The New Conspiracy Against the Jesuits Detected and Briefly Exposed Part 6

LETTER IV.

_Ecce iterum Crispinus, et est mihi saepe vocandus_ _In partes._ JUV. Sat. 4.

What! Laicus once more! And is he not then prostrate on the ground, gagged and muzzled beyond the possibility of barking? His ignorance, his falsehoods, his sophistry, have been sufficiently branded; yet, spider-like,

Destroy his slander and his fibs--in vain, The creature's at its dirty work again.

POPE.

Undoubtedly he never deserved, and never would have received even a first answer, if it had not been apparent, that his venal pen was guided and paid by mischief-makers of deeper views: and hence arises the necessity of noticing this fourth effusion, to disable the retailers of {305} his falsehoods from vainly boasting, that slander unanswered is acknowledged truth. I write not to Laicus, but to his prompters, and to his readers, if there be any left.

They may observe, that the imputations in this fourth Letter are two--king-killing continually practised, and immoral doctrines continually taught by Jesuits: and to this is added a short summary of authorities, by which all this trash is upheld. It would be an easy, but now uninteresting task, to disprove these several imputations; and this has long since been victoriously done. It may suffice to know, that they were all advanced by party men, maddened by civil and religious rage: they are registered only in the murky pages of antiquated libels, and they are here reproduced for the dishonest purpose of blackening virtue, which triumphed over them, when they were fresh. Pamphlets of Hugonots, libels of loose catholics, declamations of rival teachers, who apprehended their own humiliation in the success of the Jesuits, _Plaidoyers_, {306} _Requisitoires_, and harangues of _Pasquiers_ and _Harlays_, sworn enemies of the society, _Arrets_ of their courts of parliament, ever intent to curtail the spiritual authority of the church, and to abridge the power of the reigning monarch, in order to advance their own. Such are the men, such the pa.s.sions, which invented accusations of regicide against the Jesuits in France during the horrid confusion of the Hugonotic wars. At the return of public tranquillity, they all sunk into oblivion during the period of one hundred and fifty years, until Jansenism and Deism renewed them, in 1760, and the ensuing years, as a powerful engine to accomplish the utter destruction of their known and common enemies. It is needless to disprove each imputed fact: I will only, for a sample, refute the first, which stands in Laicus's foul calendar. It is the a.s.sertion, that the Jesuit Varade was implicated in the guilt of the a.s.sa.s.sins of Henry IV, Barriere and Chatel. Now Varade was defended and cleared by an advocate, to whom no reply could be made: this was Henry IV himself, who, in his famous answer to the parliamentary president {307} Harlay, vindicated the honour and the innocence of that Jesuit and of all his a.s.sociates, in a strain of eloquence, which Harlay and his coadjutors felt to be irresistible. The royal orator concluded his victorious defence of his friends, by advising all his hearers to forget the past excesses of civil discord, and not to exasperate smothered pa.s.sions, by mutual reproaches, into new crimes. The employers of Laicus would do well to follow this advice.

Though Henry IV was not the model of a perfect king, I have always thought his conduct towards the Jesuits a strong proof, that his return to the religion of his forefathers was sincere. The parliament, which had opposed him, while he headed the Hugonot party, opposed him now from the motives above alleged, and determined to deprive him of the services of the Jesuits, on whom they knew that he greatly depended, for the re-establishment of the catholic religion. They drove the Jesuits from France with every mark of ignominy, before Henry was strong enough to support them. When {308} his power was consolidated, he restored them to their country, and he chose one of them for his preacher, confessor, and bosom friend. This was the celebrated father Cotton, whom Laicus impudently names in his list of Jesuit regicides. In such rage of faction, it is no wonder that the parliament erected a pillar to the infamy of the persecuted Jesuits. It was not quite so tall as the British monument, which still attests to the heavens, in the words of the lord mayor, Patience Ward, that the city of London was burnt by the malice of the catholics, in 1666. The difference is, that in calmer times the Gallic column, with all the calumnies of Harlay, was erased, but Patience Ward, who had been put into the pillory for perjury, still lies uncontradicted[113]. To the article of regicides I add, that {309} the attempt on the life of Louis XV, in 1757, was not imputed to Jesuits, either by parliaments, or by Jansenists. The calumny in the fourth Letter is, I imagine, the undisputed property of Laicus or his prompters[114].

