THE SECRET PLAN OF THE JESUITS.*

THE Abbate Leone, according to all accounts, a respectable and trustworthy person, was induced, at the age of nineteen, when pursuing his studies for the church, to join the Jesuits through the exhortations of a certain curé, by name Luigi Vercelli. His appointment was obtained through Father Roothaan, rector of a College of the Society of Jesus at Turin, and he repaired, under the same guidance, to Cheiri, there to lay, in the novitiate, "the solid foundations of a truly religious and Jesuitical life."

The most profound silence, rarely interrupted even by whispers, reigned in this abode. The "guardian angel," as the father attached to each novice is called, used to close the shutters the more readily to initiate the novice in the austere exercises of Saint Ignatius, and the gloomy mysteries of other Jesuit saints. The probation directs itself in what concerns the novice to the inculcation of piety and obedience, in that which concerns the teacher to acquiring an intimate knowledge of the disposition and character of his pupil. To this effect, confession in a Jesuit College is made to comprise an avowal of every affection of the heart, every sentiment of the mind, and even of dreams.

We have heard and read a great deal of the various means by which blind obedience, the plummet-line always kept in hand by the general of the Jesuits, is brought about, and all earthly affections-all traces of "the old man" are finally absorbed in Jesuitism; but the young abbate tells us how the " grotesque" in religion is also made of avail with minds so constituted as to render such means acceptable, for even the miracles of all sorts with which the heads of the novices are filled are all invented in order to rear upon supernatural bases a structure of absolute and blind obedience.

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Father Saetti, knocking at my door one morning, according to his custom, I did not immediately open it. Why this delay ?" he asked me. I replied that I could not open the door sooner. He then reminded me that, in all things, the most prompt obedience was the most perfect; that in obeying God we must make every sacrifice, even that of a moment of time. "One of the brethren," he continued, "was occupied in writing, when some one knocked at his door. He had begun to make an o, but he did not stay to finish it. He opened the door, and on returning to his seat, he found the o completed, and all in gold! Thus you see how God rewards him who is obedient." I received this story with a burst of laughter, at which he appeared much scandalised. "What!" he exclaimed, with an alarmed face, "do you not believe in miracles?" "Most certainly I do," replied I; "but this one is only fit to tell to old women."

The manner in which the Abbate Leone relates that, pending his probation, he became acquainted with the secret plan of the Jesuits is the most extraordinary feature of his revelations. Too intense application to the subjects of a gloomy devotion, and the utter solitude of the probatoria, had broken down his spirits and his health. He asked permission to walk for a few moments in the garden, and his " guardian angel" referred him to the rector. Two days afterwards, tempted by the fine weather, he repaired for that purpose to the rector's apartment, the door of which he found open, although the rector was absent. On one side

The Jesuit Conspiracy. The Secret Plan of the Order. Detected and Revealed by the Abbate Leone. With a Preface by M. Victor Considérant. Chapman and Hall.

was a small table covered with bottles and glasses, and beyond that a small library, into which the abbate sauntered. Taking a volume from the shelves, he was surprised to find a second row of books behind the first, and still more so on removing one of them, to find a third.

What was my astonishment when this title met my gaze, "CONFESSIONS OF THE NOVICES!" The side edges of the book were marked with the letters of the alphabet. Could I do less than seek for the initial of my own name?

The first pages, written, probably, a few days after my arrival, contained a rough sketch of my character. I was utterly confounded. I recognised my successive confessions, each condensed into a few lines. So clear and accurate was the appreciation given of my temperament, my faculties, my affections, my weakness and my strength, that I saw before my eyes a complete revelation of my own nature. What surprised me above all was the conciseness and energy of the expressions employed to sum up the characteristics of my whole being. The favourite images I found in this depository of outpourings of all sorts from the heart of ingenuous youth, were borrowed from the materials used in building-hard, fragile, malleable, coarse, precious, necessary, accessory; a sort of figurative language which has kept fast hold on my memory.

Not an atom of what the novice had, as a matter of conscience, revealed to his "guardian angel" was omitted in this register. He found his enthusiasm and imagination recommended, but his want of taste for the "grotesque" in religion was put down as showing that he would spoil all, if set to work on the clumsier parts of the Jesuitical edifice. Not only did the disobedient novice examine the secrets of his own conscience, but he also apparently, in all tranquillity, took a peep at another set of volumes, which contained the confessions of strangers, and wherein he found a collection of notes upon persons of every class, of every age, rich men, bachelors, &c. Here again were circumstantial details-propensities, fortune, family, relations, vices and virtues, together with such anecdotes as were calculated to characterise the personages. It is from such a Register of Confessions, that the Jesuit can not only furnish himself in a few hours with the experience acquired by his colleagues, but this artifice endows him with the infallible power of surprising, confounding, and subjugating the penitents who knelt beside him.

