Part 3

This philosophy, so purely human, which sees in the zeal of the Jesuits, and of many others, to go and preach religion at the extremities of the earth, nothing more than a means which they make use of for becoming of consequence and powerful, regards, as the most dexterous of their missionaries, those who know how best to arrive at that end. We must not then be astonished, if the society is a little surprised at the number of invectives and clamours, of which these fathers have been the object, on account of the Chinese superstitions which they permitted to their new converts. In that, as well as in the rest of their conduct, to the very time of their destruction, they have proved, we repeat it, that they knew mankind better than their adversaries did: they perceived that they were not to frighten or disgust their new converts, by prohibiting them a few national practices which were dear to them, and which they still have it in their power to interpret as they please. Pope Gregory, who is called the Great, and who was certainly a man of good sense, seems, if we may believe the Jesuits, to have set them, in that respect, the example: they have, at least, pretended to the authority of it. Augustine the monk, whom this pope had sent into England, to convert the people who were yet barbarous, consulted him on some remains of ceremonies, partly civilized, partly Pagan, which the new converts were unwilling to renounce: he demanded of Gregory, whether he might permit them those ceremonies. “There is no taking away,” replied that pope, “from rugged minds, all their habits at once: we ascend not a steep rock by leaping on it, but by clambering up step by step.” We see here the principle on which the Jesuits pretend to have conducted themselves in China. They were persuaded, that without this condescension, the religion which they preached would not have been even heard there. I have no doubt, but artful as they are, (or rather as they were) they have still further palliated and mitigated matters with respect to other points: and it cannot be denied, that they have done well, relatively to their own views; since, after all, it was neither God nor Christianity that they wanted to reign there; it was the society under those respectable names.

Furthermore, neither the severe morality of religion, nor the doctrines of grace which they were accused of misrepresenting, are delivered in so exclusive a manner in scripture, as that we do not meet there also with several passages favourable to the most moderate opinions: and we may easily believe, that the Jesuits availed themselves of those passages, after the example of so many sects which have found in the Bible, and in the fathers, matter to support their opinions, while their adversaries found there in like manner wherewith to combat them. The scriptures are, if I may use the expression, common arsenals, to which every one goes, in order to arm himself from head to foot, and just as he pleases. Accordingly it is not without reason that the catholic church has decided, that it belonged to her alone to give to infidels the true sense of the scriptures, and of the fathers: a truth from which we cannot deviate, without exposing ourselves to a dangerous Pyrrhonism in matter of doctrine.

What is very singular, and must appear more strange still to the proselytes, whom they went to make at five thousand leagues distance from our continent of Europe, is, that while the Jesuits preached Christianity after their manner, other missionaries, their enemies, monks and seculars, preached it quite differently to the same people; warning them, at the same time, under pain of damnation, not to believe in the catechism of the Jesuits. We may judge of the effect which these contests would produce. “Indeed, gentlemen,” said the emperor of China to them, “you take a great deal of trouble in coming so far to preach to us contradictory opinions, concerning which you are ready to cut one another’s throats.” After having made them this representation, he left them to preach as long as they would, persuaded that such apostles could not have any great success. He availed himself besides, for the good of his country, of the residence of the Jesuits, who talked much more at court of astronomy and natural philosophy, than of the Trinity and religion, and who succeeded at last in rendering the other missionaries either suspected or contemptible.

It is not that they were not very ready to expose themselves to the greatest dangers, and even to death, for the sake of that religion which they burlesqued in their manner of preaching it, and which served only as an instrument to their ambition. When the emperor of Japan judged it proper (for reasons which appeared to him indispensible) to exterminate Christianity from his territories, the Jesuits had there their martyrs as well as others, and even in greater numbers. The reader will not be surprised at it, when he knows what was told me by a person extremely worthy of credit. He was particularly acquainted with a Jesuit, who had been employed twenty years in the missions of Canada; and who, while he did not believe a God, as he owned privately to this friend, had faced death twenty times for the sake of the religion which he preached with success to the savages. This friend represented to the Jesuit the inconsistency of his zeal: “Ah!” replied the missionary, “you have no idea of the pleasure which is felt in commanding the attention of twenty thousand people, and in persuading them to what we believe not ourselves.”