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On the second head of accusation--immoral doctrine--I wish to be short. The purity of the Jesuits' doctrine and morals was solemnly attested by the most qualified judges, a special a.s.sembly of fifty cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, of the Gallic church, convened by Louis XV; and their report was confirmed by many other prelates, who were not deputed to that a.s.sembly. A stronger proof of their innocence was the absolute inability of their enemies to convict a single Jesuit of four thousand, who were spread through France, of any immoral principle, doctrine, or practice. The parliament still pursued their beaten track. _Il faut denigrer les Jesuites_ was their maxim. Envy, with her hundred jaundiced eyes, was every where on the watch to discover a flaw. Malice, with her hundred envenomed tongues, stood ready to echo it through the globe. Fruitless industry!

{311} The poor parliament was reduced to spare the living Jesuits, not from any regard for truth, but because they knew, that their calumnies would not be believed. They therefore impeached the doctrine and morals of all deceased Jesuits, who had existed during two hundred years, and they intrusted the delicious task of blackening the dead to the impure pens of Jansenists, headed princ.i.p.ally by Dom. Clemencet. From this man's foul laboratory proceeded the _Extraits des a.s.sertions_, a monstrous compilation of forged and falsified texts, purporting to contain the uniform doctrine, taught invariably at all times by the whole society of Jesus, and to exhibit a fair picture of their morals. The parliament sanctioned, and addressed this abominable book to every bishop, and to every college in France. Every bishop in France felt himself and religion insulted by it; and almost every bishop condemned and forbade it to be kept or read. The celebrated archbishop of Paris, De Beaumont, in particular, demonstrated the forgeries and artful falsifications, which it contained, and it was moreover solidly refuted by _La Reponse aux_ {312} _a.s.sertions_. This laboured piece of Jansenistical malice seems to be unknown to Laicus and his a.s.sociates, though he has copied and cited several of the vile libels, which were industriously circulated, to convey the indecent impurities of the book _Des a.s.sertions_ to every corner of France. In this point the shameless Laicus has faithfully imitated his models, or rather he has confined himself to one, whom he calls Coudrette; and, with his usual effrontery, he turns this obscure man into a repentant Jesuit, acknowledging and expiating his crimes by an unreserved confession of their foulness. His magic pen has already changed into Jesuits three such perfect _disparates_, as Louis XIV, the miserable Jacques Clement, and the weak English archpriest Blackwell. It has, upon motives equally invidious, transformed to Jesuits two churchmen of the first rate merit, the cardinals Allen and Barberini, because these two prelates were, at different periods, concerned in the religious affairs of England, and were thereby obnoxious to the then prevailing sects, though neither of them had any other connexion with Jesuits, than the {313} intercourse of friends.h.i.+p and esteem. But Coudrette a Jesuit! How can this be credited? New personages in comedies are introduced to excite new interest; and was Coudrette ever before named in this island? Indeed his name is so very obscure, that it is difficult to find, even a Frenchman, who ever heard it. It has however obtained a small niche in two French historical dictionaries, the first of which, _par une societe des gens-de-lettres_, though friendly to the Jansenists, styles Coudrette _un ennemi acharne des Jesuits_. The other, by the well known abbe Feller, a man of very general information, a.s.serts, that Coudrette had been from his youth, _de tres bonne heure_, a violent partisan of Jansenism, closely connected with the abbe Boursier, one of the heroes of the sect. In 1735 and 1738, during the ministry of cardinal de Fleury, he was confined by a _lettre de cachet_ first at Vincennes, then in the Bastille, for his intrigues, cabals, and libels against the church; and of course he was canonized as a saint in the _Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques_, the well known {314} Jansenistical gazette. When the parliaments denounced open war against the Jesuits, he came forward a volunteer in the cause, and printed his _Histoire general des Jesuites_ in the course of 1761: but Coudrette and his history were perfectly forgotten in France before 1762.

How could a copy of it have escaped into England? It has found its proper repository on the shelves of Laicus, or his employer[115].

I have done with Laicus and his authorities. He promises a commentary upon his own performance. It has not, I believe, yet appeared, {315} even in the Times. Mine shall be very short.

