This would have facilitated reference, and made sensible to the eye in what portable and commodious form it was usual for the company to provide its necessary volumes. A little more of critical apparatus would likewise have been very beneficial and acceptable. But we have gladly done with exceptions respecting a work for which we are, and we doubt not the honestly Protestant public will be, duly and highly grateful.

The Constitutions, now republished from the rare first edition in 1558, are a part only of the entire Institute of the Jesuits. When a general disgust at the iniquity and immorality of this Society excited all Europe, and particularly France, to bring the affair, not only to a moral, which had sufficiently been done before, but to a legislative trial, in the years 1761-2-3, copies of the Jesuitic Institute were demanded, and supplied for the purpose of examination. The copy so supplied was the edition of Prague

* The Preface to the reprint, in its first page, quotes Robertson, in his Charles V. as stating that at the suit of La Valette in 1761, the Jesuits were "so inconsiderate as to produce the mysterious volume of their Institute." If inconsiderateness alone had been concerned, the volume would never have been produced. The note from d'Alembert puts the fact in its true form-the production was demanded by Parliamentary authority. The Reverend Peter Kenney, Jesuit, first President of the Jesuitic Seminary at Clongowes, established in 1814, (the year of the Society's restoration,) who had passed through the Seminaries of Carlow, Stonyhurst, Palermo, Maynooth, was examined before the Commissioners of the Irish Education Inquiry, Dec. 7 and 8, 1826. See Appendix to the Eighth Report; and there, in the close, pp. 402-3, the Rev. President is asked, "Were not the rules and institutes of the order made public, for the first time, upon the occasion of the trial of the great cause of the Jesuits, before the Parliament of Paris, in the year 1764, or thereabouts?" The expert President could at once perceive from the phraseology of the question, what kind of examiners he had, and how safely he might play with them. And he does not neglect his opportunity. He thus combats the implied secresy. The "constitutions," he says, "were ordered to be printed in 1558." This is true as relating to that particular book ;-he adds, "and before the year 1762, the whole Institute of the Society had undergone sixteen editions." We defy him to establish more than two, the Antwerp, (whether original or reprinted,) and that of Prague; and the latter only made public with the Society's consent. He may talk of compendiums, and substance, and bulls of popes, and being obliged to produce the Institute by the public authorities of the places of their residence, and acknowledgments in the royal patents of France, of its being examined. This is only partly true; for parts only were examined: the rest was refused; and it does not require a Jesuit or a conjuror, to tell what that rest would be. M. de Monclar, in the volume already referred to, and speaking rather to another point, the nullity of the establishment of the Society in Provence-tells us, to our point, that the Jesuits, in 1621, applying for such establishment, were required to acknowledge the independence of the crown, and to communicate their Institute for examination. The Provincial, who was then at Aix, refused both the oath of the independence of the crown

in two folio volumes, 1757. And here, in order to correct past, and guard against future mistakes, it is proper to observe, that the particular title "Constitutions" has been rather inadvertently and injuriously, as it has happened, applied generally to the whole body of the different documents constituting the Institute. Critics of eminence have been misled by the ambiguity. V. Placcius, in his valuable Theatrum Anonymorum, &c. p. 125, where he mentions the Constitutions, as translated from Spanish into Latin, by de Polanco, and, therefore, must mean the particular book, (for that alone needed translation into Latin,) proceeds to quote from Gerhard von Mastricht what evidently embraces the whole collection, occupying nine volumes, &c. Of this we shall say more. But even the accurate theologian and bibliographer, Gerdes, in the last edition of his Florilegium, p. 177, &c., has fallen into the same confusion, although, as he says, he had the good fortune to meet with a copy of the Constitutions of the edition of 1635, Antwerp, and has specified their contents. In this respect he had the advantage of Placcius. His copy, however, did not comprehend the Antwerp continuation after 1635.

