The Jesuits

Brownson's Quarterly Review, July, 1847

Art. II.  1. The Jesuits. From the French of MM. Michelet and Quinet, Professors in the College of France. Edited by C. Edwards Lester. New York: Gates & Stedman.    1845.    l2mo.    pp. 225.
2. Des Jesuites par un Jesuite. Premiere Partie. Examen des Textes. 2° Edition, augmented. Paris. ]844. 18mo.    pp. 192.
3. Des Jesuites par un Jesuite. Seconde Partie. Exa-men des Faits Historiques. Paris. 1844. 18mo. pp. 381.

The first of these works is an English, or American, translation of the infamous lectures of Messrs. Michelet and Quinet, of the College of France, against the Jesuits, delivered in the summer of 1843 ; the other two works are a formal reply to them by a Jesuit, Father Cahour, written with great mildness, but with much keenness of wit and force of logic. They leave little to be desired by way of refutation of the Lectures, and ought to have accompanied the American edition of them ; and would, if the American editor, whose name we are loath to write, had had the least conceivable sense of justice.

The Lectures, owing to the position and reputation of the Professors, and to the state of the public mind, especially in Paris, at the time they were delivered, were not altogether without effect, and  they are even now sometimes referred  to by anti-Catholic writers with a certain degree of approbation. A Presbyterian minister of St. Louis, Missouri, who possesses all the zeal, and more than the average sourness of his sect, lately quoted them, in replying to an article of ours against him,' as a work of authority ; and such, is the deplorable ignorance of Protestants in general concerning Catholicity, especially concerning the religious orders it opposes, that many, we doubt not, may really suppose the work is  in fact something better than a mere tissue of sophistry and misrepresentation.   It may, therefore, not be amiss to subject these Lectures to a rigid examination, and lay open to the public their false assumptions, misstatements, and calumnies.    We intended to do this some time since, and had, over a year ago, collected the necessary materials ; but we have hitherto been prevented from executing our intention by a press of other matters which we were unwilling to postpone.    No great harm, however, can have resulted from the delay.    The controversy is an old one, and changes not its character by lapse of time.    The Society of Jesus remains, and will remain, as it was, and its enemies have long since ceased to be able to assume a new position or to invent a new falsehood against it.

Our readers are already familiar with the character of the Professors from the account we have given of them, when reviewing some of their other works. They are distinguished chiefs of what, in a general way, is called the modern Movement party,  a party with which we ourselves were associated in the days of our blindness, and from which we hoped the redemption of man and society, till the grace of God disabused us. This party is variously denominated, and is not easily defined or described. Perhaps its most appropriate name is the Shadowistic or Symbolistic party ; very nearly what is commonly meant in this country by the Transcendental party. It is not Catholic ; it is not Protestant, in the sense old-fashioned Protestants wish us to understand Protestantism ; nor is it precisely infidel, after the fashion of the last century, or, if so at bottom, it seeks to disguise the fact by dressing up its infidelity in the costume of religion. > Its members claim to be religious, even Christian ; but Christian only in their own peculiar sense, because they profess to embrace and seek to realize what they allege was the idea entertained by our Lord. All religion, according to them, is a shadow or symbol, never the reality or the substance itself.    The idea entertained by our Lord, or the religion he contemplated, was, they tell us, a religion which completely and exactly symbolizes the whole of human nature, and shadows forth all its permanent and indestructible facts or laws. All religions are to be accepted, for each symbolizes a portion of these ; but no one can be accepted as perfect religion, for no one completely and exactly symbolizes them all. All, so far as they are positive, are true and divine ; and each, so far as exclusive, is false and mischievous. This is the great truth our Lord taught, and in obedience to this truth he sought to select out the positive portions of all religions and mould them into a perfect and self-consistent whole, which should be the adequate expression of all the essential facts of human nature. To this end he labored, suffered, and died. They only are truly his followers, or have the right to call themselves Christian, who, in this respect, imitate his example. To labor for such a religion is Christian, because it is to labor for the Christian idea, and to be a fellow-laborer with Christ himself is to be Christ  we shudder to write it  in the sense he was Christ ! and is Catholic, because it is to accept all religions, and to construct out of the materials they furnish a universal religion.

Moreover, human nature is progressive, continuously progressive, and progressive without term. It is never the same in any two epochs or countries, hardly in any two individuals, or in the same individual at two different periods of his life. The religion which perfectly symbolizes it in one age or nation will not in another. The garments fitted to the child will not fit the full-grown man, and to demand that they be retained and worn without alteration or enlargement is, in effect, to demand that the man remain for ever a child. As man himself advances, as human nature grows, and is continually unfolding more and more of what was concealed in the original germ, so the religious symbol must itself advance, have a power of development or expansion, which enables us to keep it always in harmony with our actual state ; for, if it do not advance with us, we outgrow it, leave it behind us, and are compelled to go on in our eternal career of progress without it.

But the growth, progress, development, or expansion of the symbol is not the work of God as the author of grace,  who may, indeed, gratia inspirationis, develop his revelations as seemeth to him good,  but the work of man himself. Man himself is intrusted with the work of casting his own shadow, of adapting his symbol to his nature.    But to be able to do this, he must be free to develop his own activity without restraint, and the religious symbol must be subjected to the free action of his own intellect and will,  and, we may add, to passion and caprice. Hence the conditio sine qua non of the progressiveness of religion is unrestrained freedom for man to alter, reform, amend, modify it at will, so as to adapt it to his moral and intellectual state ; or, in other words, unrestrained freedom to make his religion at all times and in all places after his own image. Hence, whatever tends to restrict man's control over his religious institutions, to render his religion inflexible, immovable, and immutable, the same always, everywhere, and for all, is hostile to religion itself, antichristian, mischievous to man, and hateful to God.

Such, in brief, is the general theory or doctrine of the Shad-oioists, or, as they are also sometimes called, the Progressists, as we can testify of our own knowledge, and as it is easy to collect from these Lectures themselves. It is clear from this statement, that the leading idea of these philosophers, doctors, or poets is the destruction of all antagonism between man and his religion. They find that there is a powerful antagonism between themselves and religion, as presented by its authorized teachers ; this antagonism they, very properly, look upon as wrong, and to be destroyed. But their peculiarity consists in proposing to destroy it by conforming, not man to religion, but religion to man. Hitherto it has been thought, that, whenever there is discrepancy between man and religion, he, not religion, should give way ; but this the theory corrects, and assumes that man is right, and that religion is in fault and in need of reform,  a notable discovery, no doubt.

It is also clear from our statement that the Shadowists do not hold religion to be imposed on man by his Maker as the law he is to learn, believe, and obey ; but they hold it to be something developed from man, spun, spider-like, from his own bowels, subjected to his free control, which he is to provide for and keep in constant repair, alter, contract, enlarge, amend, as occasion may require, so as to prevent it from ever offering any opposition to the age, country, or individual. The religious life, accordingly, consists, not in believing the revelation and keeping the commandments of God, but in adapting one's religion to the times. Under the religious point of view, man is a religion-developer, mender, or stretcher, whose chief duty is to make his religion always an exact shadow of himself. The service he may thus render religion is perhaps intelligible ; but the advantage to be derived from his religion is not very obvious. Somebody has remarked, that the difference between a good physician and a poor one is very great, but between a good one and none at all it is not great. Perhaps our Professors think that by rendering religion flexible, a sort of India-rubber religion, capable of contracting and expanding at will, they make it a good religion, and therefore nearly, if not quite, as good as none.