Though I have proved Laicus and his a.s.sociates to be unprincipled impostors, I have said nothing of them and their a.s.sertions, but what every man of virtue and information knows to be true. Every prince, every observer knows, that the overthrow of the society of Jesus was the first link in the concatenation of causes, which produced the late horrible successes of rebellion and infidelity. They all know, that the Jesuits, when their body was intire, were among the most active supporters of religion, learning, good order, and subordination to established powers, though, perhaps, professing religious creeds different from their own.

Above all, they know, that Jesuits were every where _staunch and steady friends of monarchy_. Who then will wonder, that the renowned Catherine of Russia protected them in their greatest distress, unbendingly maintaining the full integrity of their inst.i.tute, even in the smallest points? Who will be {316} surprised, that the heroic Alexander continues to distinguish them by fresh favours? Who will cavil at Pius VII, in this new dawn of public tranquillity, for his endeavours to recover their services? Who will blame other princes for imitating his example? Possibly the good pontiff may conceive himself more bound than other princes, to make some compensation to the few remaining Jesuits, because he was a witness of the aggravated cruelties inflicted upon them and their superiors, at the time of the suppression by his predecessor Clement XIV. But the motives and the conduct of these princes present matter too ample to be treated at present by

CLERICUS.

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LETTER V.

_Servetur ad imum_ _Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet._ HORACE.

SIR;

I might spare myself the trouble of answering your fifth, concluding Letter, because I believe it will be read by few, and credited by none. You seem afraid of being called an alarmist. Good Sir, be easy. No man of common information, or of common sense, will catch the alarm of danger from your pretended conclusions. Your impotent cries of danger to church and state are like the cries of a madman, who should scream out "Fire, Fire,"

in the midst of a deluge[116]. Thus, even if your {318} pretended conclusions descended in a right order of logic from your premises, the slightest view of the present state of things would convince every thinking man of the inutility of taking precautions, where no danger can possibly exist. But what must every thinking man conclude, when he knows, that your miserable inferences descend from a ma.s.s of forgeries, calumnies, imputations equally groundless and malicious; when he traces them up to a string of gratuitous suppositions, wantonly a.s.sumed and totally devoid of proof? If he has looked into my four Letters, he has recoiled with disgust from that sink of ribaldry, inconsistency, contradiction, and falsehood, which provoked them; and he has said, that though Clericus has swept away only a part of the dirt, which you have collected, he has sufficiently showed, that the rest, which he has left untouched, is equally odious and noisome. In fact, upon a slight review of your audacious criminations, I cannot discover even one, which is supported by truth; no, not one, which I would not undertake to brand with the stigma of falsehood. {319}

And what then can engage me to meddle with your final observations and inferences? Certainly not the apprehension, that men of sense and knowledge will ever acquiesce in them; but because they are all intended to feed some of the worst pa.s.sions, that canker the human heart, to gratify disappointed anger, fretful jealousy, and revengeful spite. That these sour pa.s.sions are apt to rankle in narrow hearts is not a novelty. I have caught them, in late years, venting themselves against your enemies the Jesuits, through newspapers and other prints, in tales nearly as absurd and fict.i.tious, as was the alarming story in the reign of Charles II, of thirty thousand pilgrims and lay brothers, embodied at St. Andero, ready to invade old England under the conduct of the general of the Jesuits. Now your monstrous stories coming upon the back of these fables, must lead every man of sense to conclude, that not the consideration of public security, but the accomplishment of some private view must have prompted this wantonness of slander. But {320} supposing for an instant, that all and each of your random accusations of ancient Jesuits were as true, as all and each are undeniably false; allowing that your columns in the Times could arrest a reader, unacquainted with continental history, in a state of hesitation and doubt; yet he must at least say: "These bad men, like the ancient giants, have been exterminated, they have long since disappeared, we have survived their criminal practices, why is the alarm bell sounded in the present times?"--"But," cries Laicus, "there once was a body of English Jesuits, and, during the whole term of their existence, 'our fathers spent restless nights and uneasy days. Dr. Sherlocke, living under dread of popery and arbitrary power, could enjoy no repose, when every morning threatened to usher in the last dawn of England's liberty.' I trust this quotation will not be without its use[117]." "Yes, these English Jesuits laid upon us '_a yoke, which was too heavy for {321} our fathers to bear_,' and the pope is again trying to fasten it upon our shoulders." &c.[118]

I allow it, Sir; there formerly existed a body of English Jesuits. It was violently crushed and annihilated more than forty years ago. I look in vain for the yoke, which they imposed upon our fathers: I have read something of the yoke, which they themselves bore. It is described in letters of blood, in the penal statutes of Elizabeth and the first James. During a full century, half the gibbets of England witnessed the unrelenting severity of persecution, which these injured men quietly and meekly endured. They were a body of catholic priests, always esteemed and cherished by English catholics; and, at every period of their existence, they counted in their society many members of the best and most ancient families among the British gentry. They risked their lives by treading on their native soil.

