setting Mary by the side of Christ, and the sacrifice of the mass

66

"

'Geijer," ii. p. 217, apud D'Aubigné's "Reformation in Europe," vii. p. 408.

by the side of the sacrifice of the cross. As soon as the king, John III., and the principal Swedes had been won over, the Jesuits threw off the mask. They no longer gave themselves the trouble of professing Calvinism, either high or low. The deprivation and exile of ministers, the fining and imprisoning of laymen, were found speedier and more effectual methods of conversion, Happily in the end they did not succeed.

Jesuit foot first touched the soil of England in 1549. Edward VI. was then on the throne; and the country, under its young master, counselled by Calvin, was seeking to free itself from the yoke of Rome. Two Jesuits, in disguise, hastened across from Holland, their lessons already taught them, to prevent, if possible, the threatened loss of so great a kingdom to the Papal see. They began to preach the tenets of the Anabaptists, and to proclaim the advent of the Fifth Monarchy or Kingdom of the Saints, a doctrine which had deluged many parts of Germany with blood. The scare of anarchy was thought the likeliest to frighten England from entering the path of the Gospel.*

There soon came arrest upon the English Reformation from another quarter. On the demise of Edward, Mary ascended the throne. It was no longer necessary for Jesuit, or other agent of the Papacy, to wear disguise of any sort. The most open and violent measures were those which found most favour with the Queen and her counsellors. But these evil days came at last to an end, although, alas! not till the flower of the English reformers had died at the stake. But why should we grieve for their deaths? Had their blood not watered it, would the Reformation of England ever have attained the goodly stature which it reached in the Puritan age?

* Strype's "Life of Archbishop Parker," p. 70; "Foxes and Firebrands," pt. ii. pp. 10-13.

With Mary in the grave and Elizabeth on the throne, the masks and disguises which had been laid aside were once more brought forth and put on. There came now to be two populations in England; the one walking openly in the light of day, the other veiling in darkness and mystery their real characters and designs. The Council of Trent had already accorded large discretion to the Jesuits, having considerate regard to the risks they ran in prosecuting their mission, and the fact that Christendom, lapsing into heresy, must, by all means and devices, be saved. "Your habit!" said the Council, "think not of it; no dress is forbidden you that may conceal you. Are you required to swear? scruple not to do so: no oaths are unlawful that can forward your object. Know you not that the Church can release you? aye, even though sworn on the Bible: for what is the English Bible? has not the Pope annulled that version; and what more authority has it than a story-book?"*

They were permitted, or, rather, exhorted, to frequent the churches of the heretics, that is, of the Protestants. They were to give good heed to what was there preached them it would not hurt; and as soon as they had mastered it, and learned the way of setting it forth, they were to give themselves out for clergymen. This would probably bring them an invitation to edify others by their gifts. Fairly installed in the Lutheran, or Calvinistic, pulpit, they were, but with great caution, to adventure on a slight change or admixture of doctrines; and next, but still with wariness, they were to add to the ceremonies; "there being, as the Council are agreed on, no better way to abolish that Church of heresy, but by mixtures of doctrines, and by adding of ceremonies, more than be at present permitted."+

* Mason's (Protestant Pastor of Finglas) "Researches in Records of University," Paris. "Foxes and Firebrands," pt. ii. pp. 29, 30. Lond.

1682.

+ Mason's "Researches," apud.

"Foxes and Firebrands," pt. ii. p. 31.

These Jesuit ministers, in Protestant clothing, were not all to preach after one way. In Calvinistic countries they were to preach Lutheranism; in Lutheran countries they were to preach Calvinism. In countries, such as England, where both Calvinism and Lutheranism were professed, they might preach either, or Anabaptism; or, in short, any tenet that might serve to make Protestantism odious, and divide its disciples.*

These men, who put on and off a religion as they would a cloak, and who had to resolve themselves every morning whether they should that day be of the Calvinistic persuasion, or of the Lutheran persuasion, or of a third creed, as if this latitude of action were not enough, had even ampler licence allowed them. Among the papers of Lord Burghley that came into the hands of Sir James Ware, was a letter from a confidential agent of Queen Elizabeth, dated "Venice, April 13th, 1564." This paper gives an account of consultations held in that city in a conclave of Cardinals, Bishops, and Jesuits, with the view of devising measures for undermining Queen Elizabeth's throne, and ruining the English Reformation. Among other devices, it was resolved to give indulgences to Romanists in England to fill "any office or employment-either ecclesiastical, military, or civil, and to take such oaths as shall be imposed upon them, provided that the said oaths be taken with a reserve to serve the Mother Church of Rome whenever opportunity serveth."

It is well known that, for some time after the Reformation, the Romanists were permitted, by dispensation, to attend the Protestant Parish Churches in England. It does not follow in every such case, that the Romanists listened to a Protestant pastor, seeing dispensations were given to priests to take orders in the Church of England, and enter her pulpits as Protestant ministers. Of course, every care was taken to conceal the

*"Foxes and Firebrands," pt. ii. p. 30.

E