If we analyze this marvellous theory, we shall find that it proceeds on the assumption, that the falsehood and mischief of a religion are in the restraint it imposes on human activity, and that it is true and wholesome so far as it leaves us free and unimpeded, and permits us to follow the bent of our nature, and live as we list. It assumes the end of man to be, not, as the Catechism teaches, cc to know God, to love and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in the next," but to develop freely and in all directions his inherent activity, or, in other words, to develop and perfect his nature. Our nature, as God left it, is merely inchoate, and we must take it up and complete it; that is, do what the Creator has left undone. If left free, man will always keep his religion in harmony with the times, and prevent it from interposing any obstacle to his self-development and growth. It will cease to be a let or hindrance to his progress, and he may then go on in his career, and attain------. Here the oracle is
silent, and no further response can be obtained.

Knowing now the theory and character of the Professors, we can easily understand the ground of their opposition to the Jesuits. They oppose the Jesuits, substantially, because the Jesuits oppose their theory of man and religion, because they deny that religion should be flexible, movable, mutable, and alterable at the will and caprice of each age, country, and individual ; because they are exclusive, and will not admit that man can attain to salvation in one religion as well as in another ; because they are hostile to the free development of human activity, and seek to subject it to a positive law imposed by authority on man, and not merely developed from him. Here is the ground of their opposition to the Jesuits, and their principal charges against them.

But in these charges they in fact allege no offence. There is no offence where there is no infraction of law ; and where no law is alleged as violated, no offence is alleged. The Professors allege no law as violated by what they charge against the Jesuits. They declare on no law ; but simply on their own theory. That theory is not law ; it is a mere private speculation or opinion, and therefore its infraction is no offence.

Before the Professors can allege the infraction of their theory as an offence, they must assume it to be law. But they cannot assume it to be law without contradicting themselves. The essence of their theory, as is evident to all who comprehend it, or have studied their Lectures, is that there is no law, and that man is perfectly free to exert his own activity as seemeth to himself good. To assume the theory to be law is to deny this, and to assert that man is subject to law, and free to exert his activity only according to law. On no hypothesis, then, can the Professors allege the infraction of their theory as an offence. That theory is either true or it is false. If true, there is no law; then no offence, for its infraction violates no law; if false, its infraction can be no offence ; for it can be no offence to violate a false theory. This is a bad beginning for our distinguished Professors, our learned and philosophic Universitari-ans, who would have us regard them as standing at the apex of modern civilization, and is not likely to exalt our opinion of their legal attainments and logical ability.

But the case for our Professors is worse yet. They not only cannot allege the infraction of their theory as an offence, but, on the assumption of that theory, they can allege no act of the Jesuits or of any body else, whatever it may be, as an offence. According to their theory, human activity is left perfectly free and unrestrained, and subject to no law but its own inherent law, by virtue of which it is human activity ; which inherent law, it is evident of itself, can never be violated, unless it be by not acting. There is no law, then, which restrains or forbids any act whatever. There then can be no offence ; for the offence is necessarily in doing what the law forbids. If there can be no offence, none can be charged against any one, let him do what he will. This is an awkward position for our Professors to assume. They wish to commence and sustain an action against the Jesuits, and as the condition of doing it, begin by denying all law, and therefore the possibility of any actionable matter ! But no man can be arraigned without law, or but by law. Whoever, then, wishes to arraign and condemn a party must in the outset concede the existence of law, and show that the law, on which he declares, forbids the particular acts he sets forth in his declaration.    Are the learned Professors  of the College of France,   the celebrated Universitarians, under the necessity of being taught this ?
But, unhappily for our Professors, if they should undertake to assert law, and to relieve themselves by an appeal to it, they would be obliged to abandon their theory. If they appeal to law, they recognize a legal order. But the moment they recognize a legal order, they recognize an authority to make and declare the law, and that the right or the wrong of human actions is determinable only by the law. This is as true in moral matters as in civil. Man is a moral being only by being placed under law; and he is moral or immoral in his character, simply as his acts conform or do not conform to the law to which he is subjected. Deny law, and you deny morals. Admit law, and you must admit a sovereign lawgiver, whose will is law. But the will of the lawgiver cannot bind till promulgated, and it cannot be promulgated without authority. Where there is no authority to promulgate and declare the will of the sovereign, there is no law. Law necessarily supposes such authority, and the supposition of such authority necessarily supposes the law to be what, and only what, the authority declares it to be. But if the Professors admit this, as they must, if they appeal to law, they admit the very principle for which they arraign the Jesuits ; for the gist of their allegation against the Jesuits is that they assert that man is subject to law, and that the law is determinable only by the authority which promulgates and declares it. They would, then, not only bring no charge against the Jesuits, but they would even condemn themselves. ^ Not the Jesuits, then, would be wrong in opposing, but they in defending, their theory. So much in general; a more particular examination will disclose everywhere this same original vice of the pleadings of the Professors against the Jesuits. They assert universal liberty, and allege against the Jesuits that they deny and oppose it. Be it so. But if all actions are free, it is no more an offence against liberty to deny it than it is to assert it. The Jesuits in denying it only exercise that liberty which you assert, and therefore do only what you assert they are free to do.

Do you reply, that it is self-contradictory to assert universal liberty, and at the same time the universal liberty to violate liberty ? If so, that is your affair, not ours. To assert universal liberty is, no doubt, to assert a universal absurdity; but ' the responsibility is yours, not ours. If you assert it, you can assume no act to be a violation of it ; for whatever the
act may be, it is a free act, which no law forbids. But liberty, you say, necessarily excludes all acts which are repugnant to liberty. But no act is repugnant to liberty, if liberty be universal. Let this pass. Liberty can exclude no act repugnant to liberty, unless liberty be erected into law. The law must ordain it, define it, and forbid its violation. But a law ordaining and defining liberty is already a limitation of liberty, and there is only so much liberty as the law ordains, concedes, or forbids to be attacked. But the Professors by their theory deny all law.

There is a great deal of loose declamation in our days about liberty and natural rights ; but liberty is really unintelligible without law. Liberty is my right, or it is not liberty. If it is my right, you have no right to encroach on it, and if you attempt it, I have the right to repel you; for a right which there is no right to defend as a right is no right at all. But I can have no right to repel your attack, unless there is some law which forbids it. Hence law always lies necessarily at the foundation of liberty,  the law of God, of nature, of the state, or of nations. The question of liberty, therefore, always involves the question of law, and can never be determined but by determining what the law permits, commands, or forbids. Deny this, you assert, in the name of universal liberty, universal liberty to violate liberty, which is absurd. The assertion of law is essential to the assertion of liberty, and the denial of law is a virtual denial of liberty ; for it denies liberty as a right. We wish our modern advocates of liberty, who seek to advance liberty by the destruction of law, would bear this in mind, and remember that liberty without the guaranty of law is even less than an empty name.