They devoted themselves to {322} administer the comforts of religion in secret to their suffering brethren; and they then slunk back to their hiding holes in the hollows of walls and roofs of houses. They never possessed a single house, school, or chapel, in which they could recommend themselves to their countrymen, by the peaceable functions of their profession: they were never otherwise known to the British public than when, surprised by priest-catchers, they were dragged to jail, and from jail to the gallows. Thus lived the Jesuits, in this their free country, from the twenty-second year of Elizabeth to the thirtieth of Charles II.

This is all the progress that they made, in a full century, towards _their own aggrandizement_, which, says Laicus, "is the main object of all their labours[119]."

When the scene of blood was finally closed, in 1680, by the execution of eight innocent Jesuits in one year, not to mention a dozen {323} others, who died in jail, many of them under sentence of death, the Jesuits still remained an inoffensive body of catholic missionary priests. Their object was to a.s.sist their catholic brethren; and, having obtained some foundations from the liberality of foreign potentates, they applied themselves to give to the expatriated youth of their own country the education, which the partiality of the laws denied them at home. In these pacific occupations they persevered, without experiencing any jealousy on the part of government, even during the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745; because, since the accession of the House of Brunswick, it has been a principle with our monarchs never to persecute any man for conscience, never to hara.s.s inoffensive subjects.

At the present day, that royal principle, with all its consequences, and they extend far, is widely diffused throughout the empire. Every man in it acknowledges the impossibility of converting the millions of his majesty's catholic subjects to any other a.s.signable mode of faith; {324} and every thinking man must feel the importance and, at the present day, the necessity, of attaching these millions to the common cause of the empire, and to the cordial support of one common government. Sound policy will always forbear to sour and to fret subjects, by jealous suspicions and invidious distinctions. It will always incline wise rulers of states to provide, for their subjects, ministers of religion, who are firmly attached to their government, and who may feel that they have nothing to fear from it, while they do not provoke its sword. Such was the conduct of continental governments in past times; and they everywhere judged it prudent to intrust, in a great measure, the national education of their youth to the active order of Jesuits, who, at the same time, were preachers, and catechists, and confessors, and visitors of hospitals and prisons; and who always had in reserve a surplus of apostles, armed with a cross and a breviary, ready to fly to every point of the heavens, to the extremities of the globe, to create in the wilds of America and Asia new {325} empires for the G.o.d of the Gospel, new nations of subjects for France, Portugal, and Spain. The political services rendered by Jesuits to those crowns have often been acknowledged; yet, alas! how have they been requited? When the venerable missioners of the society of Jesuits were dragooned out of Portuguese and Spanish America, the loss of millions of Indians, whom they had civilized, nay, the loss of the territorial possession was loudly predicted to those misguided courts. The first part of the prediction has long since been fulfilled. All the power of France, Spain, and Portugal, could not replace the old tried missioners of Canada, California, Cinaloa, Mexico, Maragnon, Peru, Chili, and Paraguay. The Jesuits were destroyed; the civilized natives, deprived of their protectors, disbanded, and relapsed into barbarism.

Equally impotent and unavailing was all the mighty power of France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria to fill the void, left by the discarded Jesuits, in the quiet ministry of schools at home. {326} Cast a retrospect on the former state of Europe. There were, in all considerable towns, colleges of Jesuits, now, alas! struck to ruins, in which gratuitous education was given. They were temples, in which the language of religion hallowed the language of the Muses. They were seminaries where future senators, magistrates and officers, prelates, priests, and cen.o.bites, &c., received their first, that is, the most important part of education. Not even an attempt was made to supply the room of the ejected instructors, excepting, perhaps, for form sake, in a few great cities; and here what a woful subst.i.tution! The Jesuits of Clermont college, in Paris, had, for two hundred years, quietly instructed and trained the flower of the French n.o.bility, to religion, patriotism, and letters. Within a few years after the expulsion of the old masters, Clermont college vomited forth, from its precincts into France, Robespierre, and Camille des Moulins, and Tallien, and Noel, and Freron, and Chenier des Bois, and Porion, and De Pin, and other {327} sanguinary demagogues of that execrable period; names of monsters, now consigned to everlasting infamy. The game was, indeed, by this time, carried rather farther than the Pombals, the Choiseuls, the Arandas, and others, who had planned the ruin of the Jesuits, had either designed or foreseen; but the mound was thrown down, and how could the torrent be withstood?