The abbate was interrupted in his researches by the sound of footsteps. The rector was returning with a number of Jesuit fathers from conducting the Marquis de Saluces to his carriage, and they now sat down in solemn conclave to discuss the general interests and the plan of action by which the Society was then to be guided. This, it is to be observed, was at a period when the fall of Napoleon, and the restoration of the old crowned heads of Europe, had opened new prospects to the Society. The young abbate, at first perplexed and bewildered at his situation; then terrified in the extreme; so far recovered himself in a very brief space of time as to sit down at a writing-table and stenograph the proceedings of the Fathers. The meeting over, he was also so favoured by chance, as to have been able to make his escape unobserved to the chapel, and finally, satisfied with having arrived by a very brief road at the very height of Jesuitical learning and plotting, he lost no time in bringing his probation to a close, by withdrawing himself at once and for ever from the exercises of St. Ignatius.

Taken as a whole, these revelations thus obtained contain little that is There is the same tedious and pompous verbiage in which the

new.

Society is ever accustomed to clothe its ambitious designs. Analyse all this carefully, and it resolves itself always into the same leading principles. Piety, perfect obedience, universal sway, unscrupulousness in regard to means. Even if you seek to find some details of how these principles are to be brought to act in individual cases, you still find that all resolves itself into the same bombastic generalities. There are some few exceptions, and of these we will avail ourselves. Take, for example, the views entertained by one of the Jesuits, who, it appears, had toiled in the great cause, in that susceptible field, Ireland.

And now, learn what is the baptism of fire, which, at each confession, I used to pour on the heads of my penitents in Ireland.

"Poor people!" I said to them, "how have they degraded you! they esteem you less than brutes. Look at these great landlords! They revel in wealth, they devour the land, they laugh at you, and in return for the wealth they draw from you they load you with contempt. And yet, if you knew how to count up your strength, you are stronger than they. Measure yourselves with them, man to man, and you will soon see what there is in them. It is nothing but your own stupidity that makes them so powerful."

Such was pretty nearly the substance of all my discourses to them. And when their confession was ended, I added, “Go your ways and do not be downhearted; you are white doves in comparison with those black and filthy crows. Take them out of their luxurious dwellings; strip them of their fine clothes, and you will find that their flesh is not even as good as your own. They do you gross wrong in two ways-they sully your faith and degrade your persons. If you talk of religious rights, the rights on which all others depend, yours come down to you direct from Jesus Christ; as eighteen centuries-and what centuries!-are there to testify for you. But they!-who is their father? One Luther, or Calvin, or a brutal Henry VIII. They reckon, at most, three centuries; and these they have dishonoured by numberless crimes, and by the blackest of vices! The Catholics alone are worthy to be free; whilst the heretics, slaves every one of them of Satan, have no rights of any kind. Impious as they are! did they not stigmatise as false the religion of their fathers? a religion which counted more than fifteen centuries. In other words, they declare all their ancestors damned, and believe that they alone are saved."

The same father designates O'Connell by the name of "chosen vessel." So with many other rampant Utopianisms, in which we cannot find so much to blame as many of the antagonists of Jesuitism do. The aim of the Jesuists has always avowedly been to establish a universal theocracy-to win over the heathen-to train a rising generation in submission and obedience, and to undermine and sap the Reformation. To accomplish this they adopt a system which, in its generalities, is not much more exceptionable than that which is pursued by many temporal authorities in the acquirement and the retention of power-especially in our revolutionary times. The truly objectionable part of the Jesuit system is exactly that which the abbate passes over most tenderly, the enslaving of minds and consciences, the perpetuity of ignorance and bigotry. Another curious thing in the abbate's revelations is, that whereever he makes a point in bringing out a clear and distinct general principle, he always quotes a previous authority to sanction it. Some people might be ill-natured enough to think that the text did not serve more to illustrate the quotation, than the quotation the text.

Be this, however, as it may, the strong point on which the abbate attacks the Jesuits, and the most novel, is their immorality. On this subject he is as unsparing as he is detailed in his revelations.

Here is a

parable by which a reverend confessor soothed the conscience of a fair penitent.

"Two fathers had each a son. These youths had a passion for the chase. One of the fathers was severe, the other was mild and indulgent. The former positively forbade his son the enjoyment of his favourite pursuit; the latter, calling his son to him, thus addressed him :- I see, my son, that it would cost you much to renounce your favourite sport; meanwhile, there is only one condition on which I can allow you to indulge it; namely, that I may have the satisfaction of seeing that your affection and zeal for me increase in proportion to my indulgence.' What followed? The young man to whom the chase had been forbidden, followed it in secret, and at the same time became more and more estranged from his father, until all intercourse was broken off between them; whilst the other redoubled his attentions to his father, and showed him every mark of duty and affection."

