THE STATE OF CHRISTENDOM ON THE EVE OF THE RISE OF THE SOCIETY.
TO tell the story of the Jesuits is indeed to tell facts more wonderful than fiction! And it is a story that not only bears re-telling for its weird, absorbing interest, but because it is one which, in view of the unwearied activities to this present day of its principal actors, touches our lives as English men and women much more closely than many of us are aware.
It is well that most people should shrink instinctively at the name of Jesuit. Almost everyone has learnt to regard that Society with suspicion which has earned a disgraceful celebrity as a “cunning fraternity of knaves.” But it is not well that so many otherwise intelligent Protestants should be content to be unable to give a more intellectual account for their dislike to Ignatius Loyola’s followers than that contained in the rhyme―
“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell!
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this, alack! I know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell!”
Yet when we know that the Jesuits were expelled from England in 1604, from Venice in 1606, from France in 1764, from Spain in 1767, from Naples in 1768, and so on repeatedly to the present time, and that England has blindly opened her arms to them again, is it not time for us all to know why “the Jesuit fathers” are more dangerous than any other monks? Do we not want to learn the secret of their extraordinary influence? And shall we not ask how it is that their name is associated in history with deceit and intrigue?
For today in England the Jesuit is our next-door neighbor. Concealed under names which the mild “charitable” Protestant of the nineteenth century fails to recognize, he perhaps becomes unconsciously his staunchest ally. The Sisters of the “Sacred Heart” open a convent school in our neighborhood, choosing the prettiest, most secluded, yet healthiest site, no matter at what cost. They advertise with prospectuses bearing no hint that the young ladies’ college, just opened “with every advantage,” is a religious institution. When we hesitate at the nun’s veiling in which the “Sister” principal is attired when we interview her, we are assured that our child’s religion shall in no way be tampered with. And we believe it until, perhaps, the very day when our daughter has finished her “inexpensive” and “liberal” education, and takes the veil! Then upon our dull minds there bursts the terrible conviction that the Sisters are Jesuits in disguise. It is all too late! We had never realized, because we never knew before, that one of the chief occupations of the Jesuit is to make converts. We refused till then to believe that the Jesuit Father or Sister is prepared, if necessary, to resort to the most culpable acts to bring about conversion; that while the Dominican, the Franciscan, the Benedictine monk accomplishes little in the way of proselytism, it is the Jesuit in disguise who earns the gratitude of Rome for his ceaseless, cautious, and successful endeavors to bring our Protestant children into the bosom of “Holy Mother Church.”
To tell the story of the Jesuits is to tell the story of their founder. And if we are to paint Loyola’s portrait successfully we must focus him not only in his immediate surroundings, but secure as a background an outline of the times in which he lived, or, in other words, Christendom on the eve of the rise of his great Society. “He has not seen tenderness who has not seen the sun rise,” wrote one of our greatest authors. But he who would see the never-to-be-forgotten sight knows that he must first encounter the darkness that precedes it, He must step out into the midnight. And we who rejoice in the full sunshine of gospel privilege that floods Christendom as it is, will find it a fascinating experience to transport ourselves in imagination to Christendom as it was before the Reformation sunrise. The difference is as great as that between twelve o’clock at noon and twelve o’clock at night.
But we may well ask with surprise, How did such darkness come over the people of this and other lands? How was it that gloom overtook a world to which had been given “the brightness of the Father’s glory” in the person of CHRIST, in order to disperse the night of sin forever? Christendom in midnight! The idea ought to have been an impossible one! Ah, it was not that the great Sun of Righteousness had ever set, but that the clouds and fogs and mist of human sin had arisen, and men were stumbling in the darkness of their own superstitions.
For the first three hundred years after the ascension of our Lord, Christianity, in its pure and simple form, spread quickly on every side.
The Scriptures were translated into very many languages. Gospel preachers were true and earnest missionaries, ready to seal their testimony with their lives. Stakes and massacres could not prevent the triumph of the truth; the blood of the martyrs proved the seed of the Church. The breath of pagan persecution, so far from blowing out the flame, increased its strength and light and heat.