This reasoning is as applicable in one sphere of human activity as in another, in the sphere of thought as in that of outward action. The Professors seek to arraign and condemn the Jesuits in the name of liberty of thought; but the liberty of thought cannot be asserted without asserting law, which grants and guaranties it, and therefore only so much liberty of thought can be asserted as the law grants and guaranties. To determine how much this is, the appeal is not to liberty itself, but to the law ; and therefore to the authority competent to declare the law. But our Professors deny all such authority, for the gist of their charge against the Jesuits, as we have seen, is that they assert it. They*then deprive themselves of the means of determining whether they are entitled to the liberty they claim, therefore whether they have a law against the Jesuits to which appeal may he made. In order, then, to make the denial of that liberty an offence, they are obliged to assert universal liberty of thought, and then the denial ceases to be an offence ; for it is only an exercise on the part of the Jesuits of the liberty asserted. If all thought be free, I am as free to think against that freedom itself as you are to think in its favor.
But if the Professors find themselves estopped from proceeding in the name of liberty against the Jesuits, and appeal to law, they abandon the liberty for which they contend, and, for aught they allege, the Jesuits are right, and they wrong.    They concede, then, that thought itself is subject to law, and is free only where the law leaves it free.    The assertion, then, that the law restrains thought, is true and just, and the only ground of controversy is whether the law does or does not forbid the degree of restraint the Jesuits are said to uphold,  clearly a question for the court to decide.    As the only recognized court of competent jurisdiction has already decided this question, and decided it in favor of the Jesuits, it is res adjudicate and no longer an open question, unless the Professors can impeach the court itself.     The only court of competent jurisdiction recognized by any body is the Catholic Church, and that has decided in favor of the Jesuits.    You deny the jurisdiction of that court, or you appeal from its decision.    Very well.    To what do you appeal ?    To the judgment of mankind ?  We deny the right of such appeal; but let it pass.    To the judgment of mankind declared by authority or without authority ? If you say by authority, you abandon your cause, for you assert authority.    If without authority, then the judgment is of no authority, and cannot overrule that of the Church.    To private reason or judgment ?    But that appeal is fatal to you ; for, on the ground of private reason or judgment, the Jesuits have the same right to oppose your views that you have theirs.    Consequently, neither in the name of liberty, nor in the name of authority or law, can the Professors assert  that the Jesuits, in what is alleged against them, violate the freedom of thought.

The Professors present themselves as the champions of freedom of opinion, and arraign the Jesuits as its enemies. On what ground ? On the ground of their denying and opposing the Professors' theory ; certainly on no other. But in doing this they assume to themselves the right to define that freedom, and to declare that to oppose their definition is to oppose the freedom itself.    But their definition is only their opinion, and by what right do they impose their opinion as law, and assume to arraign me for rejecting it ? In this very fact, they violate the freedom for which they contend. They assume the principle, that they have the right to impose their opinions on me, and hold me up to public derision and abhorrence, if I have the audacity to disregard them. In this they assert the most perfect dominion over me, and claim me as their slave in both soul and body. He who has the right to impose his opinions on me as law, to compel me to think as he thinks, has the dominion of my soul, and he who has dominion of my soul has of course dominion of my body ; for the dominion of the body is in the soul. In the very name of freedom of opinion, these Professors would subject us to our fellow-men, and establish a tyranny which M. Michelet himself admits to be tenfold worse than the worst political tyranny conceivable.
Liberty, rightly defined, is a sacred name, and he is worthy of condemnation who violates it ; but who gave Messrs. Michelet and Quinet the right to define it, and impose their definition as the law ?    We know well enough what they understand by liberty, but we  deny that to violate it in that sense is a crime.    As that sense is not the sense in possession, they must establish it by competent authority as the legitimate sense, before the declaration that the Jesuits violate it alleges an offence.    It is  easy to declaim, nay, to grow lyrical, and  utter dithyrambics on liberty, and to denounce all who do not chance to understand it as we do; but that does not prove that we are right, or that they are wrong,  that we are its friends, or that they are its enemies.    It is not without reason that a Madame Roland, who had herself sacrificed law to liberty, or, more properly speaking, to license, exclaims, when led to the scaffold by partisans still more violent than herself,  " O Liberty, what crimes are  committed in thy name ! "    It is not seldom that they who scream loudest for liberty are its greatest enemies.    Who more clamorous for liberty than Marat, Danton, Robespierre ?    Who more   determined   against  forcing conscience than  the boastful children of the Reformation, who have never yet gained or retained the predominance in a single country without the aid of the civil arm, and by pains and penalties enacted and enforced against all who dared oppose their opinions, as England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and our own country can bear witness ?    Indeed, it may almost be laid " down as a rule, that the man who clamors loudly for liberty, and claims to be its especial friend, is sure to be a tyrant at heart, and means by liberty only liberty to make others succumb to him.

The Professors accuse the Jesuits of being "the counter Revolution " ; that is, of opposing the French Revolution, of seeking to repair its disasters, and to prevent the recurrence of a similar catastrophe. Concede it, what then ? When did the French Revolution become a law ? When did it become a crime before God, or against the human race, to deny the justice and utility of that Revolution ? Has not France had enough of revolution ? Bewitched by her sophists and demagogues, she madly exclaimed,  " Go to, let us make a revolution. Let us do away with this old political order, under which for these twelve hundred years we have lived, grown great, renowned, and led the civilization of the world. To the guillotine with the last of our glorious dynasty of kings, and let the people reign ! " She gave the word, and down went altar and throne, temple and palace, church and state, faith and manners, and up went the red cap and the tree of liberty. What gained she ? Ask her exiled chivalry, her royal and noble blood flowing in torrents on the Place de Greve ; ask the burning sands of Egypt and Syria, the snows of Russia, the field of Waterloo, the Isle of St. Helena,  all France bristling with foreign bayonets, her beautiful capital held by foreign mercenaries, and herself owing her not being blotted out from the roll of nations to the mercy or the policy of her conquerors. Alas ! France at a frightful sacrifice has taught us the worth of revolutions and the revolutionary spirit. She, rising from her prostrate condition, and assuming her rank among the nations of the earth, only in proportion as she reestablishes the order she had in her frenzy cast off, proclaims to all the world, that it is no crime to condemn her Revolution, and to arm her children by the precepts of religion against the madness of attempting to continue or to reproduce it. If this is the offence of the Jesuits, it is their glory. In the name of France, of humanity, of all that is sacred, if this is their crime, we say, All hail to the Jesuits ! They are the true followers of Jesus ; and however much shallow sophists and conceited demagogues may revile and persecute them, great is their reward in heaven.

The Professors say the Jesuits are ultramontanists ; Ultra-montanism is opposed to the revolutionary order in France, and therefore they are monsters and to be condemned and expelled.

