be.

trines, and leaving the comparison to be drawn by every one for himself.' I will assume for a moment that the Jesuits meant to confine themselves to this doubtless very fair and honourable course, yet even in that case every one must see the gross unfairness of their procedure in one respect at least, viz., that whilst they professed to grapple with all the social evils existing amongst the Catholics, they never preached on the subject of mixed marriages. But did they then really pass over this point? No, no more than they did other polemical matters; they relegated them, instead, to a sphere where they could neither be seen nor answered to the confessional. Here they sat enthroned, attracting penitents by means of their easy probabilism, which lightens for the natural man the heavy yoke of Christianity, but inexorably strict in reference to everything specifically Romish, however trifling it might Outside-churchmanship, and zeal in its service, is made the allin-all, and the penitents are stimulated to promote its glory, especially by means of charitable gifts, by word and deed. This secret influence is under no control, and is exposed to no assault, since it eludes the necessity of furnishing stringent proofs, and is seen only in its results. Here the deep-laid designs of the Jesuits upon the female sex find their golden soil. In the confessional the womanly taste for works of benevolence is enlisted on behalf of the Jesuit institutions; and who knows whether the husband is always aware of, and consents to, his wife's donations, and whether, moreover, the wife does not often give more than can be fairly afforded? We are not in a position to give a judgment upon this point, but it is no wonder that all sorts of suspicions arise, when we see the at first penniless Jesuits within two or three years in possession of the most splendid establishments. If this be the result of a more generally awakened and livelier religious spirit, how comes it that other religious orders do not get on as fast? If it be a pure religious zeal which attaches the people to the Jesuits, and enables them to bind the people, and especially the women, to themselves, how comes it that the sheep become estranged from their ordinary shepherds, the parochial clergy?

Everywhere in the great towns a schism between the Jesuits and the parish clergy is visible; and yet the parochial clergy are, as a class, the worthier and more hard-working men. A true priest, inspired by the genuine Christian spirit, could never introduce and foment such a schism in the congregation. What does this is an uncontrollable ambition, which seeks its ends at all costs. These artless, simple men once admitted, have waxed great; have cleverly recruited their ranks with the most gifted theologians and clergymen, who became enthusiastic for a great idea, and fancied they found their ideal realized in the Order of Jesus. Nine years have hardly now flown by since the Jesuits pitched their tents amongst us, and found a hospitable reception at our hearths; and now, in Catholic Germany, they are already lords of the house. Whithersoever one looks, they possess houses of great size, mostly their own property, and crowded with members of the order. The places where they settle down are selected with great skill, like the positions of a conquering general,

and where they once gain a footing, they are not easily displaced, but draw the meshes closer and closer, till they have all within their net, and come to exercise a sway all the more oppressive and lasting in proportion as they themselves withdraw out of sight. They do not bear the name of sovereignty, but bend men to their will by means of public opinion, and by a moral pressure more galling than any physical yoke. Thus, at the present time, there are already but few German bishops who could muster up the courage to speak a word in public against them; but for all that, there are many who feel where the shoe pinches, and rue the day when they called in auxiliaries, who threaten to become their masters.

*

The Protestants gave the Jesuits free play, although by degrees even the blindest were forced to open their eyes to the Society's lust of domination. But when they wanted to get the training and instruction of youth into their hands, and aspired to the direction of schools and gymnasia, Prussia responded with an emphatic No!' and thus we Prussians at least have no need to fear any longer a very important department of Jesuit activity. How we should have fared had a mischievous concession been made in this respect as well as in some others, we may see by the example of Austria, where, especially since the publication of the Concordat, the Jesuit schools have quite gained the upper hand. They are most partial to boarding-schools, in which the pupils are always under their eye, and where instruction and training go hand-in-hand. Their principle of instruction is emulation; their principle of training, delicate condescension. The result is, an unbounded attachment of the pupils to their teachers, and a slight varnish of superficial attainments. The order, cleanliness, and elegance kept up in these establishments, together with a certain delicate tact in conversation and conduct, prove attractive, especially to the higher classes. The nobility set the fashion, and soon these schools were all the rage. Pupils, money, and indiscriminate praises flow in, and a finely-polished youth comes out, decked with a few Christian peacock's feathers, but without being hindered in the least, by these attainments, from the full possession and enjoyment of the world. Withal, he is an arch-Catholic,—that is, an arch-anti-Protestant, and that is all.

