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manca, Barcelona, Vicenza, Bologna, and Rome; and as far as he was able he ministered to their necessities, even if he had to beg for them. Thus, at Rome we find, during the famine there, that he and his companions, though they often felt the sharp thorn of hunger themselves, yet, being themselves straitened in funds for charitable purposes, they begged for the perishing, took them to such shelter as was at their command, carefully and tenderly ministered to the sick, and used the advantage which these acts of kindness afforded them for religious instruction. Hundreds, rescued from death by cold and hunger, were brought to repentance, and became lively members of the Church. In America, especially in Paraguay, we find the Jesuits christianizing and civilizing the natives, and instructing them in the arts and conveniences of social life, and governing them mildly, equitably, and well. We find Loyola going from Paris to Rouen on a visit to a sick countryman there, who had, moreover, robbed Loyola while living with him in Paris. In Rome many hospitals were opened by Loyola-the convent of Santa Martha, for abandoned women who wished to repent and reform their lives, and that of Santa Catharina, in which poor and honest young girls found an asylum against temptation and seduction; and fatherless children of both sexes were received and carefully educated in two hospitals, which still exist in Rome. Loyola, then, was humane, compassionate, and charitable. His private character was moral and unimpeached. He treated his disciples with much kindness, and never denied them what he could grant without inconvenience. Is there not something to respect and admire in this?

Jesuitism is so intimately connected with the name of Loyola, that we can scarcely separate him from the system of which he was the author; and a glance at it, as his masterpiece, seems necessary to a fair estimate of his character. It may be, and no doubt will be, objected, that Jesuitisin has been a curse and not a blessing to Europe and every land where it has appeared, and that, as by their works and fruits we are to judge men, Loyola must have been bad and corrupt in morals, because the system of which he was the author has brought forth such evil fruits. We would admit the result, but deny the correctness of the reasoning. If we allow it as correct, the conclusion inevitably follows, that Loyola, at the time of establishing his society, was knowingly and designedly establishing a system which, however well it might accomplish its purpose for a time, contained within itself the germ of its own dissolution, and which, sooner or later, must operate to its destruction. We must believe that a far-seeing mind, as Loyola's generally proved itself to be, propounded a system which could not fail to bring vice and immorality in its train, and draw down upon it the censure and opprobrium of the church it was designed to defend. Looking at Loyola's previous history, his endeavours to make his society sure, his refusal to undertake anything likely to be hereafter prejudicial to it,-we do not think such a solution at all

probable. On what principles, then, is it to be accounted for? We observe, in the first place, that Loyola's mind was penetrating, but not philosophical; he possessed great adroitness in the management of human nature, but was lacking in the clearness and straightforwardness of a soundly constituted mind. He does not seem at all aware of the immorality of the scheme he was propounding, for he nowhere makes any apology for it. He never appears to have considered that the human soul may be lost, but that it cannot be sold or transferred; that conscience may be bound or deadened, but is incapable of being entrusted to the keeping of another. His principles were in the last degree false and immoral; but at the point of view whence he looked upon them, foreshortened from the low level of his own moral understanding, he saw none of their contrarieties; he saw only their adaptation to a special end. Loyola, further, was destitute of any poetical imagination. Thus, his book of the Spiritual Exercises is the most formal, dry, and tedious work that can well be imagined; not a line of pathos, of description, or of eloquence, to relieve the monotony of the whole. It is, as Cardinal Wiseman says, a practical, and not a theoretical work, and is, no doubt, well adapted for its purpose.

We do not pretend that Loyola was without faults, or that he never acted foolishly: he often did so; as, for instance, his retiring to the cave near Manreze, where he nearly brought his life to a premature close by his lengthened fastings and severe flagellations; his going through the towns of Italy begging from door to door, while his belt was well filled with gold, which he distributed to the beggars whom he met on the road. These, and many other similar actions recorded of him, if true-which in some instances we are very much inclined to doubt, they only appearing in the history of St. Ignatius-may in a great measure be charged on the system under which he was brought up. That this is so we can plainly discern in many of his actions, in which the emotions displayed were generated, fostered, and developed by the very nature of the religious services in which he engaged. Impulse is seen side by side with a clear and vigorous understanding, now impelling him to this side, now to that, yet never entirely gaining the inastery.

