Secret Oath of the Jesuits, and their Secret Instructions; THE JESUITS. CHAPTER I. POPERY, THE REFORMATION, AND THE JESUITS. THE sixteenth century is famous as the epoch of one of the most glorious moral revolutions that ever took place in our world. Next in grandeur and importance to the first establishment of Christianity, is its deliverance from the thraldom of corruptions, under which it had groaned for ages. Those who would depreciate it may be ranged under two classes. First, the infidel and the openly irreligious and profane; who, seeing in the glorious Reformation the revival of pure and undefiled religion-of real, not of mock Christianity,-affect to despise and revile that which bears so manifestly a divine impress, and which they have not the grace to admire and adopt for their own. Secondly, those who, under the mask of reli B gion, and the grimace of affected piety, are the sincere friends of civil and ecclesiastical despotism; and who, hating the progress of light and truth, would, if they were able, plunge us once more into all the darkness, and vice, and misery of the middle ages. No wonder that such, instead of blessing God devoutly for the glorious Reformation, regard the very name of protestantism with "burning indignation," and sigh for the return of the palmy days of popery. We have neither time nor space to give an adequate sketch of that vast system of ecclesiastical tyranny, which, with the pope, or universal bishop of Rome, for its head and executive, lorded it over the bodies and souls of so large a portion of mankind, and erected, upon the ruins of true Christianity, a despotism as dark, and cruel, and degrading, as any upon which the sun ever shone. It was, indeed, a fearful and foul apostasy from true Christianity, verifying fully the predictions which had been uttered by the apostle Paul when he spoke of a “falling away" from Christian doctrine and practice, on the part of the professing church; and when he warned the professing Christians of his own day of that "mystery of iniquity" which had already begun secretly to work, and of "that wicked one, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." Popery, more than any other system, has been guilty of "imprisoning the truth in unrighteousness: it has changed the truth of God into a lie; and taught men to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, who is God over all, blessed for ever." Instead of our only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it puts forth our lord god the pope, and demands for him a homage and adoration which it is blasphemous and idolatrous to render to any human being. Instead of scripture, it puts forth tradition, the determinations of councils, the decretals of Rome, and the denunciations of the Vatican; and by these it governs the prostrate minds and wasted consciences of men; requiring of all men, on pain of eternal damnation, implicit belief and obedience. Instead of true repentance, it puts penance and the practice of outward austerities. Instead of the inward and effectual operation of divine grace, making the subjects of it inwardly "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," it introduces the doctrine of sacramental efficacy: thus making our salvation dependent, not on personal character and personal acts of repentance and faith, but upon certain acts of the priest, performed either with or without the consent of the party operated upon. And instead of the pure, simple, and spiritual worship which Christ has instituted, and which becomes the gospel dispensation, it substitutes a vain and pompous ceremonial, which ravishes the eye and the ear, stupifies the conscience, and starves the soul. The effects of this system upon the civil and moral interests of that large portion of the human family, over which its dominion extended, were such as might have been expected. If one would learn the real nature and tendency of popery, we have only to study it in the character and lives of the popes and clergy, of the |