The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-28 00:00:00

JESUITISM.

PEPIN, front being the King's Lord Chamberlain,
made himself the King. Such a rise tells its own
story of craft, and courage, and ambition ; but it
does by no means tell the whole story of how
King PEPIN founded a dynasty. It was his
alliance with the Papacy which showed the great
intellectual power and longsightedness of PEPIN.
The Pope was still a wanderer and an outcast,
too weak to be feared as an enemy alone, but
growing strong enough to be dreaded if he were
to join with any rival pretender to a throne. To
recognize the Pontiff's claims, set him up again
upon his Holy Seat, and then, in turn, have his
pontifical protection, was for PEPIN to make the
Pope's interests his own. To be consecrated
King by STEPHEN was the surest guaranty for
the endurance of' a successful usurpation ; and to
be restored to Rome and be defended by the
arms of PEPIN, was for STEPHEN to be Pope
indeed. The bargain was made, and it was
stuck to. Rome was given back and Ravenna
was added to Rome ; and STEPHEN gave France
to PEPIN and his heirs for ever, in the name of
Goo and of St. PETER, with an anathema upon
an attempt to overthrow his dynasty.
CHARLEMAGNE and ADRIAN faithfully carried
on the work which was thus begun anew. A
Roman Empire was again established, and again
the Emperor took the Pontiff for his own and his
Empire's Spiritual head. CHARLEMAGNE kissed
the feet of LEO, and LEO crowned CHARLENIAONE
successor of the C.ESARS. The brute force of
the civil despot was to be at the disposal of him
who was lord of the conscience, and the Pontiffs
business was to take care no outbreak of human
thought, no eruption of intellect, no spread of
any sort of knowledge, should make the Imperial
flocks and herds less easily governable or less
cheerfully do their work as the proprietary
animals of their crowned and mitred masters.
The clergy had the higher task, as befitted their
pre-eminence. The ignorance and superstition
of the masses made despotism subservient to the
clergy not only for impunity but from necessity.
But the predominance of the clergy brought no
real gain whatever to the people. Despotism
was all the more iron and all the more grasping,
and it identified itself completely with the
timidity, the intolerance, and the cruelty of the
priesthood. Soldiers were missionaries, massacres
were the sermons preached, and bloody, secret
tribunals did the work which hoodwiniced con-
science and the daylight would have shuddered
at with too much horror. The ages which Rome
had at hand might well be called "the dark
ages," for " the true light, which lighteth every
" man that cometh into the world." was not al-
lowed to shine within men nor around them.
The Pontiff whom men had adopted in the place
of GOD, and for their light and their salvation,
and the priests who wielded that Pontiffs pre-
tended Divine authority, were such agents of ob-
struction and oppression as the world had never
known before, and as only a vigorous, struggling
Europe could have required. So much of Chris-
tilnity as was made an ingredient in what was
called Christianity was of no other public or
social influence than to keep the civil power in
fear of the pontifical. It may, and indeed it
must, have brought comfort and consolation to
many a lone soul, but its general working was
only degradation—deliberate, steady, almost
hopeless degradation—happily, degradation for
priests personally and morally as well as for
peoples politically.
France and Italy, Spain and Germany, shared,
though unequally, in the common misery—com-
mon victims of a popular religion turned into a
conspiracy and of priests organized into a polity.
Already in the eleventh century, when ROBERT
of France and his Queen, CONSTANCE, visited
Orleans, there was a bonfire of thirteen human
beings got up by the clergy as a spectacle and in
honour of pure orthoxody; and m Germany

Cita:wax VII. was raising all the land against
the Emperor ; while in Spain a Catholic King wag
taking for his wife an unconverted ItloOrish
maiden and giving his Christian sister to the
Sultan of TOLEDO. A century later an brxocErr
formally established the Inquisition, a Conned
as formally prohibited the reading of either the
Old or New Testament, and the lioxivaseas and
the 13tormaic-r5 treated the Kings of England
and Denmark as if they also were the liege sub.
jects of the Pope.
The Popes, indeed, were very far from being
always successful in the objects of their ambi-
tion ; but, however unsuccessful a Pope might
be in any object, he always made it a losing game
for whatever prince set himself up against hint.
Nor were the priests and monks themselves al-
lowed to be independent or insubordinate now
that Rome had acquired a larger experience of
administration. The proudest religions the world
knew of before the Jesuits of Loyot..k—the most
wealthy, the best disciplined, the most dreaded—
were sacrificed daringly and deliberately to the
necessities of the times, and the civil arm wat
used with a vengeance when CLEmarr V. made
PHILIP turn Templars by scores in the very
streets of Paris.

But wealth and power, impunity and profligacy,
again did their work for Rome, as Rome did the
work of Europe's degradation.