Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

sicians, merchants, serving-men; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor-houses of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught;

the hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying.

Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of apostate kings, to spread evil rumours, to raise tumults, to inflame civil

of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest west, and astonished the convent of Spain and the schools of France by his penance and vigils. The same lively ima- | arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away gination which had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries of religion which are the hard-wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexiest trial of faith, were in his case palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile, that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place; and that, as he stood praying on the steps of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same share which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.

Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich with paintings and many-coloured marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of its gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battles of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached the church was too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy.

Dominant in the south of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quarteringblocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country-scholars, phy

ble in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty-the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad rulerwere inculcated by the same man according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these men as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors. And both de scriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, tolerant of the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. His first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too.

The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. In the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China, they were to be found. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word.

The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order, animated the whole Catholic world. The court of Rome itself was purified. During the generation which preceded the Reformation, that court had been a scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of religion. They were men like Leo X.; men who, with the Latinity of the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They regarded these Christian mysteries of which they were stewards, just as the Augur Cicero and the Pontifex Maximus Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among them selves they spoke of the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity, in the same tone in

which Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle lect spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy, of Delphi, or of the voice of Faunus in the whatever his rank, his learning, or his reputamountains. Their years glided by in a soft tion, was to purge himself to the satisfaction dream of sensual and intellectual voluptuous- of a severe and vigilant tribunal, or to die by ness. Choice cookery, delicious wines, lovely fire. Heretical books were sought out and women, hounds, falcons, horses, newly-disco- destroyed with the same unsparing rigour. vered manuscripts of the classics, sonnets and Works which were once in every house were burlesque romances in the sweetest Tuscan- so effectually suppressed that no copy of them just as licentious as a fine sense of the grace- now is to be found in the most extensive libraful would permit; plates from the hand of a ries. One book in particular, entitled "Of the Benvenuto, designs for palaces by Michel benefits of the death of Christ," had this fate. Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, It was written in Tuscan, was many times reand gems just dug up from among the ruins printed, and was eagerly read in every part of of ancient temples and villas;-these things Italy. But the Inquisitors detected in it the were the delight and even the serious business Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith of their lives. Letters and the fine arts un- alone. They proscribed it: and it is now as doubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. utterly lost as the second decade of Livy. But when the great stirring of the mind of Europe Thus, while the Protestant Reformation probegan when doctrine after doctrine was as- ceeded rapidly at one extremity of Europe, the sailed-when nation after nation withdrew Catholic revival went on as rapidly at the from communion with the successor of St. other. About half a century after the great Peter, it was felt that the Church could not separation, there were throughout the north, be safely confided to chiefs whose highest Protestant governments and Protestant nations. praise was, that they were good judges of Latin In the south were governments and nations compositions, of paintings, and of statues, actuated by the most intense zeal for the an whose severest studies had a Pagan character, cient church. Between these two hostile and who were suspected of laughing in secret regions lay, geographically as well as morally, at the sacraments which they administered, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, and of believing no more of the Gospel than of Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different contest was still undecided. The governments class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical of those countries had not renounced their affairs-men whose spirit resembled that of connection with Rome; but the Protestants Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In exhibited in their own persons all the austerity France they formed a commonwealth within of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul IV. the realm, held fortresses, were able to bring brought to the Papal throne the same fervent great armies into the field, and had treated zeal which had carried him into the Theatine with their sovereign on terms of equality. In convent. Pius V., under his gorgeous vest- Poland, the king was still a Catholic; but the ments, wore day and night the hair-shirt of a Protestants had the upper hand in the Diet, simple friar; walked barefoot in the streets at the filled the chief offices in the administration, and, head of processions; found, even in the midst in the large towns, took possession of the parish of his most pressing avocations, time for pri-churches. "It appeared," says the Papal vate prayer; often regretted that the public nuncio, "that in Poland, Protestantism would duties of his station were unfavourable to completely supersede Catholicism." In Bagrowth in holiness; and edified his flock by in-varia, the state of things was nearly the same. numerable instances of humility, charity, and The Protestants had a majority in the Assem forgiveness of personal injuries; while, at the bly of the States, and demanded from the duke same time, he upheld the authority of his see, concessions in favour of their religion, as the and the unadulterated doctrines of his church, price of their subsidies. In Transylvania, the with all the stubbornness and vehemence of house of Austria was unable to prevent the Hildebrand. Gregory XIII. exerted himself Diet from confiscating, by one sweeping denot only to imitate but to surpass Pius in the cree, the estates of the church. In Austria severe virtues of his sacred profession. As Proper it was generally said that only onewas the head, such were the members. The thirteenth part of the population could be change in the spirit of the Catholic world may counted on as good Catholics. In Belgium the be traced in every walk of literature and of art. adherents of the new opinions were reckoned It will be at once perceived by every person by hundreds of thousands. who compares the poem of Tasso with that of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixtus V. with those of Leo X.