Soon the Jesuits found out how to attach to themselves the reinvigorated life of Catholicism, to make out themselves and Catholicism to be one and the same thing; or rather, to assume to be its crowningglory. They introduced their writings and doctrinal manuals, promulgated the ultramontane placita (decrees) of their Order, and sought to rivet the attention of Christians on what is exclusively Romish and external; and they succeeded in carrying their point, and accordingly, in themselves determining what development the Church should take. This part of the subject requires further explanation, and is well worth studying. The Jesuit order, in addition to the three ordinary vows, takes a fourth-that of unconditional and unlimited obedience to the

* The German gymnasia answer to our grammar and high schools.

Pope. This promise is a serious thing, but is very easy to make; for if the Pope conforms strictly to the will of the Jesuits, these may very well be conformable to the Pope, i. e., only to themselves. It is, therefore, nothing but a vow of egoism, in which one vows to have one's own way. Should it please the Pope to will anything displeasing to the Jesuits, their obedience would be as edifying as at the time of Clement XIV., when the pious fathers themselves set at naught his fulminations, and under the aegis of heretical and schismatic princes, persisted in maintaining an institute Rome no longer acknowledged. So far did they go in their pride, that they regarded themselves as indispensable, and in all seriousness, claimed to be more Catholic than the Pope. This is what suggests to the witty Romans the saying, Il papa nero vale più del papa bianco. The black Pope (the General of the Jesuits, who wears black), is of more consequence than the white Pope (since the Pope always wears a white soutane).' Since, according to this proverb, the Jesuit Order is above the Pope, and knows how to rule the Pope so cleverly, that he fancies he himself is sovereign, the main and vital question with the order must be thishow to manage so as to secure for the Pope, i. e., for ourselves, the sole and definitive power in all that concerns the doctrine and life of the Church, or in other words, unlimited dominion.

What is to be done, therefore, is to make the hitherto undecided scholastic opinion of the Infallibility of the Pope an article of faith (dogma explicitum). But how to attain this object? Hitherto, the way in which dogmata implicita, i. e., opinions of the schools, in favour of which the majority of the Catholic world has declared, have been elevated to the rank of dogmata explicita, i. e., doctrinal articles received and published by the Church, has been by means of an œcumenical council. Even in cases in which, owing to the times, such a council has been an impossibility, and yet an opinion has fought its way to a certain degree of dogmatical authority, the next council has nevertheless held it necessary to give a dogmatic sanction to such an article by means of a formal decree. The doctrine of Papal Infallibility has already been long ventilated in the schools, which is the less matter for surprise since it is the most repulsive indeed, but the inevitable, final deduction of the Papal system.

As now many an error at the outset springs from a germ very like a truth, and develops itself harmlessly for a good while, but at last cannot help revealing the inevitable and glaring false conclusion wrapt up within it, so was it with this last deduction. Many allowed themselves to dally with the Papacy in a milder and more limited form, who opened their eyes when they heard on all sides its last word sounding in their ears, and already imagined themselves the victims of its thundering Quos ego!

There is no overlooking the fact, that the Jesuits are the champions in this cause; but they remarked, also, that the most respectable men, and the greatest geniuses of their Church, i. e., all who retained any measure of independence, held aloof. They were well aware, therefore, that it was necessary to wait awhile, and prudently to temporize;