Such is the spirit of the method which the Jesuits have followed, for teaching with success to mankind what they called religion and Christian morality. Such was the moderate doctrine which they preached at the court of Louis XIV. and by means of which they succeeded in rendering themselves so agreeable. Accordingly it was principally under the reign of that prince that the power, the credit, and opulence of the Jesuits received in France such prodigious aggrandizements: it was under this reign that they succeeded in rendering the clergy dependent on them (we may even say their slaves) by the disposal of benefices, with which the fathers la Chaize and le Tellier, the king’s confessors, were successively entrusted: it was in this reign that they succeeded, in consequence of the need which the bishops stood in of them, in extorting, even while they braved them, their confidence, or the appearance of their confidence, and in obtaining the direction of several seminaries; in which the youth, destined to the church, were brought up in their doctrines, and in the hatred of their enemies: it was under this reign that they succeeded, by decrying or vilifying the other orders and the secular ecclesiasticks, in invading a great number of colleges, or at least in obtaining permission for establishing new ones: it was under this reign that they succeeded so far, through the confidence and consideration which Louis XIV. gave them, as to draw all the court to their college of Clermont. We remember still the mark of flattery which they bestowed on that monarch, by divesting that college of the name which it bore of the _Society of Jesus_, in order to call it the college of _Louis the Great_; and nobody is ignorant of the Latin distich which was made on that occasion, and in which the society was reproached “with acknowledging no other God but the king.” Thus they represented them at once as idolaters of despotism, in order to render them vile, and as preachers of regicide, in order to render them odious: these two accusations might appear a little contradictory, but the business was not to speak the exact truth; it was to say of the Jesuits as much ill as possible.

Lastly, what completed the power and glory of the society was, that under Louis XIV. the Jesuits succeeded in destroying, or at least in oppressing in France the Protestants and the Jansenists, their eternal enemies; the Protestants, by contributing to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, that source of depopulation and of evils to this kingdom; the Jansenists, by depriving them of the ecclesiastical dignities, by arming the bishops against them, by forcing them to go and preach, and write in foreign countries, where even these unfortunate people still found persecution.

Under this very reign in which the Jesuits were so powerful, and so formidable, the most terrible strokes were given them, more terrible perhaps than any they had felt till that time. The pleadings of Pasquier and Arnaud were but bombast satyrs, and in a bad taste: the _Provincial Letters_ gave them a wound much more deadly: this master-piece of pleasantry and eloquence diverted and moved the indignation of all Europe at their expense. In vain they replied, that the greatest part of the theologists and monks had taught, as well as them, the scandalous doctrine which they were reproached with: their answers, ill written, and full of gall, were not read, while every body knew the _Provincial Letters_ by heart. This work is so much the more admirable, as Paschal in composing it appears to have divined two things, which seemed not made for divination, language, and pleasantry. The language was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading: in the _Provincial Letters_ there is not a single word that is grown obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday. Another attempt, no less difficult, was to make people of wit and good folks laugh at the questions of _sufficient grace_, _next power_, and the decisions of the casuists; subjects very little favourable to pleasantry, or, which is worse still, susceptible of pleasantries that are cold and uniform, and capable at most of amusing only priests and monks. It was necessary, for avoiding this rock, to have a delicacy of taste so much the greater, as Paschal lived very retired, and far removed from the commerce of the world: he could never have distinguished, but by the superiority and delicacy of his understanding, the kind of pleasantry which could alone be relished by good judges in this dry and insipid matter. He succeeded in it beyond all expression: several of his bon-mots have even become proverbial in our language, and the _Provincial Letters_ will be ever regarded as a model of taste and style. It is only to be feared, that the expulsion of the Jesuits, lessening the interest which we took in this book, may render the perusal of it less poignant, and perhaps make it be one day forgot. This is a fate which the most eloquent author has to apprehend, if he writes not on subjects that are useful to every nation, and to all ages: the duration of a work, whatever merit it may have in other respects, is almost necessarily connected with that of its object. The _Thoughts of Paschal_, greatly inferior to the _Provincials_, will live perhaps longer, because there is all reason to believe (whatever the humble society may say of it) that Christianity will last longer than they.

The _Provincials_ would be perhaps more assured of the immortality which they merit in so many respects, if their illustrious author, that genius so elevated, so universal, and so little formed for taking an interest in scholastick trumpery, had turned alike both parties into ridicule. The shocking doctrine of Jansenius, and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for it as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez. Every work, in which we sacrifice with success to the publick laughter fanaticks who worry one another, subsists even after those fanaticks are no more. I might venture to foretell this advantage to the chapter _on Jansenism_, which we read with so much pleasure in the excellent _Essay on General History_, by the most agreeable of our philosophical writers. The irony is scattered in that chapter to the right and left, with a delicacy and ease which must cover both the one and the other with indelible contempt, and make them weary of cutting one anothers’ throats for nonsensical fancies. Methinks I see Fontaine’s cat[10], before whom the rabbit and the weasel bring their suit on the subject of a pitiful hole which they contend for; and who, by way of decision,

Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems, Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre.