*

We should not withhold from our readers the information upon the subject of the Antwerp edition of the Institute, which Placcius conveys from Gerhard. This witness deposes, that the Constituand the communication of the Institute-refusa la communication de l'Institut. State necessity allowed the omission. The dispensation was pleaded on the ground of the Edict of 1603. But, adds the Procureur General, the Court, by ordering in 1762, that "the Constitutions should be communicated to me, has given its minister the first opportunity of publicly examining the laws of the Society-puisqu'il est permis pour la premiere fois au Ministere public d'examiner ce qu'ils sont, et quelles sont leurs loix, pp. 262-270. Indeed this kind of proof might almost be superseded by the very words occurring in the Regulæ, Regulæ Com-munes, § 38, pp. 29-30, of the Antwerp edition: Nemo quæ domi acta vel agenda sunt, externis referat, nisi superiore id probari intelligat. Constitutiones vero, aliosve hujusmodi libros aut scripto, [sic] quibus Societatis institutum vel privilegia continentur, nonnisi ex superioris expresso consensu üs communicet Ed. Pragæ ii, p. 77. All this sufficiently justifies the testimonies adduced in the preface of the work before us, p. ii, as to the whole of the contents of the Institute being unknown even to members of the Society. We could tell Mr. Peter Kenney something about the Monita Secreta which, perhaps, would be news to him, and might give them a different origin from that in which Mr. Dallas and he coincide. M. de Monclar's Compte Rendu, pp. 180-224, particularly 198, and following, may convince him that the Institute itself has directions, not at all different in substance from those in the Monita Secreta: but being exhibited in a concentrated and naked form in the latter, they have more of the appearance of pasquinade or satyr. The heading in Monclar is the Politique de la Société. What he quotes from the Institute de Confessariis Principum is most characteristic and instructive.-Ordinatt General, pp. 193, &c.

tions, or, more properly, the Institute, in nine volumes, (it might be bound in any number at pleasure, the different pieces being separately paged,) was printed under the careful inspection of two fathers, and trusted only to members of the fourth vow. Under our Cromwell some of these members were imprisoned in England, and copies found upon them, from which an accurare fac simile re-impression was made in Amsterdam. The Jesuits endeavoured to secure the reprint, but were disappointed by the honesty or resolution of the printer. Certainly copies, though scarce, are to be met with.

The

In the Antwerp edition, immediately preceding the Index at the end, is a list of the different pieces in the order in which they are usually placed, and which appears to be the proper one. first in order is, the Litteræ Apostolicæ, giving the foundation, and authority, and privileges of the Society in various Papal constitutions, &c. And we may just remark here-for it is hopeless to attempt any thing like a complete view of so interminable a subject-that all the privileges which were dispersed among the other religious communities of Rome were collected and concentrated in that of Jesus. The Society, in fact, was a complete monopoly. It absorbed within its vortex all descriptions of pontifical predilection. Its vow of unlimited obedience to the pontiff completely won his Holiness's heart, and not only disarmed all incipient opposition, but procured, after a ready confirmation, new favours from every successive occupant of the Roman see-faculties, indulgences, indults, privileges, canonizations-till every other fraternity found itself reduced to insignificance and impotence by the overwhelming bulk and power of the disciples of a Spanish fanatic. The next article in the Institute is the Constitutions, with which at present we have most concern. We will, however, in order to give an adequate account of the whole Institute, just enumerate the other articles as they are given in the place already referred to. After the Littera Apostolice and the Constitutiones cum Examine, just mentioned, follow Regula, Decreta Congregationum, Canones, Formulæ Congregat, Ratio Studiorum, Ordinationes Generalium, Compendium Privilegiorum, Instructiones, Industriæ, Instructio P. Claudii, Exercitia, Directorium Exercitiorum, Epistolæ Præpositorum Generalium.

For several reasons we give a preference to the Antwerp edition of the Institute. But it is right to offer some account of that of Prague, particularly as that was the edition communicated to the authorities in France in the years 1761-63. It has the advantage of regulations subsequent to the date of even the Antwerp continuation; and the title purports that it is digested in a better order. It likewise puts forward the authority of the eighteenth General Congregation, which might with much more accuracy have been that of the fourteenth, § 8, when the proposal of the

Bohemian Province to print the new edition was acceded to. The eighteenth congregation, § 20, does nothing more than sanction the accompaniment of the Elenchus of R. P. Piccolominei. We will not pretend to have minutely collated the two editions, but it is plain enough that the last, any more than the first, was not intended for public circulation. In this, as in all similar cases, there are some things to shew-other things not to shew.