6

but as the wily general employs the time of seeming truce in pioneering and reconnoitring, so were they active otherwise than in direct attack. Their plan and course of reasoning, which they do not speak out, but only indicate by their course of procedure, is the following:Hitherto, articles of faith have only been made by the decrees of councils. This way is tedious, unpractical, and in the present case, unfavourable to our object. The unconditional obedience hitherto accorded to the Pope in disciplinary matters must be extended to the sphere of belief: the line between the two is not so definitely drawn as men think, for discipline and doctrine often border very closely on one another, and the examples in which the doctrinal tendencies of certain theologians, e. g., the systems of Hermes, Gunther, Bautain, &c., have been prohibited, and the prohibition willingly accepted and acquiesced in, are as essentially precedents as the notification and condemnation of heretical books. But for all that, it is hazardous to make a general rule out of precedents; and in our case it is doubly hazardous, since the judge would decide in his own cause. It would too greatly shock delicate feelings if the judge were to say, 'I, the judge, pronounce that I, the judge, am in the right.' Our numerous adversaries would be the more encouraged to rise against us, inasmuch as they could with truth affirm, that for eighteen centuries and-a-half, it has been a thing unheard of, that matters of faith can be settled otherwise than by a General Council. But if we venture upon our coup and lose, we lose for ever; and, worse than all, down goes the belief in our omnipotence, and we no longer stand forth as the Unique Society, surrounded with a magic glory and a magic power. To be sure, it is not likely that we should exactly lose the day, but it is not a matter of indifference to us whether we win with a majority, however strong, or secure unanimity. Accordingly, we must still, for the present, content ourselves with biding our time, and making preparation. How to do this is clear. We must pave the way; i. e., we must level the road towards the method of deciding doctrines by the Pope alone, without a council.' This was what they were driving at when, in their theological lectures and writings— especially in the hand-books of canon law-they gave to the Papal system the most decisive victory over the Episcopal.

In the southern countries of Europe the way was already open; and in the northern so great was the admiration of the newly-introduced Jesuits, that the soil was extremely favourable for the work. In France alone, the independent Gallican spirit was still the most formidable obstacle, but Rome had nevertheless so carried on her operations here-especially since the February revolution-that Ultramontanism had got the upper hand, particularly in the episcopate. Thus the ground was nearly everywhere prepared; for Britain and the non-European countries either procure their clergy from Rome, or at any rate, stand in the most intimate filial relation with her. But for the wary Jesuits, the anxiously expected moment for promulgating their dogma, and thereby attaining the summit of their glory, was not yet come. It was necessary first to make an essay with another

article, and thus to see whether the path was clear-whether the bridge would bear.

For this purpose, the elevation of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary-till then only a scholastic article-into a dogma, was made to serve the turn. The Protestants' have entirely misunderstood the reason and the significance of this fact. Much has been written and spoken about the infringement of Christ's dignity as our only Redeemer, by means of this exaltation of Mary, about the freedom of Mary's ancestors from original sin necessarily following from it, &c.; but all this is partly an incorrect view of the dogma, and partly exaggeration. The true centre of gravity of this event lies, not in the present, but in the future, in so far as this new method of deciding on doctrines, which has actually been tried with success, affords a sure guarantee that the next dogma to be set up, that of the Infallibilty of the Pope, will be proclaimed without difficulty. Hence the general fermentation now prevalent. The Catholics allowed the doctrine to be proclaimed, and held their peace, because they deemed this article of faith of no moment; and now they discover that they have allowed their hands to be tied, and that they will justly be chargeable with inconsistency when they shall want to reject the same course of procedure in the case of the next dogma. The insignificance of this doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception, so far as Catholics are concerned, is obvious, since they are taught by it nothing essentially new about Mary; and in like manner there is no change made in the honours paid her. What is new in it rather offends, than otherwise, their childish piety. For Mary, whom the Catholic was so glad to think of wholly as a mother, sharing with him all his sufferings and griefs, all his struggles and victories, and for this reason feeling for him so much the more lively a sympathy, is now removed to a greater distance from him, far away into a mysterious and imposing, but withal, on that very account, more terrifying halo of majesty.

Accordingly, the internal sentiment in the worship of Mary, viz., the noble emulation of a beautiful and sublime pattern, cannot be said to have been elevated, but can only have been impaired by the new dogma. Pope Pius assigned as the reason for its being the right time to publish the new dogma, his desire to raise to a still loftier pitch the honour of the Mother of God. The Pope is an amiable man, with deep feelings, who really embraces Mary with childish affection, and with all the warmth and glow of his southern sky. He believes that in his lifetime he has already experienced numerous miraculous proofs of her loving care for him, and is eager to pay her his thanks, in the same way as a grateful child spends the first money it earns on some gaudy article of dress for its mother, without stopping to think whether its mother has not nobler desires, or whether the dress becomes her. The first and highest desire of the Pope is towards his mother, Mary. Accordingly, the Jesuits managed with great tact and circumspection when they attacked the Pope on his weak side, and, besides, they could reckon on a wide circle of sympathizers. They acted with foresight on this ground also, since they exalted the external Mariolatry at the expense of the truer internal honouring of the Virgin, which latter