No body is perhaps fitter than this illustrious writer, to form a history of theological quarrels, in order to render them at once both odious and ridiculous, and thereby deliver mankind for ever from this shameful and terrible scourge.

_The Practical Morals of the Jesuits_, written by doctor Arnauld, which came out soon after the _Provincials_, though of a merit greatly inferior, put the finishing stroke to the throwing upon these fathers an odium, which they will never be able to wash off. This unfavourable and deep impression, which is perpetually kept up by the reading of these books, has even now found, at the end of a century, minds disposed to believe all the ill which has been said of the Jesuits, and of approving all the mischief that has been done to them. The term of _Jesuitical morals_ has been, as it were, consecrated in our language, to signify loose morals, and that of _Escobarderie_ to signify an artful lie: and we know how much weight a fashionable way of speaking carries with it, especially in France, towards procuring credit to opinions.

The Jesuits, loaded from that time with so much hatred, and such a number of imputations, were not to be till long after the victims of it: they triumphed in the first violence of the attack, and became but the more powerful, the more animated against their enemies, and the more formidable to them. Yet what enemies had they to deal with? With men of the greatest merit and reputation, and whose consideration with the public still increased by their very persecution; an Arnauld, a Nicole, a Saci; in one word, all the writers of the celebrated house of Port-Royal. These adversaries were much more to be dreaded by the society than plain theologists, whom the common run of mankind listen not to, understand not, and have no esteem for: they were great philosophers (as great at least as could be in those days) men of the first class in literature, excellent writers, and men of an irreproachable conduct. They had in the kingdom, and even at court, respectable and zealous friends, whom they acquired by their talents, their virtues, and the signal services for which literature was indebted to them. The general and rational grammar, called the _Port-Royal_ grammar, from their being the authors of it; the excellent _Logic_ called by the same name; the _Greek Roots_; their learned grammars of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish; such were the productions of this free and respectable society. The illustrious Racine had been their scholar, and had preserved, as well as Despréaux, his friend, the most intimate connections with them: their works on religion and morality were read and esteemed by all France; and by the masculine and correct style in which they were written, had contributed most of any, next to the _Provincials_, to the perfection of our language, while the Jesuits counted yet among their French writers only des Barris and des Garrasses. What pity that those writers of the Port-Royal, those men of such superior merit, should have thrown away so much genius and time in ridiculous controversies on the good or bad doctrine of Jansenius, on idle and endless discussions on free-will and grace, and on the important question, Whether five unintelligible propositions be in a book which nobody reads? Tormented, imprisoned, exiled for these vain disputes, and employed perpetually in defending so futile a cause, how many years of their lives have philosophy and letters to regret as lost! What lights would they not have added to those with which they had already illumined their age, if they had not been carried away by these unhappy and pitiful distractions, so unworthy of taking up the thoughts of men like them! May we venture to say a little more of this, at the risk of deviating one moment from our subject? Can reason withhold shedding bitter tears, when she sees how many useful talents the quarrels, so often excited in the bosom of Christianity, have buried? how many ages these wretched and scandalous contests have destroyed to the human understanding? and how many geniuses, formed for discovering new truths, have employed (to the great regret of true religion) all their sagacity and abilities, in supporting or giving reputation to ancient absurdities? When we run through, in the vast royal library, the first apartment, of an immense extent, and find it destined, for the greatest part, to a collection, without number, of the most visionary commentators on the scriptures, of polemical writers on, questions the most void of meaning, of school divines of every sort; in short, of so many works from whence there is no drawing one single page of truth, can we refrain crying out with sorrow (_ad quid perditio hæc?_) “To what end all this loss?” Again, human nature would have been in no very great degree to be pitied, if all these frivolous and absurd objects, these _holy trifles_, as a celebrated magistrate calls them[11], had ended in ill language only, and had not occasioned the shedding of torrents of blood. But let us shut our eyes on these dismal objects, and make only one other reflexion, as consolatory as it is humiliating to the human mind. How is it possible, that the same species of beings which invented the art of writing, arithmetic, astronomy, algebra, chemistry, watch-work, the art of weaving, so many things in short worthy of admiration in the mechanical and liberal arts, should have invented the philosophy and divinity of the schools, judicial astrology, the concomitant concourse, versatile and congruous grace, the victorious delectation, absolute accidents, and so many other fooleries, as would occasion the suspending, by authority of justice, the person who should first broach them now-a-days? Plato defined man, “an animal with two feet without feathers.” How ridiculous soever this definition may appear, it was perhaps difficult (the lights of religion set aside) to characterise otherwise the indefinable human species; which on one side seems, by master-pieces of genius, to have approached the heavenly beings, and on the other, by a thousand incredible marks of folly and cruelty, to have set itself on a level with the most stupid and ferocious animals. When we measure the interval between a Scotus and a Newton, or rather between the works of Scotus and those of Newton, we must cry out with Terence, _Homo homini quid præstat!_ “What difference there is between man and man!” Or must we only attribute this immense distance to the enormous difference of ages, and think with sorrow that the _subtile_ and _absurd doctor_, who wrote so many chimeras, admired by his contemporaries, had perhaps been a Newton in an age more enlightened? Let us weigh well all these reflexions; let us add thereto the perusal of ecclesiastical history, those kalendars of the virtue of some men, and the weak wickedness of so many others; let us behold in that history the usurpations, without number, of the spiritual power; the robberies and the violences exercised under the pretext of religion; so many bloody wars, so many cruel persecutions, so many murders committed in the name of a God who abhors them; and we shall have pretty nearly an exact catalogue of the advantages which the disputes of Christianity have brought upon mankind.

