Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary

Opinions adopted and extended by the Jesuits.

The Jesuits have carried very far the consequences of several doctrines which were hatched before their time, and which expose kingdoms to continual revolutions. The opinion, that the authority of kings is inferior to that of the people, and that they may be punished by the people, in certain cases, has been taught and practised in all countries, in all ages, and in all Christian communions that have made any figure in the world. History affords us instances every where of kings deposed at the instigation, or with the approbation, of the clergy. The opinion, that sovereigns have received the sword from God to punish heretics, is yet more universal than the former, and has been reduced to practice among Christians from the days of Constantine to ours, in all the Christian communions that have had the power in their hands; and a man scarcely dare write in Holland against such an opinion. These two doctrines, therefore, were not

invented by the Jesuits; but they have drawn the most odious consequences from them, and such as are most prejudicial to public peace: for, from the conjunction of these two principles, they have concluded, and that as they think by consequential reasoning, that a heretical prince ought to be deposed, and Heresy extirpated by fire and sword, if it cannot be done any other way.

If sovereigns have received the sword to punish heretics, say they, it is evident that the people, the true sovereign of their monarchs, according to the first principle, ought to punish them when they persist in heresy. But the gentlest punishment that can be inflicted on a heretic is, doubtless, imprisonment, banishment, confiscation of goods; and consequently an heretical king ought at least to be dethroned by the people, his sovereign and superior; since, according to the first principle, monarchs are only delegates to whom the people, not being able to exercise its sovereignty in person, recommend the functions and exercise of it, with restrictions, and an inalienable right of resuming them, when they acquit themselves ill. Now there is no case in which they ought more reasonably to be divested of them, than when they deserve the punishment which the sovereign, according to the second principle, is ordered by God to inflict on heretics. But as it is not ordinarily possible by judicial processes to take from them the goods which they have fairly forfeited by virtue of the laws, which God will have established against heresy: as, I say, they have most commonly power enough in their hands to maintain themselves in the exercise of royalty; an exercise which is nothing but usurpation, as long as they are heretics; it follows, that recourse must be had to artifice, in order to bring them to the punishments which they have rightly incurred; that is to say, conspiracies may be formed against their persons; since, otherwise, God would have given the

sword to the people, as a true sovereign, for the punishment of heretics, in vain. On the other hand, if sovereigns have received the sword to punish the breakers of the two tables of the decalogue, it follows, that they ought to proceed with greater severity against heretics, who violate the first table, than against murderers and thieves, who only violate the second; for the infractions of the first are immediate treason against the divine majesty, and affront God directly; whereas the infractions of the second offend him only in an indirect manner. It is, therefore, the duty of ecclesiastics to excite sovereigns to the punishment of heretics, violators of the first table of the commandments; and if princes are negligent in this part, that negligence deserves to be more exclaimed against, than a neglect in punishing murderers and robbers.

It ought also to be represented that, if the inevitable danger of ruining the state, oblige them to grant heretics a toleration, they are bound to keep their word no longer than the danger lasts; and this danger ceasing, they ought to resume the sword for the extirpation of heresy, just as they would resume it against robbers and murderers, when the danger which forced them to make a truce with these is once over. In a word, if God have given the sword into the sovereign’s hand for the punishment of heresy, the granting it impunity will render them as criminal before God, as the granting impunity to theft, adultery, and murder; and the only thing that can excuse them would be that, for the avoiding a greater evil, the infallible ruin of the state and church, they were forced to promise the suspension of the penal laws; whence it follows, that they are obliged to their first engagement as soon as that danger is passed; for every oath that engages to the disobedience of the laws of God, is essentially null.

Thus you see upon what foundation the Jesuits

have built a system which hath rendered them so odious, and which has given so just a horror for the maxims that several among them have vented. They have built upon a foundation which they found ready to their hands; they have raised consequence upon consequence, quite out of sight, without being astonished at the hideousness of the objects; they have believed, on one hand, that this would turn to the advantage of the church; and, on the other, that they did nothing against the art of right reasoning. I shall not examine whether logic, in effect, did not lead them through all these consequences; the matter would be too odious. I content myself with saying that France, having seen two of her kings successively murdered, under the pernicious pretence that they were favourers of heretics, thought she could no better ruin this wretched gradation of consequences than by overturning the first principle it depends upon. For this reason the third estate of the kingdom resolved to condemn, as pernicious, all doctrines which make the authority of monarchs depend on any thing besides God. This was a leap too far on the other side. Mankind have since hit upon a medium.—Ed. ⁶⁷

Again: It was not the Jesuits who invented the mental reservations, nor the other opinions that Mr Pascal has charged upon them, nor even the philosophical sin. They found all this in other authors, either expressly, or in such a manner, as a doctrine is in the principle that produces it by consequences.

This doctrine is almost an unavoidable result of the definition of liberty, by which it is asserted that, to the end any action be free, the agent must have a power of determining himself to the right or left, without being necessitated by any foreign cause. Now this definition is that which is most commonly received in the church of Rome, and as we have seen in their society a greater number of patrons of these

opinions than in other communities, and that in their hands the loose maxims grew daily more fruitful by the earnestness with which they disputed on these points, they have been formally and expressly impleaded. Wretched fruits of disputation! their method of studying has had at least as great a share in it as the corruption of the heart. Before they come to read moral divinity, they have dictated one or more courses of philosophy; they have accustomed themselves to cavil upon every thing; they have wrangled a thousand times upon the “ens rationis;” they have heard as often the questions maintained pro and con about universals, and many other things of the same nature; their heads are so turned to objection and distinction, that, when they come to handle matters of morality, they find themselves wholly disposed to perplex them. Distinctions offer to them in shoals; arguments, ad hominem, oblige you to fortify yourself on every hand, and to abate one thing to-day, another thing to-morrow. All this is very dangerous. Dispute as long as you please about logical questions; but in morality be content with good sense, and with that light which the reading of the gospel sheds on your mind. If you go about to dispute after a scholastic manner, you will not readily find a clew to the labyrinth. It was a very good saying of a certain person, that the books of the Casuists teach nothing but the art of cavilling with God. These advocates in the court of conscience find out more distinctions and subtleties than the lawyers in the civil courts. They make the tribunal of conscience a sort of moral laboratory, in which the most solid truths evaporate into smoke, volatile salts, and vapour. What Cicero said of the subtleties of logic, admirably agrees with those of the Casuists. “Dialectici ad extremum ipsi se compungunt suis acuminibus, et multa quæ- rendo reperiunt non modo ea quæ jam non possint ipsi dissolvere, sed etiam quibus ante exorsa et potius detexta prope detexantur. The logicians at last wound themselves with their own edge, and, by enquiring after many things, find not only what they cannot themselves give a solution of, but what overthrows all they have before been raising.” A man is caught in webs of his own spinning; he is lost, and knows not how to turn himself; nor has he any way to disengage, but by relaxing in almost every article. They, who have read father Pirot’s book, will own that it is easier to censure it, and perceive that it contains dangerous doctrines, than answer his objections.