If the lady could understand the bearing of this Jesuitical advice, the reader may possibly do the same. It becomes monstrous, however, when we see the text of St. Paul perverted, to attest the right to have a sisterwife, and David quoted as an example of polygamy. The Jesuits consider confession to be the foundation-stone of the Catholic edifice, and confession cannot exist without celibacy-yet celibacy is not a natural state of things. Hence Cardinal Bellarmin said, "For those who have made a vow of continence, it is a greater crime to marry than to give themselves up to incontinence." Jesuits also make a distinction between what they term "a successive and invisible polygamy and an interior and spiritual celibacy." One of the fathers spoke of the "Sisters of Charity" as follows:

I refer (he says) to the Sisters of Charity! charming women, who owe it to us not to forget that "well-ordered charity begins at home." I have visited and been intimate with many of them in different countries. They are very accessible and very confiding; almost all whom I have known have spoken to me of their secret sorrows. I have listened to their complaints against priests and monks, -as if they expected our hearts to be as tender and as ardent as their own! It is my opinion that these are the sort of nuns adapted to our own times. I wish, indeed, it were possible to lighten the yoke of all the rest (allegerire il giogo dell' altre), who are condemned unnecessarily and uselessly to see nothing all their lives but one little patch of sky and one little patch of earth; and what is still worse, to remain always shut up together, seeing the same eternal faces without any possibility of removing to another convent, even when such a change appears reasonable. I would have the cloister abolished altogether, so that there might be less difficulty, less ceremony in approaching them. What a spring of cheerfulness for the poor hearts of these maidens! What an opportunity for them to vary, if not their pleasures, at least their griefs! The Sisters of Charity have this advantage.

But we have followed these revelations as far as propriety will permit. We cannot accompany the author into the mysteries of the Hospital of St. Roch, as developed by himself and M. Poujoulat. It is sufficient that we have assisted in giving them publicity to a certain extent, as in duty bound to do, by the ties which attach us to our own church system, and by the imperious necessity that always exists of exposing fraud and immorality, when it assumes the most dangerous of all masks-that of piety and perfection. M. Victor Considérant has lent his name and pen to the abbate's revelations for other purposes-to exhibit in its odious nakedness what he calls "the pseudo-Christianity, the Christianity of the profit-seekers, of Theocracy of Despotism." We may be fairly allowed to doubt if the "true Christianity, the democratic Christianity," which he would exalt in its stead, would be a bit better-we should say rather worse.

CASTLE SCHILDHEISS.*

BY JOHN OXENFORD, ESQ.

I.

HOW THE PRINCESS ADELAIDE WAS SENT TO A CONVENT, AND HOW LONG SHE STOPPED THERE.

It would have been a blessed thing for Bohemia, if the convent at Ratisbon had been less famous, if the abbess had not been so renowned for her piety, and the nuns had not sung so extremely well, for in that case the Emperor of Germany would never have dreamed of sending his daughter there. This same daughter, whom historians call Adelaide, was a little, plump, blond personage, with large fair curls lying close to either cheek, and with a habit of looking out of the corners of her eyes, through very long lashes, which, if not commendable, was considered highly fascinating by the court. If had wished to choose a personage for a nun, the Princess Adelaide would have been the very last you would have selected; but the convent at Ratisbon was famous, and the emperor was crotchetty,-so to the convent she was sent. Many of the courtiers exchanged knowing glances at each other in the course of this proceeding, as if they foresaw a dreadful failure, but the emperor had a knack of turning his head sharply, and giving a look when it was least expected, so that the gentlemen around him were speedily obliged to reduce their countenances to their habitual wont of expression.

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The Princess Adelaide was received by the abbess with the greatest kindness, and was as miserable as possible. In words she thanked the good lady for her friendly attentions, but the corners of her lips seemed to quiver uneasily as she spoke, and her eyes became red and moist in spite of her efforts to smile. She regretted the festivities at her father's palace, she regretted the knights whom she had often seen gazing in admiration upon her, but chiefly she regretted the King of Bohemia, whom she had never seen at all, but of whom she had heard wonders. Indeed, from all we gather respecting the history of that monarch, the wonders she had heard of him were rather greater than those he had actually performed.

Bearing in mind this predilection of the Princess Adelaide for the yet unseen, but highly enamoured King of Bohemia, we do not feel as startled as we otherwise should have been, on hearing that when an illlooking wight introduced himself into the convent, telling the abbess that he was a messenger from the emperor, but privately informing the princess that he had come from the king, she did not fly into a violent rage, but was rather gratified than otherwise at the intelligence. The wight in question, whose name was Dietwold, and who was the king's tutor, gave her a most ardent epistle from his sovereign, and informed

This is no translation, but the subject is taken from a German popular story The last chapter will remind the reader of "Sir Guy the Seeker," in Lewis's ballad.

Nov.-VOL. LXXXIV. NO. CCCXXXV.

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