We have thus endeavoured to point out those qualities in Loyola's character for which we think he is fairly entitled to our admiration and respect; of their validity or conclusiveness we leave our readers to judge for themselves. In the facts and events of his life we have rejected all those marvels, miracles, and highly coloured, overdrawn pictures, which go so far to make up the deeds of the canonized, and most of which, if true, do in reality tell more against him than for him, though his adorers do not seem to see it in this light. Knowing the purpose for which they are inserted, we have not much difficulty in detecting and rejecting them, and determining what the man was as he really lived in the flesh. Loyola while living laid no claim to miracles. He worked, and worked earnestly, his motto being, "He who does well one work at a time does more than all.”

In conclusion, we believe Loyola to have been strictly conscientious in all his actions; to have followed unflinchingly what he considered the path of duty; and to be deserving of our admiration and respect, if not as a great man, at least as a good Christian. R. S.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

IF asked whether Ignatius is Loyola, our answer would be, Yes; for Loyola is but the other name of Ignatius. But respect and admiration are not the same thing. Respect may rise into admiration, but admiration may exist without respect. I admire Blondin, but I can never respect him. I admire Napoleon Buonaparte, but I admire and respect Wellington. The association of two ideas, incompatible, in our opinion, of the character which gave birth to Jesuitism, compels us to take the negative side in this discussion.

Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde was of a noble Spanish family, and by natural temperament fitted to take a high place in the armies of Charles V. As a soldier it is impossible to limit the fame he might have acquired for the splendour of the deeds he was capable of performing in the shock of battle, in the siege of fortresses, in the sack of cities. A wound in both legs at the defence of Pampeluna diverted the energies of his romantic and visionary nature from the feats of arms to the tricks of Jesuitry. Compelled to a life of physical inaction, he solaced his mind and indulged his fancies by studying the romances of chivalry, the lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic, and the life of Christ. He rose from his couch a spiritual knight-errant. An imaginary lady-"no countess, no duchess, but one of yet higher degree," in short, the Virgo Deipara-captivated his mind. To her he addressed the language of a passionate lover. For her he would shed his own, and bathe his sword in the life-blood of her foes. He took to his bed a chivalrous Spanish soldier he left it a fanatical Papist.

This transition from a worldly to a spiritual knighthood is open to the suspicion that, since as a cripple he could not win renown, Loyola turned his attention to a field where broken legs were no obstacle. It was not remorse for his sins that induced him to abandon the ease and luxuries of the castle of Loyola, and to adopt the coarse fare of Mount Montserrat. It was not from strong and pure aspirations that he laid aside the lance and took to the pilgrim's staff. He had read the life of Christ, but he preferred the lives of fictitious saints. He found no disgusting austerities in the Gospel; its pure and simple life had no charms for the chief of fanatics, and the founder and head of Jesuitism. He hung his shield before the shrine of the Holy Virgin, and swore in her service to undergo penances which would eclipse all that Rome prescribed, or her legends recorded. To obtain the pardon of his sins he scourged himself thrice a day, and passed seven out of the twenty-four hours on his knees. Once from Sunday to Sunday he abstained from all food. We admire the inflexibility of purpose and the power of endurance