To return to the Jesuits, the nomination of father le Tellier to the place of confessor to Louis XIV. furnished them with an opportunity of wreaking fully their vengeance. This violent and inflexible man, hated by his very brethren, whom he governed with a rod of iron, made the Jansenists drink “to the very dregs,” according to his own expression, “of the cup of the society’s indignation.” Scarce was he in place, but they foresaw the evils of which he would be the cause: and Fontenelle the philosopher said, on learning his nomination, “the Jansenists have sinned.”

The first exploit of this ferocious and fiery Jesuit, was the destruction of Port-Royal, where not one stone was left upon another, and from whence they dug up the very corpses that were interred there. This violence, executed with the last barbarity, against a house respectable for the celebrated persons who had inhabited it, and against poor nuns, more worthy of compassion than of hatred, excited clamours throughout the whole kingdom: these clamours have re-echoed down even to our times; and the Jesuits themselves confessed, on seeing the spectacle of their destruction, that the stones of Port-Royal were falling on their own heads to crush them.

But the indignation which the destruction of Port-Royal excited against them, was nothing in comparison of the general commotion which the bull _Unigenitus_ occasioned. It is certain that this bull was their work: we know also the universal opposition which it produced in almost all the orders of the state: we know the intrigues, the frauds, the violences, which were put in practice to extort the acceptance of it. We may remember that Louis XIV. having succeeded in making it to be received (partly by foul and partly by fair means) by an assembly of forty prelates, saw with pain nine bishops who remained in opposition to it: he could have wished, for the peace of his conscience, an entire uniformity in the episcopal corps. “That is very easy,” said the duchess his daughter to him, “you need only order the forty acceptants to be of the opinion of the nine others.” The propositions condemned were, for the most part, so ill chosen, that it is pretended that a great prince, on reading them in the bull, took them for truths which it enjoined to be believed, appeared edified by them, and was very much surprised, though of a docile disposition, when his confessor undeceived him.

The magistrates were not the last to rise against this bull. They were especially shocked at the censure of the ninety-first proposition. “The dread of an unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us from doing our duty.” Instructed by the melancholy effects of the quarrels between the Priesthood and the Empire during so many ages, they perceived how easy it was to avail themselves of this censure, to detach the people, by menaces of excommunication, from the fidelity which they owe their sovereign. They saw, in so rash a condemnation, the secret attempt which the Jesuits and the court of Rome wanted to make upon our maxims, of the temporal independence of kings. There was no subscribing, with any modesty, to the Anathema launched out against a proposition so evident, but by confining it to a tortured sense, which it presents not, in judging it (which is ridiculous in such a case) upon a pretended intention of the author in favour of excommunicated fanaticks. Who doubts that fanaticks might not abuse the truth which this proposition includes, to the braving of every excommunication which they shall think unjust? But is the abuse, which may be made of a truth, a reason for proscribing it? Would the scripture itself be safe from a stigma founded on like motives?