We now return to the Constitutions, properly so called. The edition now in a reprinted form presented to the public is the first printed-not published-in the year 1558, eighteen years after the foundation of the Society. These Constitutions form the fundamenfal rules of the Society, since it must have had some such from the beginning. They were doubtless contracted and rude for some time, and would of necessity obey the progress of the new institution. They were the production of an illiterate Spanish soldier, and existed at first only in the vernacular language. After eighteen years of success, obtained by much contest, it was thought right that these fundamental rules should appear in a more perfect form, and in the language esteemed by Rome both sacred and official. They were accordingly translated into Latin, by John de Polanco, secretary of the Society; and his translation was decreed to be printed by the first General Congregation, in 1558; and it was done before the close of the year. A third General Congregation, however, in 1573, thought proper to give a preference to a second Latin translation, which is that printed since the abovementioned date, and, therefore, in all modern editions. See Decreta Congr. I., Titulus II. § XV., Tit. V. § LXXVIII., LXXIX., and Congr. III., § XXVI.; in the Antwerp edition, pp. 32, 59, 60, 182, 183. It is remarkable that the directions thus given include the Examen, afterwards preceding the Constitutions, and the Declarationes accompanying them-neither of which appeared in the first edition, and of course do not in the present reprint. We should however observe, that the date of the original is given at the close of the edition here reprinted, although omitted in subsequent ones, as it naturally would be, a new translation being substituted. We apprehend that the official attestations of the date of the first edition, here produced, are more satisfactory than the Synopsis Primi Sæculi of Damianus, which is but distant and inferior authority. We may perhaps have to refer to the Imago Sæculi Primi, of which it is a synopsis, before we conclude.*

But we hasten to the contents of the important volume now particularly before us. It is, we believe, the first time that an English translation of the Constitutions, or of any other book of the Jesuitic

* Some curious particulars relative to the first printed Latin translation of de Polanco may be read in Sacchini's Hist. Soc. Jesu., Liber Secundus, 45-51, anno 1558.

Institute, has made its appearance. We rate highly the re-impression of the rare first edition in the original form, together with the collation with a modern edition, that of 1702; but it is with peculiar satisfaction we notice the translation, which will enable the British public to understand what are the fundamental principles of a Society, (particular as Jesuitic, and general as Papal,) of which they are soon likely to hear something more. It would be too long a task to ourselves, and an unreasonable as well as unnecessary tax upon our readers, to enter upon a minute examination of the contents of the Constitutions. It will be sufficient to say, that, as regards the admission of members, their qualfications, their exercises, their duties, the time exacted for proving their various fitnesses, the power and mode of exclusion when expedient, the full admission of members into the body of the Society, as professed, the authority of the rulers of the order, the rules for their particular conduct, the security against incapacity or counteraction, the systematic construction of the whole moral and physical machine, so, as to obtain, individually and unitedly, the greatest possible amount of power and force, all to be directed to the one great end which the Society, with almost palpable and profane mockery, as well as with disgusting reiteration, designates as* ad majorem Dei gloriam, but more truly ad majorem Societatis Jesuitica amplificationem, imperium et opes-the Constitutions exhibit the most consummate, we had almost said satanic policy and skill, in order to the attainment of their object. No small portion of the collective power of the body arises from the flexibility, or, as the French like to call it, mobility of the laws, not only of the book before us, but of the whole code. Rigorous indeed they are, to the utmost extremity of the law, as respects the governed; but to the governors they are as pliant as wax. There is nothing fixed in the Constitutions either of Jesuitism or the Papacy at large, but self-interest, self-aggrandisement.

There are two or three points, however, in the interesting volume before us, which we think our readers will thank us for bringing into prominent view.

In the fifth book, which relates to the admission of the proper and more efficient members of the Society by profession, that profession, in form, is given in the third chapter. It is as follows:

66

"I, N, make profession, and promise Almighty God, before His Virgin mother, and before all the heavenly host, and before all by-standers, and You, Reverend Father, General of the Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and your successors; or, You, Reverend Father, Vice

*That we do not express ourselves too strongly, the reader may be convinced, if he will read in Monclar, pp. 189-192. The eternal repetition of this phrase, however, he says, according to a Jesuitic author, marque l'onction de la grace.