(Prejudices against.)

It is undeniable that a great many condemn the Jesuits out of mere prejudice. Whatsoever is published against them is almost equally believed by their enemies, both Catholics and Protestants. It is also

true that the accusations are renewed against them, as often as occasion offers, in any new book. In the mean time they who examine, with any sort of equity, the innumerable apologies published by the Jesuits, find, as to some facts, sufficient justifications to make a reasonable enemy drop the charge. I will give an instance of this.

In 1610, there came out a very severe book against the Jesuits, intituled Anti-Coton, in which it was affirmed that the abbot du Bois had maintained, and would prove it to father Coton’s face, that “sentence had been given against him at Avignon, for getting a nun with child.” Father Coton, answering this libel, produced the following letter. “I, whose name is underwritten, do certify that I was in Avignon, all the time the rev father Coton, of the society of Jesus lived there; and that I never heard any one say that he had committed any thing contrary to the dignity and quality of his profession; and, in particular, as to what the Anti-Coton charges upon him. In which Anti-Coton, since I am made the author of a manifest calumny, wherewith the rev father Coton is charged: I frankly aver, that I know nothing of it, and that I have always looked upon the said rev father Coton as a venerable and worthy man: in testimony whereof, I have written and signed this present deposition. From Paris, in my study, the eve of St. Denis the martyr, 1610. Olivier abbot du Bois. And I have sealed it with my seal.” Besides this, he produced four certificates, “seen and acknowledged for authentic, true, and legal, by the royal notaries of the city of Paris.” The first was signed “Lewis Beau, prothonotary of the holy apostolic see, and sealed with his seal, and with those of two subsequent archbishops in the metropolitan city of Avignon, whose vicar-general he had been all the time of father Coton’s sojourning in Avignon.” The second was signed by fifteen persons, “who composed, and represented all

the clergy of Avignon.” The third was signed by the two consuls of Avignon, and their accessor, and sealed with the seal of the consular house. The fourth was given by the bishop of Orange. These four attestations concur, not only in contradicting the author of the Anti-Coton as an infamous calumniator, but also in extolling father Coton’s good and pious conduct. “Besides these certificates, the magistrates of Avignon wrote to this Jesuit in these terms, ‘ If these testimonies of prelates and consuls are not sufficient, we can produce the certificates of the greatest part of the gentlemen, doctors, citizens, merchants, and others of the town.’ ” I know not what could be produced of greater force to justify the accused; and yet, there were a great many, who still believed that the nun was got with child, and that sentence had been passed upon father Coton. They gave more credit to the Anti-Coton, who brought no proof, nor any authentic evidence, than to father Coton, who produced all that the most exact judicial proceedings could require. This could be nothing but the effect of an extravagant prejudice.

The fate of the Jesuits and that of Catiline is much the same. Several accusations were given in against Catiline without any proof; but they met with credit, upon this general argument; " since he has done such a thing, he is very capable of having done this, or that, and that it is very probable he has done the rest.” The historian Sallust has judiciously observed this illusion, which is not a sophism of the schools, but of the town. “Scio fuisse nonnullos qui ita existimarent, juventutem quæ domum Catilinæ frequentabat parum honeste pudicitiam habuisse: sed ex aliis rebus magis quam quod cuiquam id copertum foret, hæc fama valebat. Sallust in Bello Catilin. page m. 33. ⁶⁵—I know there were some, who looked upon the young persons who frequented Catiline’s

house, as men of ill fame; but it was not a knowledge of them, but something else which gave rise to this opinion.” There was published at the Hague, about eleven years ago, a book intituled, the Religion of the Jesuits. The author confesses that the prejudice against these gentlemen is so general, that whatever attestations of innocence they fortify themselves with, it is impossible to undeceive the world. “We must know,” says he, “that nothing so horrible can be said against the Jesuits, though ever so doubtful, but it becomes probable from their character, and the consideration of what they are capable of.” He gives two examples of this: one is, " the report spread, not only at Heidelburg, but through all Europe, that they had suborned a false spirit from the other world, who cried every night in the ears of the old duke that there was no salvation for him, unless he would exterminate heresy and heretics out of his new dominions, according to the counsel of the fathers Jesuits: the duke, tired with these visions, resolved to enquire into the matter. He declared himself to one of his officers, who engaged to conjure the spirit most effectually, without either prayers or holy water. The officer hid himself under the prince’s bed, and when the spirit came, he so hacked and hewed him with his hanger, that it is said he died of his wounds. The officer who had done the exploit, had the indiscretion to tell his wife of it, against the duke’s express commands. The wife was no more retentive than the husband; and thus the thing was divulged. The Jesuits have tried all manner of ways to clear themselves. The duke has issued rigorous injunctions in his estates against speaking of it. The Jesuits have procured certificates under the hands of the Protestants themselves, concerning the falsity of the story. But all to no purpose. They will never destroy the suspicions which these stories, whether true or false, have imprinted in the people’s minds, because they are known to be capable of this juggle, by others of the same stamp.” He mentions some of them in general, I mean without circumstances of time, and place, and persons: and after having advised us to reject their certificates from the Palatinate, he concludes thus: Religion des Jésuites, page 79. ⁶⁶ “However, be this little story true or be it false, we know what they can do, and that is enough to make the thing probable.” The other example is, that the Jesuits had “plotted to poison the emperor in the sacrament.” This prince was cautioned of it, “and would not communicate the next day, but forced the Jesuit to take the poisoned Host, of which he died. The emperor and court of Vienna, according to its devotion, ordered under terrible penalties the few persons that were privy to it, to keep the thing a secret. It was not, however, well kept; or at least it spread a little, and a gentleman of honour swore that the thing happened for certain in Vienna. We do not give this for a truth,” pursues the author, and indeed, to say all, we are not much inclined to believe it: but, be it ever so false, the Jesuits will never be able to destroy the suspicion of it, because of the character of the society, which is known all the world over.” He adds several reflexions, tending to persuade his readers that this story of Vienna is certain; and then proceeds: “The thing after all may be false; but it will ever be thought probable, considering the ordinary conduct of these good fathers. “They who believe the story of Vienna false, will however believe it probable. If it be false, it will at least serve to justify what I have just now said, that the hatred against the society is extreme, even in the church of Rome.”

