thy pleasure! O, fit representative of a society, that smiles, only to deceive; teaches, only to confine knowledge within its own narrow limits, and to direct it to its own unhallowed ends; and lives and labours but to undermine and destroy!

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE JESUITS.

THE Constitutions of the Jesuits, embrace those rules of the society which relate to its constitution and government; and may be regarded as standing in the same relation to it as a foundation does to a building. From the commencement of the society, it has been a leading object with the Jesuits, to keep these fundamental rules a secret. As a body, they have ever had a strong repugnance to the light. They have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." "The thirty-eighth of their rules expressly commands them not to communicate either their constitutions or other books or writings, which contain the institutes or the privileges of the society. In 1584 their general, Aquaviva, in sending to the Peruvians the Litteræ Apostolicæ, warned them anew, that in communicating them to the superiors, they should strictly observe the 38th rule. The declaration on the constitutions of the society, represents it as inexpedient that the novices of the society should see the whole constitution, but only an abridgment.”* In short, there is something so re

* Poynder's History of the Jesuits, and Reply to Mr. Dallas's Defence. London, Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1816.

volting in the real character and genuine aspect of Jesuitism, that it must be carefully concealed from all who are not in some measure already pledged and reconciled to it; and that it must be only gradually unmasked and disclosed to the view of its own disciples, lest those sentiments of ingenuousness and independence which yet remain to them, being shocked and alarmed at the sight of so terrible a monster, they should retreat into the world and reveal the secret to the injury of the society. In spite, however, of their efforts to preserve the secret, it came out in 1761, during the celebrated visit of the M.M. Lionée and Father la Valette; when they were so inconsiderate as to produce the mysterious volume of their institute. "By the aid of these authentic records, the principles of their government may be delineated and the sources of their power investigated with a degree of certainty and precision, which previous to that event it was impossible to attain,"

The first thing that strikes us in those constitutions is, that the grand outline is precisely that which Ignatius Loyola laid as the basis of this new order. In perfect agreement with this fact, Damianus one of their order as early as 1641, in his Synopsis, book 1, c. viii. says, "Pope Julius the successor of Pope Paul ordered the constitutions to be written. Ignatius Loyola applied himself long and considerately to them. "Whilst meditating them," says he, "he experienced divine illuminations; whilst writing them he shed tears. Moreover, the Virgin Mother of Christ descended to instruct him. The constitutions are decreed to be full of the Spirit of God."

Though, however, the constitutions are, in all their leading features, what they were as they came from the hand of Loyola; it is not to be supposed but that they have been gradually wrought up to that perfection of human policy which they now display. It was in 1558 that the volume of constitutions translated from the Spanish of Loyola by Father John Polancus, was originally committed to the press by the college of the society at Rome; and it is from a translation of the original copy that we shall have frequent occasion to quote, while illustrating the nature of this society.

The other principal authority to which we refer, with Poynder's History of the Jesuits, is "The Principles of the Jesuits developed in a collection of extracts from their own authors, to which is prefixed a brief account of that order, and a sketch of its institute.”J. G. and F. Rivington, St. Paul's Church Yard.

As it regards the institution of the Jesuits, it consists principally of four classes :

1. The first class is the house of probation for the NOVICES. In this house they remain twelve or twenty days, in order that they may receive a little knowledge of the society, and the society much knowledge of them. After the constitutions or rather an abstract of them have been read, there follows a confession of all the past life, renewed every six months to some Jesuit priest who may be deputed by the superior to receive it.

If the individual is approved as a novice, he then passes into the house of probation where he remains Here the novices are ;

two years.

1. To devote a month to the spiritual exercises drawn up by Ignatius Loyola at Manresa. "Know you," says M. Quinet in reference to this work, "what distinguishes Ignatius Loyola from all ascetics of the past. It is that he could logically analyze himself in this state of ravishment in which he was at Manresa; and which with all others, excluded the idea even of reflection. He imposes on his disciples as operations, acts which with him had been spontaneous. Thirty days sufficed him to break the will, the reason; yea, much as a horseman overcomes his courser."

And what were the means which Loyola employed in his spiritual exercises to inoculate his disciples with the disease with which he himself had been infected, and to throw them into a syncope, out of which they should never once awake? You shall hear, my reader. The book of spiritual exercises requires amongst other things, 1. The novice is to trace on paper, lines of different sizes which answer to the different sizes of sins. 2. To shut one's self up in a chamber with the windows nearly closed. 3. To imagine to himself hell-to see in his spirit vast fires, demons, and souls plunged in liquid fire; to imagine that we hear wails, vociferations; to imagine, also, that we smell a putrid odour-of smoke and sulphur ; and to taste things the most bitter, as

tears and gall.*

2. To serve for a month one or other of the hospitals, by ministering to the sick; in proof of in

* Exercit. Spirit. p. 80, 82, 83.