" The worst thing for it would be to show that its profession of faith is not only different from, but inimical to, the profession of faith of the State. In her institutions founded upon the equality of existing worships, France professes and teaches the unity of Christianity, under the diversity of particular churches. This is her confession, such as it is, written in the sovereign law; all Frenchmen belong legally to the same church under different names : there are, henceforth, here no schismatics or heretics, but those who, denying every church but their own, every authority but their own, wish to impose it upon all others, to reject all others without discussion, and who dare to say, c Out of my church there is no salvation,' when the State says precisely the reverse. It has not been from pure caprice, if the law has broken the religion of the State. France could not adopt as her representative the Ultramontanism lohich, from its principle of exclusiveness, is diametrically opposed to the social dogma and the religious community, inscribed upon the constitution as the result, not only of the Revolution, hut of all modern history. Whence it follows, that, for things to be otherwise than they are, one of two things must take place: either France must abjure her social and political communion, or Catholicism must become truly universal, by comprehending at last what it is now content to curse."  pp. 88, 89.

Suppose the antecedent, we deny the consequence. 'Grant there is an antagonism between Ultramontanism, that is, Catholicity, and the order to which the Revolution has given birth in France, it no more follows from this fact that Ultramontanism is wrong than it does that the Revolutionism is wrong. By what authority is that order which has resulted from the Revolution assumed to be the law, which to oppose is necessarily a crime ? You must establish the legitimacy of that order, the legality of what you call the sovereign law, before you can assume it to be a crime to disregard or transgress it.

The Revolution, we are told, has established in France, as the sovereign law of the state, a law which Ultramontanism necessarily contravenes. That is, there is a necessary antagonism between the political order and the religious order. Be it so. But if the Church opposes the State, the State opposes the Church. Whence, then, follows it that the Church is wrong ? Why is not the fact, that the political order opposes the religious, as good proof, to say the least, that the political order is wrong, as that the religious order is ? Which is the more sacred, religion or politics ? Where there is antagonism between religion and politics, which must give way ? Religion ?    Since when has the political order been made supreme ? Since when has the State had rightfully the supreme control in matters of religion ? Since when has it received from Almighty God authority to teach his word, and to assume the direction of consciences ? The Christian religion was condemned, prohibited by the State, under the pagan emperors of Rome ;  was it therefore wrong for the subjects of the emperor to embrace it, and to do all in their power to propagate it ? If you assert the supremacy of the State in spirituals, be so obliging as to show us the patent of the Almighty constituting the State the Ecclesia docens, and the temporal prince the pontifex maximus.

The Professors tell us that the Jesuits are Ultramonta-nists; Ultramontanism is the supremacy of the Church, and the assertion of the supremacy of the Church is inimical to religious liberty. Hence the Jesuits are opposed to religious liberty, and, for that reason alone, should be suppressed. But why is it more inimical to religious liberty to assert the supremacy of the Church than it is to assert the supremacy of the State ? Is religious liberty less interested in the liberty of the Church than in the liberty of the State ? If you declare the State supreme, you subject the Church to the State. Is religion free, when it is subjected to the State ? Is it to defend religious liberty to assert the right of the State over it, and to oppose it to assert the freedom of the Church ? Am I free in my religion, when I am bound to take my religion from the temporal power, and prohibited from embracing a religion the State does not see fit to authorize ? Am I the enemy of religious liberty, because I resist the attempt to make the State the director of consciences, and to give the prince absolute authority over the souls, as well as the bodies, of his subjects? Strange advocates of religious liberty are these celebrated Universitarians! Religious liberty with them means freedom from the authority of religion, and absolute subjection, body and soul, to the civil power ; that isj the most absolute religious despotism conceivable,  a despotism which was realized in part by Henry the Eighth of England, when he caused himself to be declared supreme head of the Church, which is still more fully realized by the Autocrat of the Russias,  and which is perfectly realized by the Emperor of China, the mighty brother of the moon ! Strange that these men of lofty words do not see that the principle on which they condemn the Jesuits condemns themselves, and that they cannot assert religious liberty for themselves without asserting it also for Ultra-montanists! The State destroys religious liberty by prohibiting religion, as much as it does by ordaining a particular religion and forbidding the exercise of any other.

Again ; these Professors, by the principle they contend for, condemn themselves as politicians. They assert the authority of the State against the Jesuits, and hold, that, inasmuch as they are condemned by that authority, they are justly condemned. This asserts the sacredness of the authority of the State, and denies the right of any one to go against it. They then deny the right of revolution, for revolution is the subversion of the authority of the State. They then condemn themselves ; for they assert the legitimacy of revolution. Nay, they are, in principle, themselves the counter revolution, and obnoxious to the very charges they bring against the Jesuits. If they insist on asserting the sacredness of the State, the absolute authority of the State in matters of conscience, they should descend from their stand as accusers, and take their place in the prisoner's box to receive the sentence of the court. How hard it is for iniquity to avoid condemning herself ! how hard it is to forge a weapon against truth and justice which shall not pierce our own hands and heart! Yet these Professors are great men, lights of their age, and stand, as we have said, at the very apex of modern civilization !

But this is not the worst of it. The facts assumed are not true. There is no such sovereign law in France as is alleged in the passage quoted. What is given as the sovereign law of France is nothing more than the opinion of Messrs. Michelet and Quinet, and their party, and they must remember that their opinion does not happen to be law. The French charter of 1830 declares, that u each one professes his religion with equal liberty, and obtains for his worship the same protection." This is the sovereign law of France. M. Quinet tells us that this article ordains that every one may be saved in his own religion, and asserts the unity of Christianity under the diversity of particular churches. With his leave, it does no such thing. It simply guaranties the freedom of worships, without deciding any thing at all in favor of one or another. It is a simple declaration that the State professes no religion, or that she tolerates and protects the religion of her subjects, be it what it may. To say that this is a profession of faith is nonsense. The State declares in her fundamental law that she makes no profession of faith; therefore she makes a profession of faith ; and, therefore, whoever makes any profession of faith  contravenes the sovereign law of the  State ! The government of this country protects all religions, but professes none.    Therefore, it professes a religion.    What religion ?     No religion.      Therefore,  to profess a religion is  to contravene the profession of the State.    This is the way these master-spirits of the nineteenth century, these champions of art, science, intelligence, reason, argue !     The State says it affords equal protection to all worships adopted by its subjects; therefore it decrees that every one may be saved in his own religion ; and therefore the Catholic, who holds and teaches that out of the Church there is no salvation, contravenes the law, and is placed out of its protection!    Cannot these  marvellous philosophers understand that there is a difference between affording equal civil protection to diverse religions, and decreeing that all are equally available for salvation ?    In protecting all religions, the State throws the responsibility of his religion on the subject, and assumes that she has nothing to do with his spiritual welfare or future salvation.    Moreover, if all religions are equally protected, the Catholic must be protected as well as any other.     Then the Catholic has the legal right to believe and to teach that out of the Catholic Church there is no salvation.    Then the Jesuits, in so teaching, do not contravene the sovereign law of France ; for that which is legal cannot be against law.    Consequently, even if the abominable heresy of the supremacy of the temporal authority in matters of religion were to be asserted, it would still follow that the Professors fail to allege even an offence against the Jesuits.