The history of the two succeeding genera tions is the history of the great struggle be tween Protestantism possessed of the north of But it was not on moral influence alone that Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the the Catholic Church relied. The civil sword south, for the doubtful territory which lay be in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed tween. All the weapons of carnal and of spiin her support. The Inquisition was armed ritual warfare were employed. Both sides may with new powers and inspired with a new boast of great talents and of great virtues. energy. If Protestantism, or the semblance of Both have to blush for many follies and crimes. Protestantism, showed itself in any quarter, it At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in was instantly met, not by petty, teasing perse- favour of Protestantism; but the victory re cution, but by persecution of that sort which mained with the Church of Rome. On every bows down and crushes all but a very few se-point she was successful. If we overleap

another half century, we find her victorious Elector of Saxony-the natural head of the and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Protestant party in Germany-submitted to Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Nor become, at the most important crisis of the has Protestantism, in the course of two hun- struggle, a tool in the hands of the Papists. dred years, been able to reconquer any por- Among the Catholic sovereigns, on the other tion of what it then lost. hand, we find a religious zeal often amounting It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this to fanaticism. Philip II. was a Papist in a wonderful triumph of the Papacy is to be very different sense from that in which Elizachiefly attributed, not to the force of arms, but beth was a Protestant. Maximilian of Bavato a great reflux in public opinion. During the ria, brought up under the teaching of the first half century after the commencement of Jesuits, was a fervent missionary wielding the the Reformation, the current of feeling, in the powers of a prince. The Emperor Ferdinand countries on this side of the Alps and of the II. deliberately put his throne to hazard over Pyrenees, ran impetuously towards the new and over again, rather than make the smallest doctrines. Then the tide turned, and rushed concession to the spirit of religious innovation. as fiercely in the opposite direction. Neither Sigismund of Sweden lost a crown which he during the one period, nor during the other, might have preserved if he would have redid much depend upon the event of battles or nounced the Catholic faith. In short, everysieges. The Protestant movement was hardly where on the Protestant side we see languor, checked for an instant by the defeat at Muhl-everywhere on the Catholic side we see ardour berg. The Catholic reaction went on at full and devotion. speed in spite of the destruction of the Armada. Not only was there, at this time, a much It is difficult to say whether the violence of the more intense zeal among the Catholics than first blow or of the recoil was the greater. among the Protestants; but the whole zeal of Fifty years after the Lutheran separation, Ca- the Catholics was directed against the Protestholicism could scarcely maintain itself on tants, while almost the whole zeal of the Prothe shores of the Mediterranean. A hundred testants was directed against each other. years after the separation, Protestantism could Within the Catholic Church there were no sescarcely maintain itself on the shores of therious disputes on points of doctrine. The deBaltic. The causes of this memorable turn incisions of the Council of Trent were received; human affairs well deserve to be investigated. and the Jansenian controversy nad not yet The contest between the two parties bore arisen. The whole force of Rome was, theresome resemblance to the fencing match in fore, effective for the purpose of carrying on Shakspeare "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, the war against the Reformation. On the in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet other hand, the force which ought to have wounds Laertes." The war between Luther fought the battle of the Reformation was exand Leo was a war between firm faith and un- hausted in civil conflict. While Jesuit preachbelief, between zeal and apathy, betweeners, Jesuit confessors, Jesuit teachers of youth, energy and indolence, between seriousness and frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, the atheists, who had worn the tiara during the generation which preceded the Reformation, had succeeded Popes, who, in religious fervour and severe sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose. The order of Jesuits alone could show many men not inferior in sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the apostles of the Reformation.

overspread Europe, eager to expend every faculty of their minds and every drop of their blood in the cause of their church, Protestant doctors were confuting, and Protestant rulers were punishing sectaries who were just as good Protestants as themselves—

In

"Cumque superba foret BABYLON spolianda tropæis, Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos.” In the Palatinate, a Calvinistic prince persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony, a Lutheran persecuted the Calvinists. In Sweden every body who objected to any of the articles of the Confession of Augsburg was banished. But while danger had thus called forth in Scotland, Melville was disputing with other the bosom of the Church of Rome many of the Protestants on questions of ecclesiastical gohighest qualities of the Reformers, the Reform-vernment. In England, the jails were filled ed Churches had contracted some of the corruptions which had been justly censured in the Church of Rome. They had become lukewarm and worldly. Their great old leaders had been borne to the grave, and had left no successors. Among the Protestant princes there was little or no hearty Protestant feeling. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant rather from policy than from firm conviction. James I., in order to effect his favourite object of marrying his son into one of the great continental houses, was ready to make immense concessions to Rome, and even to admit a modified primacy in the Pope. Henry IV. twice abjured the reformed doctrines from interested motives. The VOL. III.-5

with men who, though zealous for the Refor mation, did not exactly agree with the court or all points of discipline and doctrine. Some were in ward for denying the tenet of reprobation; some for not wearing surplices. The Irish people might at that time have been, in all probability, reclaimed from Popery, at the expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in revning bishops.