But presently a new order of things set in. Imperial favor was shown to the struggling disciples of the hitherto despised doctrine, and from that moment faith became feeble and its purity was dimmed. Ministers of Christ were tempted to add temporal authority to their only commission to “feed the flock of God.” They were asked to judge cases of dispute between members of the Church, and the request seemed innocent and reasonable at first sight. But it quickly led to the neglect of their sacred duties. Their word began to take the place of God’s Word. The Bible was gradually hidden from the people. What wonder that confusion and darkness set in!
Henceforward, instead of a brotherhood, the ministers of Christ were to be distinguished by splendor of rank, varying in degree from the dignity of Patriarch to that of presbyter. The Christian world was divided into four dioceses, over each of which a Patriarch presided, governing the whole of the clergy, who now formed a distinct and exalted class of men. Such an arrangement, as might be supposed, led to strife as to who should be greatest; and while the shepherds quarreled among themselves the sheep were unfed. The Bishop of Rome, at last taking to himself chief authority, began to demand obedience from all. This was in the fifth century. The clergy expended their time and strength on rites and ceremonies borrowed from the pagans, and when they mounted their pulpits it was to dispense fable instead of truth.
By the time the sixth century arrived the inward power of religion was well-nigh lost. The Church’s morning had changed to twilight. Many a preacher had never seen the Scriptures in his life, and even an Archbishop, finding by chance a Bible, exclaimed, “Of a truth I do not know what book this is, but I perceive that everything in it is against us.”
A ball, once set rolling downhill, quickens its descent by its own weight. The decline of the Church from its first simplicity was very rapid. Lamps were lighted at the martyrs’ tombs, and the Lord’s Supper partaken of beside their graves. It was but a step further to offer prayers to them as well as for them, and, further, to represent them and other saints by images and pictures in the churches. Then, baptism must be made a more impressive ceremony by white robes and chrism, milk, honey, and salt. Soon a crowd of church officers sprang up, to be known by the unscriptural titles of “sub-deacons,” “acolytes,” “exorcists,” “readers,” and “choristers,” etc. Curious machinery and costly furniture were needed in order to keep the staff of motley workers employed. The Church had “golden chalices” and “wooden priests” to keep its artificial life within it, as the sceptic sneered.
And so the light waned. They forgot the truth that Christ, once offered to bear the sins of many, had opened the way “into the Holiest of all,” and that there remained “no more offering for sin.” Instead of worship they sought to offer “sacrifice,” and, because they had thus turned the Lord’s Table into an altar, they henceforward considered their ministers “priests.” The Word of God was fettered, hidden, and forgotten. What could stay the inroads of error?
It is easy now to understand how things grew from bad to worse in Christendom. The Bishop of Rome knew no limit to his ambition, and, as time went on, became more exacting in his claims, until the day arrived when, having made himself not only Bishop of bishops, Head of the Church, and―oh ! the blasphemy of it!― “His Holiness the Vicar of Christ,” he claimed also temporal power. As a crowned monarch, “the Pope’s name should be the chief name in the world: it must be lawful for him to depose emperors; his decision was to be withstood by none, but he alone might make void those of all men, while he could be judged by no one.”
The mitre and the royal crown came to war. For two hundred years the Popes carried on the conflict, drenching many an acre with blood and causing infinite confusion and misery, until at last the Papal power conquered. Rome, the terror of the world, became its mistress, and kings were her servants and all peoples her slaves. Pope Innocent III., in 606, exclaimed with awful arrogance, “I enjoy alone the plenitude of power that others may say of me, next to God, and out of his fulness have we received.” And, in 1303, Boniface VIII. Impiously “declares, defines, pronounces it to be necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
In this later period thick darkness had engulfed Christendom. It lay in the midnight shadow of a supreme tyrannical power achieved by battle, bloodshed, and error. Yet the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep.