What thinking man shall now wonder, that the much tried pontiff, Pius VII, having, during his captivity, seriously pondered the connexion of causes and effects, should wish to retrieve the ancient order of things, should even hasten to second the wishes and requests of his fellow sufferers--I mean the surviving princes and prelates, who so sorely rue the mistakes of their immediate predecessors? It is very remarkable, that the false policy of these latter was first discerned and publicly disapproved by two acute sovereigns, who were not of the Roman communion, the magnanimous Catherine of {328} Russia, and the far famed Frederic III, of Prussia. These sovereigns were not ignorant of the various artifices, which had distorted the good sense of the catholic princes. They knew how to elude and disappoint them, when they were practised upon themselves. The empress Catherine especially, in despite of Rome, Versailles, Lisbon, and Madrid, maintained, with a resolute and strong hand, the several houses of Jesuits, which she found in her new Polish dominions; she would not suffer even the smallest alteration to be made, in any of their statutes or practices. Her two successors have settled them in their capital, and in other parts of their empire; and at this day, the glorious Alexander, far from mistrusting those fathers, openly cherishes and favours them, at once as blameless ministers of the catholic religion, and as trusty servants of government, earnestly labouring to endear the new sceptre of the czars to the catholic Poles, lately united to their empire[120].

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Most undoubtedly, next to the purity of religion, the best and dearest interest of the Jesuits always was, and always must be, public tranquillity, order, and subordination of ranks. In tumults and confusion, they must unavoidably be sacrificed. To favour the daring projects of civil and religious innovators, their body was devoted to destruction; and the extinction of it was presently followed by the universal uproar of the Gallic revolution. Hence their name is odious to Buonaparte. In his progress through Germany, he drove them from Ausburg, and Friburg, and other towns, where the magistrates and inhabitants had succeeded to preserve a small remnant of their body, though without hope of perpetuating it by succession. In 1805 the court of Naples, convinced of its past error, reinstated the Jesuits, to the universal joy of the capital; and immediately Napoleon seized {330} the kingdom, and dismissed them. Other princes have equally regretted the rash deed of their destruction. Even the emperor Joseph II once a.s.sured me in private conversation, that he much lamented the suppression of the order of the Jesuits. He repeatedly said, that, in his mother's time, in which it was accomplished, he was never consulted upon the measure, and that he would never have acceded to it.

Our country has happily escaped the horrors of modern revolution; but our country has had its alarms. To prevent the recurrence of them, it must surely be sound policy to trust, favour, and protect all those persons, who, from a motive of self-preservation, as well as of duty, will always employ their influence among the lower orders of society, to maintain peace and tranquillity in the several religious cla.s.ses, which form the bulk of the people, however denominated. With regard to the numerous body of catholics, this line of conduct has been uniformly pursued by their Irish bishops, by the {331} English apostolic vicars, and by all the missionary priests, Jesuits, and other regulars, who have appeared among us: and, I add, in finis.h.i.+ng, that, in this respect, they would all be co-operators and steady allies of the bishops and clergy of the establishment, who can have no greater interest, at the present day, than to preserve general tranquillity. Protestant and catholic prelates, with their respective dependants, all equally professing zeal for purity of doctrine, though differing in their tenets, would thus be friends _usque ad aras_, and general peace would be the precious fruits of their agreement. Thus we have often seen catholic and protestant legions, Austrians and British, arrayed under the same banners, and successfully pursuing their warfare against a common enemy. This matter is susceptible of extension, but Laicus would not understand it. I finish this Letter, as I ended the first, seriously advising him to meddle no more with this subject.

CLERICUS.