As the Catholics in zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an inttel superior organization In truth, Protestanism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed 2 M

sumes the direction to herself. It would be absurd to run down a horse like a wolf. It would be still more absurd to let him run wild, breaking fences and trampling down passengers. The rational course is to subjugate his will, without impairing his vigour-to teach him to obey the rein, and then to urge him to full speed. When once he knows his master, he is valuable in proportion to his strength and spirit. Just such has been the system of the Church of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She knows that when religious feelings have obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise men above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and self-command, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause.

Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly with out any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church, on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody at Lambeth, or at Edinburgh, troubled himself about what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But at Rome, Cracow and Munich were objects of as much interest as the purlieus of St. John Lateran. Our island, the head of the Protestant interest, did not send out a single missionary or a single instructor of youth to the scene of the great spiritual war. Not a single seminary was established here for the purpose of furnishing a supply of such persons to foreign countries. On the other hand, Germany, Hungary, and Poland were filled with able and active Catholic emissaries of Spanish or Italian birth; and colleges for the instruction of the northern youth were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, out could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment's notice for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. It it was thought at head-quarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly given and instantly obeyed. In a month, the faithful servant of the Church was preaching, cate-able sin. He imputes every wild fancy that chising, confessing, beyond the Niemen.

In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coal-heaver hears a sermon, or falls in with a tract, which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardon

springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hope. less. At length a turn takes place. He is re conciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sun

It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very masterpiece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty generations of statesmen, have improved it to such perfection, that among the contrivances of political abilities it occupies the highest place. The stronger our conviction that reason and Scripture were decidedly on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard that system of tactics against which rea-shine is on his path. He ascends the Deson and Scripture were arrayed in vain.

If we went at large into this most interesting subject, we should fill volumes. We will, therefore, at present advert to only one important part of the policy of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly understands, what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects-particularly in infant sects-enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects-particularly in sects long established and richly endowed—it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force which in itself, like the muscular powers of a fine hore, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to proJuce great good or great evil; and she as

lectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural, and surely not a censurable desire, to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is full-to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion, is a strong passion in the guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbours; and if he be a man of strong parts, he often does su with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep

very composedly while the rector preaches on | religion, the chance is, that though she may the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love disapprove of no one doctrine or ceremony of for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exer- the Established Church, she will end by giving cise of his newly discovered powers, impel her name to a new schism. If a pious and him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel benevolent woman enters the cells of a prison, with the establishment, no objection to its for- to pray with the most unhappy and degraded mularies, its government, or its vestments. of her own sex, she does so without any auHe would gladly be admitted among its hum-thority from the Church. No line of action is blest ministers. But, admitted or rejected, his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Papist bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author, nor write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost forever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her goverment, or her ceremonies.

Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast, whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minis

ter.

To that Church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars.

Even for female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of

traced out for her; and it is well if the Ordi-
nary does not complain of her intrusion, and
if the Bishop does not shake his head at such
irregular benevolence. At Rome, the Countess
of Huntingdon would have a place in the ca
lendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be
foundress and first Superior of the Blessed
Order of Sisters of the Jails.
Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is
certain to become the head of a formidable se-
cession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is
certain to be the first General of a new society
devoted to the interests and honour of the
Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her
restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not
untinctured with craft. She becomes the pro-
phetess, the mother of the faithful, holds dispu
tations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to
her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place
Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an
order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of
whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the
Church;-a solemn service is consecrated to
her memory:-and her statue, placed over the
holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger
who enters St. Peter's.

We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe, that of the many causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the fanaticism of such persons as St Ignatius and St. Theresa.

The Protestant party was now, indeed, vanquished and humbled. In France, so strong had been the Catholic reaction, that Henry IV. found it necessary to choose between his religion and his crown. In spite of his clear hereditary right, in spite of his eminent personal qualities, he saw that, unless he reconciled himself to the Church of Rome, he could not count on the fidelity even of those gallant gentlemen whose impetuous valour had turned the tide of battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, and Southern Germany, Catholicism had ob tained a complete ascendant. The resistance of Bohemia was put down. The Palatinate was conquered. Upper and Lower Saxony were overflowed by Catholic invaders. The King of Denmark stood forth as the Protector of the Reformed Churches; he was defeated, driven out of the empire, and attacked in his own possessions. The armies of the house of Austria pressed on, subjugated Pomerania, and were stopped in their progress only by the ramparts of Stralsund.

And now again the tide turned. Two vic lent outbreaks of religious feeling in opposite directions had given a character to the history of a whole century. Protestantism had at firs driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had

« AnteriorContinuar »