France, we are told, recognizes " the unity of Christianity under the diversity of particular churches." This is not true ; but suppose it true, what then ? What is it to me what France does or does not recognize ? Is France the Church ? It is amusing to observe the ado Frenchmen, even some Frenchmen who are Catholics, make about France. To our Professors France is very nearly what the Church is to the faithful, and it suffices for them to ask, What does France that is, those who assume to speak in the name of France  teach or tolerate ? and they seem to take it for granted that France is infallible, and that whatever she condemns must needs be damnable. All this may be very patriotic, but we cannot accept it. France is no doubt a very considerable kingdom, Paris a very clever city ; but Paris is not the Holy See, nor France the Church of God. We can pardon much to patriotism, and we expect a French philosopher to hold that France is all the world, Paris all France, and himself all Paris ; but because he does, it does not follow that we must, or that the Jesuit who does not is therefore guilty of a crime. Religion, truth, justice, virtue, do not depend on national distinctions, are not bounded by geographical lines, and change not in form or substance as we pass from one country to another. They are universally and eternally the same,  the same for Socrates and Theodore Parker, for Confucius and Michelet, the Hottentot and the Frenchman, the Asiatic and the American. What in the world has nationality to do with faith, religion, morality, philosophy ? Talk not to us, then, of what France recognizes, or does not recognize. She might cease to be, and the Church remain, religion remain, and wisdom and virtue remain. Before you bring in France as umpire in religious matters, recollect and produce her credentials, and authenticate to us her divine commission.

But even here, again, the Professors are out as to their facts. France officially recognizes no such doctrine as is pretended. What are the facts ? Simply that she recognizes diverse worships, and supports their ministers from her treasury ; but not that she recognizes them as Christian, or as substantially one and the same religion. One of those religions is the Hebrew religion. Does she recognize Judaism as identical with Christianity ? She, for reasons or no reasons satisfactory to herself, pays the expenses of different religions ; but she nowhere professes to believe these religions are all alike true, and available for salvation. That is a question she leaves to her subjects to decide for themselves. For aught she says, she may believe them all false and anti-Christian. As a government, speaking officially, she professes no religion, though in point of fact the Catholic religion is declared by the charter of 1830 to be the religion of the French, and therefore Protestantism and Judaism are merely tolerated.
The Professors gravely tell us that France is more catholic than the Church, because the Church excludes from salvation all not of her communion, and France does not. This might make even a tyro in metaphysics laugh. In the first place, France teaches nothing on the subject; and if she did, it would amount to nothing. In the second place, catholicity is predicate only of that which is one and identical. To claim to be catholic because you hold that salvation is attainable in diverse communions is absurd. A church embracing diverse communions is syncretic, or eclectic, not catholic.    A church is not catholic because it denies the possibility of salvation out of its bosom, but it cannot be catholic unless it does so. Exclusive-ness is essential to catholicity, as every one who knows any thing of metaphysics knows full well. It is not to the credit of the Universitarian philosophers that they do not know this, and that they fall into the absurdity of confounding catholicity with eclecticism or syncretism.

The catholic teacher must teach all truth to be taught pertaining to the order in which he teaches. If there be no one communion or church that does this, there is no catholic teacher. It is not catholic to teach that truth is distributed through all communions, and that, if the separate portions of each were collected together into one whole, you would have all truth. Undoubtedly there is truth in all religions and in all sects ; and no sect could live a single day, were it not for the truth it has. But is there or is there not a communion that has all truth, and therefore truth in its unity and plenitude, all that is distributed through the various sects ? Is there a sect which has a single truth not possessed by that one communion ? If so, there is no catholic church. France, we say, not in order to be more catholic than Rome, but in order to be catholic at all, then, must possess the whole truth, and be able to teach it in its unity and plenitude. Do the Professors claim this for her ? They do not. They simply contend that she professes that there are elements of truth in some communions wanting in others, and that no one has them all. Then it is absurd to talk of her catholicity, for her catholicity consists simply in the denial of catholicity. What admirable metaphysicians and logicians are these renowned Universitarians !

Our Professors allege, also, that the Jesuits are opposed to the glory of France, and therefore should be condemned and expelled from her dominions, especially from Paris. But to oppose the glory of France is no offence, unless that glory be the law, or, what is the same thing, unless there be some law which forbids opposing it. In this charge the Professors, then, assume a law, and therefore abandon their theory, which denies all law. But let this pass ; by what right do they declare the glory of France the law, and make an appeal to national vanity and prejudice against the Jesuits ? The Jesuits are a religious order approved by the Church ; they are laboring to spread Catholicity ; and they would, if they could, make all France thoroughly Catholic. This is the worst that can be said of them.    The assumption, then, is, that there is antagonism between Catholicity and the glory of France, that France cannot be Catholic without sacrificing her national glory. Suppose it; what then ? Is national glory in general, or the national glory of France in particular, to be placed above religion ? Suppose the antagonism ; whence follows it that the fault is on the side of religion ? We had supposed that religion is before politics, that where there is opposition, politics, not religion, must give way, and that no national glory may be consulted at the expense of justice, sanctity, truth.
Religion can never be legitimately opposed on the authority of politics or of national glory. Religion is that which is highest ; what it ordains is ordained by God himself, who is the sovereign Lord and Proprietor, and who has in all things and in all cases the sovereign right to command. It is the lex suprema, and overrides all the ordinances of men, all national institutions, and civil enactments ; for these must be tried by it, not it by them. If it sanction them, they are legitimate, and may stand ; if it condemn them, they are by that fact alone illegitimate, and without right or business to be at all. It extends even to the thoughts and intents of the heart, and is the supreme law in both courts, the exterior and the interior. As individuals or nations we are placed under it, bound to conform to it, to obey it in every particular, and are guilty of rebellion against God, our rightful Sovereign, if we do not. If, then, Catholicity be the true religion, you must submit to all her demands, however opposed she may be to your individual or your national pride and vanity. What she opposes God opposes ; what opposes her opposes God, and you must abandon it, or stand condemned as guilty of treason against your rightful Sovereign. If you would oppose Catholicity, you must, then, do it on some other ground than that of national glory or national vanity. You must unchurch her, show that she has not the commission she claims, and then you have a good reason for rejecting her, whether she do or do not oppose national glory. But till then, the fact that this or that is opposed by her is only a proof that this or that is itself to be opposed.

Moreover, the charge is absurd. It does not allege that Catholicity is false, and therefore repugnant to the national glory. But conceding, by implication, its truth, it alleges that the Jesuits are censurable for laboring to spread it, because it is hostile to the glory of France. But there is and can be no national glory in opposition to true religion. The glory of the nation, as of the individual, is in loving and obeying the Lord, in making his law supreme, and in refraining from every act, however advantageous it may appear to our short-sighted wisdom, which it forbids. Concede the truth of Catholicity, and national glory is in strict fidelity to it ; and it is national sin and shame to go against it. What more absurd, then, than to allege that Catholicity, conceded to be true, is repugnant to national glory ?