The Waldensians and Albigenses (perhaps the oldest body of Protesters against submission to Rome), since they crossed the Alps in 1100, had preserved the Word of God in their valleys. The Church of the Alps was the first to possess a translation of the whole of the New Testament in its own―the Romaunt―tongue, the language of the troubadours of the Dark Ages. In the seclusion of their lonely valleys these mountaineers worshipped God in simplicity, and transcribed laboriously the divine Word. Each manuscript was worth its weight in gold for the time spent upon it. Every copy served hundreds of readers, for, as yet, in the thirteenth century, no printing press had been invented. Quietly the Bible stole its way out of the Swiss valleys into men’s hands and hearts, and with it came the first faint streak of dawn. Men’s consciences awoke. Men’s souls were quickened by the breath of God.
In vain the Pope sent St. Dominic and his band of monks, two and two, to search out heretics, and set a mark on those who were to be burned at the first opportunity. Fruitlessly did he call upon his army to fight these “accursed of God,” with the promise of pardon for their sins as the reward of victory. Although sixty thousand in one Albigensian city perished by fire and sword at the command of the Pontiff, so that not a house or human being remained when the carnage was over; although there were ghastly heaps of dead who had expired under the excruciating tortures of the Inquisition, until it seemed that the true Christian faith itself was well-nigh exterminated, yet the Word of God still lived. It was handed down through the flames, from stake to stake; and we owe, under God, its preservation to those who still persisted in carrying it secretly over Christendom, singing it as troubadours, preaching it as missionaries, living it as Christians.
In the year 1324, in an obscure Yorkshire village, a child was born who was destined to become a leader amongst men in our own country, over which hung the same pall of Romish error as enveloped other lands. John de Wiclif, while yet an Oxford student, began to protest against the evil lives of the Mendicant Friars. The old monasteries by this time had fallen into a corrupt state, more sinful than the world which their inmates had forsaken. The descriptions Roman Catholic writers give of these establishments, which may at one time have sheltered piety and preserved art, are too awful for repetition. Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who, we must suppose, would speak as leniently as possible of his fraternity, in the twelfth century said: “Our brethren despise God, and, having passed all shame, eat flesh now all the days of the week except Friday. They run here and there, and, as kites and vultures, fly with great swiftness where the most smoke of the kitchen is, and where they smell the best roast and boiled.” And St. Bernard, writing at the same period, confesses: “I can never enough admire (wonder at) how so great a licentiousness of meals, habits, beds, equipages and horses can get in and be established, as it were, among monks. . . . And all this,” he exclaims, “in the name of charity, because consumed by men who had taken a vow of poverty, and must needs, therefore, be denominated the poor!”
The notorious profligacy, pride, wealth, and indolence of the monks had become the scandal of the Church of Rome. New fraternities were called into existence by the Pope, at his wits’ end to remedy the evil. The Franciscan and Dominican preaching friars, who lived on alms, and literally were beggars, quickly won a reputation for sanctity by their humble garb (a coarse woollen cloth, girded with a cord tied in three knots) and frugal diet, and then as speedily lost it by their abuse of the gold which flowed into their hands as stewards of their order. Soon they exceeded the older orders in idleness, insolence and evil living. Their influence blighted everything that was good and fair.
These were the men whom Wiclif, in the year 1360, stood up to oppose. The Mendicants were going through England selling to men the pardons of the Pope! This brought
Wiclif, Master of Balliol College in the University of Oxford, to a close examination of the Word of God as to the forgiveness of sins; and then, fully convinced of the “rude blasphemy” of that which was taking place, he boldly asserted: “There cometh no pardon but from God. I confess that the indulgences of the Pope are a manifest blasphemy.” It required a courage that can scarcely be reckoned at its true value in these days of liberty to scatter writings abroad that conveyed such a censure on the Papacy. But the reformer stood to the controversy against those who could scarcely forbear to take his life. But he was immortal until his work was done. The crown of his labors was the translation of the Bible for the first time into the English tongue! There were already copies of the Word of God in England, but the common people of ordinary education were quite unable to read the Latin language in which they were written. No one in England had thought of such a thing before. In his quiet Rectory of Lutterworth, Wiclif sat down to his sublime task, and in four years completed it. “The message of heaven was now in the speech of England.” The reformer had given to his country the greatest boon it could receive―the English Bible!