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he displayed; we cannot, nevertheless, respect the man. We apply to Ignatius what Lord Macaulay said of his associate, Don Francis Borgia,-"Our applause is demanded for feats of humility, prodigies of obedience, and raptures of elevation;" but his biographers "seem to have assumed the office of penitential executors to the saint, and to challenge for his memory some of the disgust and contempt which, when living, he so studiously courted." A man with the Bible before him, who yet professed to be guided by the practices of the most fanatical adherents of Rome; who "sought to propitiate not mere mortal man only, but the Deity himself, by the most lavish promises;" who pledged himself to perform three thousand masses in one day to move heaven and earth, is a man whom Protestants cannot afford to despise, but Papists alone, if even they, can respect. Such a soul may command the homage of a world that is dazzled by the mere greatness of genius, but can never attract the love and esteem of the Christian Church. Such prodigies," Macaulay observed, "whether enacted by the saints of Rome or by those of Benares, exhibit a sovereignty of the spiritual over the animal nature, which can hardly be contemplated without some feelings akin to reverence. But on the whole, the hooked fakeer, spinning round his gibbet, is the more respectable suicide of the two; for his homage is, at least, meet for the deity he worships. He whose name had been assumed by Ignatius and his followers, equally victorious over the stoical delusions and the lower affections of our nature, had been accustomed to repose among the domestic charities of existence, and to accept such blameless solaces as life has to offer to the weary and heavy-laden; nor could services less in harmony with His serene self-reverence have been presented to Him than the vehement emotions, the squalid filth, and the lacerated frames of the first members of the Society of Jesus." And because Loyola "himself tolerated, encouraged, and shared these extravagances,' the hooked fakeer is the more respectable of the two characters.

There are two men whose names will never be erased from the page of ecclesiastical history-Luther and Loyola. There are two historians and essayists whose writings will long continue to mould the opinion of the British nation-Macaulay and Ranke. Each of these historians has been struck with the points both of resemblance and contrast between the champion of honest Protestantism and the champion of subtle, crafty, and immoral Jesuitism. Let us see the verdict of these master-minds on the respective characters of the men who headed the two great reformations of the sixteenth century the Protestant and the Papal.

Ranke observes," We are here involuntarily reminded of the state of mental distress into which Luther, some years before Loyola, was plunged by very similar doubts. But these two remarkable men extricated themselves from this labyrinth by very different paths. Luther arrived at the doctrine of atonement through Christ, wholly independent of works. This afforded him the key to the Scriptures, and became the main prop of his whole

system of faith. It does not appear that Loyola examined the Scriptures, or that any particular dogma of religion made an impression on his mind. As he lived only in his own inward emotions in thoughts which rose spontaneously in his breast-he imagined that he felt the alternate inspirations of the good and of the evil spirit. One day he felt as if awakened from a dream. He thought he had sensible proof that all his sufferings were assaults of Satan. He determined from that hour to have done with his past life, never to tear open those old wounds, never again to touch them. It was not so much that his mind had found repose, as that he had formed a determination; rather, indeed, an engagement entered into by the will, than a conviction to which the will is compelled to yield. It needed not the aid or the influence of Scripture-it rested in the feeling of an immediate intercourse with the world of spirits. In other words, Ignatius commenced his career as a mystic and an enthusiast. It was only because he stopped short on the verge of religious madness that he was saved from Bedlam.

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This resting on visions and visionary aids would," Ranke continues, "never have satisfied Luther. Luther would have no inspirations, no visions. He held them all, without distinction, to be mischievous. He would have only the simple, written, unquestionable word of God. Loyola, on the contrary, lived on fantasies and inward inspirations. He thought no one so well understood Christianity as an old woman who, in the midst of his torments, told him that Christ would yet appear to him. At first he could obtain no such vision, but now he thought that Christ, or the Holy Virgin, manifested themselves to his eyes of flesh. . . For him there needed no longer either evidence or Scripture. Had none such existed, he would have met death unhesitatingly for that faith, which before he believed, which now he saw." In relation to Christianity and Mohammedanism, Frederick Denison Maurice says, "Plain men will be asked to declare which teaching bore clearest tokens of belonging to the earth; which of a divine origin?" The same question in relation to Luther and Loyola will call forth from all our readers the answer we give,-Loyola was “of the earth, earthy." Luther, as symbolized in the Apocalyptic visions, was "a mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, a rainbow upon his head, and his face as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, and in his hand a little book, open"-that book which, Ranke says, Loyola did not even consult.

From the camp of the Protestant invaders "there arose," Macaulay says, "the war-cry of absolute mental independence; from the beleaguered host" of Rome, "the watchword of absolute spiritual obedience. The German pointed the way to that sacred solitude where, besides this worshipper himself, none may enter; the Spaniard to that innumerable company which, with one accord, still chant the liturgies of remotest generations. Chieftains in the most momentous warfare of which this earth had been the theatre since the subversion of Paganism, each was a rival worthy of the other

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