But we deny the fact alleged ; put it on any ground you will, we deny that the Jesuits, in laboring to make France Catholic, are warring against the glory of France. In so laboring they are true Frenchmen, and show that they, not the Universitarians, have the true French spirit, and are filled with the true national life of France. The glory of France is identified with the Catholic religion. Her power, greatness, renown, art, civilization, chivalry, glorious deeds, recollections, all that is a spell upon the heart of the Frenchman, and makes him proud to belong to France, to call himself her son,  is redolent of Catholicity, inseparable from Catholic faith and piety. Divest France of what she owes to Catholicity, and she is a byword and a mockery. Her shame, her disgrace, the foul deeds for which she blushes and all her friends blush, she owes to her forgetfulness of the true source of her glory, to her neglect of Catholic faith and piety, to her Huguenots, Jansenists, and infidel philosophers, and infidel rabble. These have torn her bosom, stripped her of her fair ornaments, cast her out in nakedness and shame, wounded, bleeding, and half dead. The Catholic Church made her a kingdom, gave her her rank among the nations, her noble sentiments, her lofty and refined civilization ; inspired her chivalry and heroism ; covered her soil with the monuments of art and charity ; sent forth her armies of missionaries and martyrs, more glorious in their conquests than those led on by her unrivalled military heroes. O, base and degenerate is the Frenchman who would rob her of this her true glory, who would sever her from the Church, bid her spurn the Catholic religion and seek to be glorious by denying her whole past, and becoming a feeble infant of yesterday, without recollections, without ancestors, without parents,  a mere foundling, to be nursed by the tender charities of an infidel and blaspheming world ! O gentlemen, are you mad ? In the name of patriotism, as well as of religion, if you love your beautiful country, if you would not sink her so low that there shall be none so poor as to do her reverence, labor day and night with all your zeal and power to bind her, soul and body, to Rome. Link her fortunes to the Eternal City, her glory to the Holy See, and long as the world stands shall she flourish, be loved, be honored, and revered. Separate her, and she is gone ; France of the past, France of the Middle Ages, France of Chivalry, France the leader of modern civilization, France the great, the renowned, to whom even the foreigner is compelled to do homage, is no more, and her place in history is henceforth a blank for ever.

Yet we deny not that there is adroitness in this appeal. It is the common resort of all who would oppose the Church of God, from the loud-bellowing Luther down to the low-piping Ronge. All seek their point d'appui in the national spirit, and trust for success to the appeal to national prejudice. Thus, Luther appealed to the old Germanic spirit against the Church, and evoked the shade of the defunct Herman, the old pagan, to renew the fight against Rome. Rome is a foreign power, anti-national, the hereditary enemy of the Germanic people. Shall we, whose fathers so often met her legions in battle, who never succumbed to her power, who defeated her armies, invaded her territories, and blotted her old empire out from the list of nations, shall we tamely yield to the mandates of a shaven priest, who impudently pretends to the throne of the Csesars ? Shall our serene and high-mighty princes submit to be ruled by his creatures, to hold his stirrup, to kiss his toe, and do his bidding ? Where is the old Germanic spirit ? Rouse ye, brothers, rouse ye from your baseness ; wake the old Teutonic thunder; shake the seven-hilled city beneath him, and let him know that Germans are men, free men, and never were and never will be in subjection to a foreign power!

Thus, too, in England appealed the enemies of the Church to the national spirit, and alleged that it was a disgrace, that it derogated from the national dignity and independence, that his Majesty Henry the Eighth should not be supreme in his own realms over all things spiritual and temporal, and that when he wanted to put away one wife and take another he must send to Rome for permission, and be denied. Should not a king be supreme ? Should he not, when his wife no longer suffices for his lust, have the right to behead her and take another? Fine time of day, when his sacred Majesty cannot do his will without humbly craving leave of an Italian despot! It is an outrage upon the nation. Shall free-born Englishmen submit to it ?   Submit to it!   No. Are you Englishmen ? Speak out, then, and let that Italian usurper know that you despise him, and that not a minion of his shall set his foot on English soil, without meeting a dungeon, a scaflbld, or a gibbet.

Thus too is it with anti-Catholic writers and lecturers in our own country, our Beechers, Bushnells, and Kirks, with their foreign associates, Sparry, Leahy, and Hogan.    They appeal to the  national spirit,  to American vanity and prejudice, to check the growth of the Church amongst us.    They are, all at once, marvellously patriotic.    What! free Americans, will you suffer a foreign power to steal into your free territories and establish his dominion over you ?    Can ye surrender the independence  so   gloriously   won   by your patriot  sires ?    Have ye so soon forgotten Bunker's Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown, Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Henry ?    Where is your national spirit ?    Are ye already prepared to bow your necks tamely to  the yoke of the foreigner ?    Know you not that the Pope is the head of the Church, that all Catholics are his subjects, his slaves, sworn to do his bidding, that he is a  foreigner, an  Italian  despot,  and  that, if you  become Catholics, you must become the subjects of a foreign master, must lose your national independence, lose your rights as freemen, your inalienable rights as men, and sink into mere slaves ? Ay, free Americans !   become Catholics,   and you  lose  all your rights ; you cease to be men ; you become slaves, soul and body, to the will of an old man seated on the seven hills of Rome.    Are you prepared for this ?    Has national independence no longer a charm for you ?    Is freedom not worth possessing ?    Are your  free institutions not worth struggling for, dying for ?    Rouse ye, then, before it is too  late.    Insidiously the enemy is stealing upon you.    He is establishing his posts  and fortifying himself throughout the whole length and  breadth of your land, consecrated to freedom by the labors,  privations,  prayers, tears,  and  blood of your fathers, and ere you dream of it, you will find yourselves in his power and obliged to surrender at discretion.    Then farewell to the hopes   of freemen, of sages, of  philanthropists, the   mighty dead and the mighty living, that at length there might be one country in which man should be free to live under laws of his own making and a religion of his own choosing.    Americans ! free Americans !  by all your national spirit, by all your recollections, and by all your anticipations, be warned in  season ; awake from your fatal security,  and make one  bold, manly effort, before it is for ever too late, for your country, your political institutions, your homes and firesides.  Such is their appeal.

Yet, ingenious and successful as is this appeal, may be it is nothing but a gross absurdity. What is it in principle, but setting up nationality as the law of religion, as if religion were not free, sovereign, and catholic, but dependent on national distinctions and geographical lines ? Prove the Catholic religion false, prove that the Church is not the Church of God, if you can, and oppose her on the ground that she has no authority from God to promulgate and declare his law ; but do not so stultify yourselves as to oppose her on the ground that she is anti-national ; for, if religion as religion is admitted at all, she must be admitted as superior to the nation itself. None but such as deny all religion, regular atheists, can, if they know what they do, condemn any religion for reasons drawn from any national spirit or political order. Religion is higher than politics, and gives the law to the nation, instead of taking the law from it. You must conform your nationality to your religion, not your religion to your nationality, and subordinate your politics to its precepts, unless you would maintain the infamous maxim that " all is fair in politics,"  a maxim first openly proclaimed, we believe, by a modern Jew in New York,  a fit representative of those who crucified their God between two thieves.

It is lawful to object to the authority of the Pope, if a good and solid reason can be found for doing so ; but to object to it because the Pope is an Italian, not an American, an Englishman, an Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, or a Dutchman, is as absurd as to refuse to acknowledge the authority of our Lord, because, according to the flesh, he was a Jew. The Pope, if he has any authority at all, has it, not by virtue of the fact that he is a foreigner, an Italian, or an Italian prince, but by virtue of the fact that he is the successor of St. Peter, the Visible Head of the Church, which is catholic, of no nation, but over all nations and in all. If he have the authority he claims, it is no national authority, but the authority delegated to him by Him who has all power in heaven and in earth, and to resist it is to rebel against God. And is there any who dares maintain that it is lawful to rebel against God ?