APPENDIX;

CONTAINING

THE BULL OF CLEMENT XIII,

AND THE

JUDGMENT OF THE BISHOPS OF FRANCE,

IN FAVOUR OF THE JESUITS.

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APPENDIX.

No. I.

_Sanctissimi in Christo Patris et Domini nostri Domini Clementis Divina Providentia Papae XIII, Const.i.tutio qua inst.i.tutum Societatis Jesu denuo approbatur._

CLEMENS EPISCOPUS SERVUS SERVORUM DEI, AD PERPETUAM REI MEMORIAM.

Apostolic.u.m pascendi Dominici Gregis munus beatissimo apostolo Petro, ejusque successori Romano pontifici delatum a Christo Domino, nulla locorum, nulla temporum conditio, nullus humanarum rerum respectus, nulla denique ratio circ.u.mscribere, aut suspendere potest, quominus idem Roma.n.u.s pontifex ad omnes ejusdem officii partes, nulla ex iis praetermissa, nulla neglecta, curas suas dirigere debeat, atque omnibus incurrentibus in ecclesia necessitatibus providere. Harum partium inter praecipuas, postrema non est regularium ordinum approbatorum ab apostolica sede tutelam genere, ac fortibus piisque viris, qui eisdem regularibus ordinibus sese solemni sacramento addixerunt, suamque pro tuenda, atque {336} amplificanda catholica religione, agroque dominico excolendo, strenuam operam impendunt, alacritatem addere et animum, languidos et infirmos excitare, et corroborare, jacentibus afflictisque consolationem afferre, praecipue ver ab ecclesia fidei suae et custodiae concredita, omnia, quae in animarum ruinam in dies suboriuntur, scandala summovere.

Inst.i.tutum societatis Jesu ab homine conditum, cui ab universali ecclesia idem, qui sanctis viris cultus et honor tribuitur, a fel. record.

praedecessoribus nostris Paulo III et Julio itidem III, Paulo IV, Gregorio XIII, et Gregorio XIV, Paulo V, diligenti examine perpensum, approbatum, saepius confirmatum, et ab iisdem pluribusque aliis ad novemdecim praedecessoribus nostris ornatum peculiaribus favoribus et gratiis; episcoporum, non mod hujus, sed superiorum etiam aetatum praeconio commendatum, ut maxime frugiferum, et fructuosum, et ad promovendum Dei cultum, honorem, et gloriam, aeternamque animarum salutem procurandam aptissimum; potentissimorum, piissimorumque regum, et clarissimorum in Christiana republica principum praesidio, et tutela usque munitum; cujus ex disciplina novum prodiere viri in sanctorum, vel beatorum numerum relati, quorum tres martyrii gloriam sunt consequuti; a pluribus sanct.i.tate claris viris, quos beatos in coelo novimus sempiterna perfrui gloria, collaudatum; quod ecclesia universa longo duorum saeculorum spatio in suo sinu aluit et fovit, ejusque professoribus praecipuam sacri ministerii partem semper commisit magno c.u.m emolumento animarum; quod ipsa denique catholica ecclesia in Tridentina synodo declaravit ut pium; hoc idem inst.i.tutum novissime fuerunt, qui per pravas interpretationes, tum privatis {337} sermonibus, tum scriptis etiam typis in lucem editis irreligiosum, et impium appellare, contumeliis lacerare, probo et ignominia afficere non sunt veriti, atque e devenerunt, ut privata sua non contenti opinione, hujusmodi virus de regione in regionem, nullis non adhibitis artibus, derivare, atque undequaque diffundere sint aggressi, neque adhuc cessant, incautis, si quos inveniant, Christi fidelibus, ut in proprios pertrahant sensus, subdole propinare: quo in ecclesiam Dei nihil injurium magis, nihil contumeliosius, quasi adeo erraverit turpiter, ut, quod impium, et irreligiosum est, solemniter existimaverit Deo carum et pium, eque decepta sit flagitiosius, quo diuturnius, ad annos scilicet amplius ducentos, c.u.m maximo animarum detrimento, sinui suo tantam haerere labem, et maculam sustinuerit. Huic tanto malo, quod eo longius dissimulatum, tanto altius radices agit, viresque acquirit in dies, diutius differre remedium, just.i.tia, quae sua cuique a.s.serere et fort.i.ter tueri jubet, et pastoralis nostra erga ecclesiam sollicitudo non sinit.