Without so many repetitions, we might easily have taken his thought. He means, that a man need only confidently publish whatever he pleases against the Jesuits, to be assured that abundance of people will

believe it. I believe him in the right; at least, that in this he will prove a good prophet. It was doubtless on this presumption that he published the story of Vienna, though he believed it false. But if other authors have taken the same method, what will become of all the facts which the enemies of the Jesuits have published? Should we not have reason to believe, that they have divulged several which they knew to be false or doubtful, and which nevertheless would in their reckoning appear as certain, and be received by the public as undoubted truths? I cannot think the rules of morality will allow the making so ill a use of public prejudice: they command us to be equitable towards all, and never to represent people worse than they are. I own to this author, that the readiness wherewith the public swallows all that is said against the Jesuists, is “a sign of excessive aversion to that society;” and I deny not but this aversion affords most reasonable consequences, which blast their reputation. He has reason to add, “that the good fathers would not do amiss to explain to us this riddle; how it comes to pass that, being so good, so officious and so amiable, they are notwithstanding so terribly hated, while the Jansenists and Jacobins are not so cried down in the world as the Jesuits are?” But he might perhaps be embarrassed, should we require of him the explication of another riddle: how it comes to pass that there are ministers, accomplished in all kinds of virtues, as they pretend, who are hated as a pest in all the communions different from their own, and who have innumerable enemies in their own, and of whom nothing could be published, but what would appear probable. I question, however, whether this writer had all the prudence of a nice disputant, when he insisted so much upon this great disposition of the public to believe whatever is printed against the Jesuits. This is more proper than he imagines to keep their own friends fast to them, who will easily believe that this prejudice has been made too much use of, in publishing the most ill grounded stories.

They themselves, at least, fail not to make the most of this plea, that they may be furnished with one general common-place to invalidate the accusations. Heretofore, they used to answer all the books that were written against them; at last, they are weary of it. The reason they allege for their silence is, that they are no more obliged to confute the satires of their enemies, than the king of France is to answer the gazettes of Amsterdam. “Why should not he allow” it is father Tellier who speaks “the Jesuits to neglect answering libels which, in their opinion, are no less fabulous and contemptible than the gazettes of Amsterdam, and the historical or prophetical systems of Mr Jurieu? Ought they to be more tender in point of reputation, than the powers whom God has placed over us? Ought they not, or at least may they not be permitted, after these great examples, to despise what only touches their particular honour.” Here are more reasons of theirs, taken from the insignificancy of their answers, and the disposition of one part of the public to take for truth whatever is said against them. “We no sooner answer one of their satires, than they have half a dozen more ready to be published. They keep magazines full of them; they have them remitted from all parts of the world. Those that were refuted a hundred years ago, or which the world laughed at though they were not refuted, they revive again at present, with the same confidence as if they were new pieces, or had remained unanswered. And the generation that shall come after them, forty or fifty years hence, will do the same with those satires invented in our days; as despicable and as despised as they are. What use will it be, for instance,

to the Jesuits of China to have been the first and almost the only men, who submitted without the least resistance to the apostolical vicars, in 1684, when this has not hindered their enemies from publishing, the last summer, by the pen of their secretary, the Holland Gazetteer, that the holy father was extremely provoked against the Jesuits, because they would not acknowledge the bishops he had sent to China. Can it be doubted that, some years hence, this lie will come again upon the stage? In like manner, what advantage will it be to the Jesuits of Germany, to have had an attestation, signed by four of the principal counsellors of the elector Palatine, all Protestants, in which they declare that the story of a Jesuit, counterfeiting a voice from heaven, to deceive this prince and to excite him to the destruction of heresy, is a pure fable? Will this act hereafter hinder any good Protestant, who shall continue the history of the Jesuits, from making a chapter of this chimerical adventure, upon the credit of the Holland Gazetteer? Why should we not expect this, when we see the gravest authors of the party seriously tell us the story of the packers of Amiens, with all the circumstances that are capable of making a story ridiculous....After this, let not the Holland Gazetteer repent his publishing, for example, that it was the Jesuits, who by their avarice and wicked councils, engaged the emperor in the last Hungarian war; that the people of Vienna, enraged against them on this account, massacred several of them when they would have escaped, upon the approach of the Ottoman army: that it was they who burnt Stockholm the last year, (a little before, it was four disguised Turks that did it), &c. Let him not repent his publishing these follies, and a hundred more of the same nature; nor let him change his style for the future. If they are at present despised, at least he may assure himself that the time will come when they shall be very good memoirs for him who shall write the twentieth or thirtieth tome of the Practical Morality.” You see with how much art they take advantage of the prejudice of their enemies; and how they verify the maxim, ' misfortune is good for something.’ They turn the hatred of the world against them to their advantage, Fruuntur diis iratis. It is certain their enemies would hurt them more, if they observed some measure in the blows they give them; for, whilst they promiscuously heap on well-grounded accusations with those that are otherwise, they favour the accused; they give him a handle for rendering those suspected, which are really true. A man must be very blind not to foresee that several libels, which daily appear against the society, will put weapons into their hands. Did they pay the authors for publishing such stories, they might be said to employ their money well.