" But we deny the authority of the Pope ; we do not admit that the authority Catholics claim for him was ever delegated to him."    Then say so ; prove what you assert, and oppose him for that reason; but not because he is, perchance, an Italian, and resides at Rome, instead of Geneva, London, Paris, or Washington. Do not oppose him on the ground of his nationality, when he claims and exercises no authority on that ground. If he has no authority, that fact alone is reason enough for not submitting to him ; if he has the authority he claims, there is no good reason conceivable for not obeying him. If he is not God's Vicegerent, nobody asks you to obey him ; if he is, nobody can deny that he ought to be obeyed by all, of whatever nation they may be. This is all we will deign to reply to the objections drawn from nationality and politics. We could easily refute them by denying the supposition on which they rest, and showing that there is nothing in the constitution of the ecclesiastical or Papal power that contravenes any national independence, national spirit, or political order, not morally wrong in itself; but we will not do religion the foul dishonor of compelling or suffering her to plead at the tribunal of politics or nationality. We agree with our Puritan fathers, that the Church is free and sovereign, and can never be compelled to answer at the bar of the State. She is supreme. In relation to each other, all states and nations are by right free and independent ; before God, or before his Church, if it be his Church, no one is free or independent, save in obedience ; for in respect of nations as of individuals, it is the law that God is to be obeyed rather than men.
This is the Christian doctrine ; it is the doctrine of common sense ; it is, moreover, the American doctrine. It was the denial of the supremacy of the State over religion, and the assertion of the supremacy of the Church over the State,  the freedom and sovereignty of religion, and the subjection of the State to the law of God, promulgated and declared by his ministers,  that induced our fathers to leave their homes, that sustained them amid the privations of the wilderness, and enabled them to found the American state. America was rescued from its savage state and made the abode of civilization in obedience to the great principle of the freedom and sovereignty of the Church of God. Especially was this true of Puritan New England. Our fathers had their faults and their errors ; but while their blood courses in our veins, we will not rob or consent to see them robbed of their only glory, their only solid claim on the gratitude of their posterity. They only are true to their memory, and really entitled to call themselves in any deep and significant sense Americans, who are true to this great and everlasting principle, the denial of which is the assertion of the subjection of religion to the State, and God to man. If our Puritan fathers had been the Church of God, as they falsely assumed they were, they would have been right, and no descendant of theirs would have had cause to blush for their principles or general conduct. Their major was sound ; only their minor was false. Even as American citizens, as descendants of the Puritans, we are bound to assert the principle of the supremacy of the Church, and to refuse to make religion justify herself before the temporal authority. But be this as it may, religion is, as we have said, the lex supremely the law of laws, and the right of the Church to teach and to govern all nations is established the moment she is established to be God's Church. Deny that she is his Church, give a respectable reason for your denial, and we will meet you and discuss her claims ; but never will we discuss with you, whether she is favorable to one political order or another, the national spirit and the national majesty, or against them.

These very scientific and logical Professors, these attorney-generals of the human race, the rejuvenescence of the famous Baron Anacharsis Clootz of the French Convention, also cry out against the Jesuits and demand their condemnation in the name of humanity. But here again they forget their theory, and assert law, which their theory repudiates,  refute themselves by assuming authority which has the right to control human activity,  the very thing they charge against the Jesuits. But waive this. Consistency is rarely a striking quality in the enemies of truth. They speak in the name of humanity,  a respectable name, we do not deny ; bur there is a higher name, a name which is above every name, which every tongue must confess, and at which every knee must bend, whether in heaven, on the earth, or in hell. The Jesuits profess to speak in this higher name, and to promulgate the law humanity is bound to obey, not to take their law from humanity. Humanity is no lawgiver. It is the creature ; is itself under law ; and all its glory is in obedience to the law imposed upon it by its sovereign, and by which it is to be judged. To undertake to impeach the Jesuits in the name of humanity, prior to impeaching them in the name of God, is to make man the law, the sovereign, to substitute him for God, and to fall into idolatry, forbidden even by the law of nature. You stand, then, in your own wrong, and cannot be entitled to judgment against the Jesuits.

The Professors contend that the Jesuits are opposed to human progress, and are therefore the enemies of God ; but it is only progress in their sense that they allege the Jesuits oppose. But they are not entitled to assume their sense as the true sense, and to oppose the Jesuits because they do not accept it. The progress of mankind in the knowledge and love of God, in faith, and hope, and charity, in all, they being judges, which constitutes the true good and real glory of man, nobody can allege the Jesuits oppose ; for this is an end which they avow, and for which they labor with a zeal and a perseverance which even their enemies applaud. The question between them and the Professors, then, is, whether the one or the other takes the right view of progress,  evidently a question for the court to decide.
But the view of progress taken by the Professors is only a recent and a crude speculation, is entertained only by the Professors and their party, and in their works is assumed without proof, or any attempt at proof. It is, then, without authority ; and to seek to condemn the Jesuits because they disregard it is to seek to condemn them without any authority for condemning them,  rank injustice, tyranny, oppression. In the very name of humanity, then, in which they affect to speak, they are themselves condemned ; for there is nothing more repugnant to humanity than oppression, tyranny, injustice. Humanity demands justice ; justice is inconceivable without law, and law, without the Sovereign Lawgiver. Justice, by the force of the word itself, means conformable to law. Deny law, the jus, and there is no justice. Hence, the Professors, in denying law, in denying all authority to declare the law, and in arraigning the Jesuits for adhering to law, and maintaining that it is what the sovereign ordains, are themselves guilty of that enmity to man which they charge upon the Jesuits ; for in this they deny justice, and leave man no appeal from the tyranny and oppression of his brother.

So it always is. They who break from the Church, who seek some other rule of life, whether they do it in the name of liberty, or progress, or philanthropy, are always sure to defeat the end they profess to have in view. In every country, the ruin of the constitution, and the loss of the liberty of the subject, and finally of the state, have invariably been due to measures introduced by the partisans of liberty. If any one doubts it, let him read the histories of Greece and Rome. The liberal party always are the party that overthrow liberty. It has been so in France ; it has been so in England ; it is rapidly becoming so in this country. Every step the party whose battle-cry is liberty takes in advance, here and everywhere, is the loss of some guaranty of freedom. Their shout of victory is always over some edifice thrown down ; never over some one erected. It is when demolishing palace and cottage, and making the abodes of peace, elegance, and safety a heap of ruins, that the frantic shouts of the mob make the welkin ring, and honest people feel that hell is broken loose.

