Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Nothing more remains then to government and the magistrates, for the honour of religion and the state, than to repress, and render alike contemptible, both parties. We say it with so much the more confidence, as nobody calls in doubt the impartiality of the wise depositaries of justice, and the hearty contempt which they have for these absurd contests, the dangerous effects of which their office has required them to prevent. With what satisfaction will wise and enlightened subjects see them complete their work? Ought not the Jansenist Gazetteer and the Convulsionaries[21] to expect from them, on the first occasion, the same treatment as the Jesuits; with this difference, however, which we are to put (in point of honour) between the punishment of a revolted noblesse, and that of a turbulent populace? The Jesuits uttered their dangerous maxims in open day: the Convulsionaries and the Jansenist Gazetteer preach and print their extravagancies in the dark. The obscurity alone with which these wretches envelope themselves, can shield them from the fate which they merit: perhaps also there needs to destroy them only to drag them out of that obscurity, only to order the Convulsionaries (under pain of whipping) to exhibit their disgusting farces, not in a garret, but in a fair, for money, among dancers on the rope, and players with cups and balls, who will soon bring them down: and as to the Jansenist Gazetteer (under pain of being led through the streets upon an ass) of printing his dull libel not in his garret, but at an authorised bookseller’s, at the publisher’s, for example, of the _Christian Journal_, so widely circulated, and so deserving of being so. Convulsionaries and gazetteers will vanish, the moment in which they shall have lost the little merit which remains to them, that of _clandestineness_. In a very short time the name of the Jansenists will be forgotten, as that of their adversaries is proscribed; the destruction of the one, and the disappearance of the others, will leave no longer any trace to recollect them by: this event, like those which have preceded it, will be effaced and buried by those which shall follow; and nothing at most will remain of it but that French witticism, that the chief of the Jesuits is a broken captain, who has lost his company.

To conclude, we shall observe that the title of _Society of Jesus_ is still one of the reproaches which the Jansenists cast on the Jesuits, as a too proud denomination; by which they seemed to attribute to themselves alone the quality of Christians: this is a pretty slight subject of quarrel, and proves only what we have already said, that hatred has formed weapons of every thing to attack them. The true crime of the society, we cannot repeat it too often, is not the being called the _Company of Jesus_, but the having been really a company of intriguers and fanaticks; the having endeavoured to oppress every thing which gave it umbrage; the having wanted to domineer in every thing; the having intermeddled in all affairs and all factions; the having sought, in a word, rather to render themselves necessary than useful.

The spirit of giddiness, which has occasioned the misfortune of the Jesuits in France, seems to announce to them a like fate in the rest of Europe. They have long been cried down in the territories of the king of Sardinia, and the republick of Venice; and the little existence they yet preserve there, may very possibly be shaken anew by the shocks which they have just felt elsewhere: their conduct in Silesia, during the last war, has not disposed favourably towards them a prince, in other respects an enemy to superstition and the monkish race: the house of Austria, which has so long protected them, begins to be tired of them, and to find out what they are; and they have all room to fear, lest the bomb, which has burst in Portugal and in France, should dart some of its splinters against them into all parts of Europe.

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We shall close this treatise with the queries, of which mention has been made above, respecting the oath which was required of the Jesuits: they are proposed in such a manner, that there seems to be no doubt, either as to the answer to be made to each, or consequently as to the part which these fathers should have taken. It appears, in the writings published on this subject by the Jansenists and the Jesuits, as if they had made it their business to deviate from the true point of view of the question. Instead of the idle declamations which have been printed on both sides, the author seems to have meant to substitute a little logick: this is the secret for abridging a number of controversies, which the rhetorick of lawyers and of mandates would perpetuate to eternity.

QUERIES.[22]