Ut igitur tam gravem injuriam a sponsa ecclesia divinitus n.o.bis concredita, atque etiam ab hac apostolica sede propulsemus, et hujusmodi injustas, irreligiosasque voces in animarum perniciem, et seductionem, et contra omnes aequi, bonique rationes longe lateque diffusas, nostra authoritate apostolica compescamus; ut clericis regularibus societatis Jesu, id a n.o.bis pro just.i.tia exigentibus, suus maneat status, eadem nostra authoritate firmius constabilitus; eorumque nunc temporis summe afflictis rebus aliquod afferamus levamen: ut demum venerabilium fratrum nostrorum episcoporum, qui ex omnibus regionibus catholicis eandem societatem n.o.bis per litteras {338} magnopere commendarunt, et ex ea maximas utilitates in suis quisque dioecesibus se capere profitentur, justis desideriis obsecundemus; motu proprio, et ex certa scientia, deque apostolicae potestatis plenitudine, omnium praedecessorum nostrorum inhaerendo vestigiis, hac nostra perpetu valitura const.i.tutione, eodem modo, ratione et forma, quibus ipsi edixerunt, et declararunt, nos quoque edicimus, et declaramus; inst.i.tutum societatis Jesu summopere redolere pietatem et sanct.i.tatem, tum ob praecipuum finem, quo maxime spectat, defensionem scilicet, propagationemque catholicae religionis, tum ob media, quae adhibet ad ejusmodi finem consequendum, quod vel ipsa nos hactenus docuit experientia; c.u.m ex eadem disciplina tam multos ad hanc usque aetatem prodiisse novimus orthodoxae fidei propugnatores, sacrosque praecones, qui invicto animi robore terra marique subiere pericula, ut ad gentes inmanitate barbaras evangelicae doctrinae lumen afferrent, et quotquot idem profitentur laudabile inst.i.tutum, partim intentos juventuti religione et bonis artibus erudiendae, partim operam dare spiritualibus exercitiis tradendis, partim a.s.sidue versari in sacramentis praecipue poenitentiae et eucharistiae administrandis et ad eorum frequentiorem usum fidelibus excitandis; tum homines in agris degentes divini verbi pabulo recreare; ac propterea idem inst.i.tutum societatis Jesu ad haec eximia perpetranda, divina providentia, excitatum, ipsi quoque approbamus, et praedecessorum nostrorum approbationes ejusdem inst.i.tuti apostolica auctoritate nostra confirmamus: vota, quibus iidem clerici regulares societatis Jesu juxta idem eorum inst.i.tutum se devovent Deo, grata illi et accepta esse declaramus: spiritualia exercitia, {339} quae ab iisdem clericis regularibus traduntur fidelibus a mundi strepitu semotis per dies aliquot, ut de aeterna fui ipsorum salute seri et unice cogitent, ut maxime conducibilia ad reformandos mores, et ad Christianam pietatem hauriendam nutriendamque, magnopere probamus, et laudamus: congregationes praeterea, seu sodalitia, non modo adolescentium, qui ad scholas vent.i.tant societatis Jesu, sed quaevis alia, sive scholarium tantum, sive aliorum Christi fidelium tantum, sive utrorumque simul sub invocatione beatae Mariae, seu quovis alio t.i.tulo erecta, et quae in iis pia opera ferventi studio exercentur, probamus, praecipuamque erga beatam Dei Genitricem semper Virginem Mariam devotionem, quae in iis sodalitiis alitur, et promovetur, magnopere commendamus, nostrorumque fel. record.

praedecessorum Gregorii XIII, Sixti V, Gregorii XV, et Benedicti XIV const.i.tutiones, quibus ea sodalitia approbarunt, nos apostolica auctoritate nostra confirmamus, caeterasque omnes const.i.tutiones a Romanis pontificibus praedecessoribus nostris in ejusdem inst.i.tuti societatis Jesu functionum approbationem, et laudem conditas, quarum singulas hic haberi volumus pro insertis, auctoritate itidem n.o.bis a Deo tradita, apostolicae confirmationis nostrae robore, per hanc nostram const.i.tutionem, munitas volumus, et si opus sit, velut a n.o.bis ex integro conditas, editasque censeri praecipimus, et mandamus.