It has been the same in regard to religion.    The Reformers  would have religious freedom, and they have gained bv their sacrilegious attacks on  the Church, in most countries where they have succeeded, the complete subjection of religion to the State, and in others, religious anarchy, even worse than religious  despotism.     For the last hundred  years  the world has scouted the holy name of charity, and taken up the sentimental name of philanthropy.     The great men would not hear of God ; they were all for man, for fraternity, peace on earth, and good-will; and hardly since the world began have vice and crime more prevailed, the poor been more neglected, the lower orders more trampled on, or doomed to suffer greater privation and distress; tyranny and arbitrary power made more rapid strides, or established themselves more securely in their thrones of oppression.      Truth, justice, mercy, all that man needs, all that is honorable to human nature, is sacrificed to " the almighty dollar."    The money-god is worshipped everywhere, and daily are whole hecatombs of human hearts sacrificed at each of his ten thousand shrines.    Yet all is done in the name of liberty, brotherhood, universal love, and good-will! O, the terrible madness which seizes men, the moment they leave God to follow the devices of their own hearts !    The devil then has full power over them, and whirls and tosses them hither and thither, and sports with them at his leisure ; and they, poor souls, fancy it is all freedom,  and joy, and peace, and love, and quiet and easy journeying to heaven.    But there is no way but God's way, and the only way of securing a hundredfold m this life is to give up all for the life to come.    Man never suffices for himself, and whenever he attempts, in his own way, by his own wisdom and strength, to effect even a good end, and labors for it with all zeal and diligence, with constancy and perseverance, shrinking from no difficulty and danger, and pressing on even to the sacrifice of life, he only finds himself the farther from its accomplishment, and that he has only aggravated the disease he sought to cure.

Let who will examine the actual results of all the extra-Catholic movements in modern times for the melioration of man's moral, religious, or social condition, and he will be struck with the truth of what we assert. Let one go farther, and examine with some care, with some philosophical insight and logical acumen, the theoretic plans according to which these movements take place, and he will see, with equal clearness, that these results ought in all cases to be precisely what they have been. We are not disposed to deny, even to our French Professors, a certain kind of humanity, and though, like all reformers and philanthropists out of the Church, they act on the principle that the end sanctifies the means, we have no doubt but they wish a better order of things than they seem to themselves to see, and really persuade themselves, that, if they could once realize their theory in actual life, the condition of the individual and of society would be greatly ameliorated ; yet there is not a single good their theory proposes which is not, on that theory, impracticable. Their theory is hostile to the end they wish. The good they crave for society, may be, is possible ; but whoever knows the nature of man knows that it does not consist in the elements they suppose, and whoever knows the ordinary laws of cause and effect knows equally well that it is not attainable by the means they would have us adopt. Let actual living men, men not in the closet, but out in the world, with all their natural dispositions and passions, sympathies and antipathies, hurtling one against another, adopt that theory and attempt to act upon it, and its authors would themselves be among the first to condemn the result.*(footnote: * In confirmation of what is asserted in the text, we may remark that the original movers of all great social or religious revolutions are always found, as the revolution proceeds, seeking to arrest its progress, and to prevent it from going too far. Luther soon found himself obliged to struggle against the legitimate development of the movement he commenced, and we see him during the last years of his life battling with a broken heart against the practical workings of his own theories. The men who made the French Revolution in 1789 nearly all turned their arms against it, sought to arrest its progress, and most of them perished in the attempt. What a sad spectacle does Lafayette present, seeking to persuade his army to leave the frontier, and march upon Paris to suppress the Convention which he himself had helped create! In no instance we have ever read or heard of have the men who have sought, to remodel the Church or the State after their own theories been satisfied with the result of their efforts. They almost always abandon their work in disgust, and, if carried on at all, it is by another generation, who succeed them, and who in their turn are disappointed and disgusted and give or are compelled to give way to another and a madder generation. Calvinism sinks to Socin-lanism, Socinianism to Transcendentalism; constitutional monarchy descends to democracy, democracy to ochlocracy, and ochlocracy yields only to military despotism. (end of footnote)

Nothing of that which they promise themselves would be realized, and all of that which even they most dread would be multiplied a thousand fold.    Men are not mere machines,  and their conduct  is governed  by moral and   not mechanical laws.    They are living, and it is the property of life to suspend the action of many of the natural laws.     We know the action of chemical laws upon the dead body, but these laws are held in  abeyance during life.    Another and a subtler agent is at work, on the laws or modes of whose activity chemistry can throw no light.    These are taught us only by another science, and one of which they who sneer at the scientia divina and study only the scientia humana are and must be ignorant.    Hence they miscalculate their forces, mistake their operation, and consruct in their theories only monuments  to their own rashness and folly.    The explanation of man is not in man himself, but in his Maker alone.    Man attains to a knowledge of himself only in proportion as he attains to knowledge of God.    Ever are we riddles to ourselves, till we find in God the solution.    We must be adequate to the design of a work of art, before we can comprehend the whole design of the artist from the contemplation of the work itself. Man must be equal to the creation of man, before from man himself he  can comprehend  the full meaning of man.    But only he who comprehends the full meaning of man can determine his end, or disclose the means of attaining it.    Hence all those human theories fail of their purpose, and must fail; and for both the knowledge of our end and the means of gaining it, as well as for the ability to will it, and to use the means, we must depend on the bounty of Him who has made us, and alone knows what we are, what is our true good, and how it is to be attained.    If he has not furnished us with  the  means of instruction and of grace, it is idle to seek for the melioration of society ; and if he has, it is worse than idle to seek the end by any other means than those which he furnishes.

But enough of moralizing for the present.   In what we have thus far said, we have aimed merely to show the folly and absurdity of the Professors Michelet and Quinet in attempting to sustain an action against the Jesuits on their theory, and the grave errors in which the attempt involves them. They assume scarcely a position, let the conduct of the Jesuits be what it may, that is tenable. They have nothing solid of their own, no law or authority to urge against any body or any thing. They have theory, speculation, dithyrambics, hate, and prejudice ; but these are of no weight, and will never authorize an accusation. Before we can successfully condemn others, we must have something certain of our own. This is a fact the enemies of the Church forget. They forget that they can no more condemn without law, than we can demand their submission without law ; and that they cannot deny without reason, at random, any more than we can affirm without reason ; because every denial is itself an affirmation. We have, therefore, wished to show that the Professors have no ground on which to attack the Jesuits ; for they have no ground on which to stand themselves.    This we think we have done.

But in doing this we have not done all. We have thus far, if we may so speak, considered only the account which the Professors have given of themselves. There remains to be considered the account they give of the Jesuits. Thus far we have simply demurred to their declaration, and labored to show that they allege no offence, since they allege no law. But in condescension to what we presume to be their wish, we will waive the demurrer, and join issue with them on the facts in the case. We will endeavour to show that the Jesuits of their Lectures, so far as there can be pretended to be any thing exceptionable in their conduct, are mere entia rationis, or creatures of the imagination, and especially will we show that the charges against the Jesuits' system of education are either unfounded, or commendations. But we have no space to do this in our present paper, and must reserve it to a future occasion. The furious attacks made upon the Jesuits, the fear and consternation with which their very name strikes the enemies of God, and the distinguished services they have rendered the cause of truth, piety, science, art, and literature, render the subject interesting and important, and warrant us in devoting very considerable space to the discussion of the questions raised by Messrs. Michelet and Quinet. We are not afraid of drawing too largely upon the attention or patience of our readers ; and it is well to let our unbelieving countrymen know something of the value of the oft-repeated accusations against an order which has done so much for Catholicity, and which has received so many and so signal tokens of the divine approbation and protection. We hope to be able to resume the subject in our next Review.