UC-NRLF 
 
 L 
 
 «B 2bM 535 
 
THE 
 
 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PUEITAIS. AID JESUITS 
 
 COMPARED. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR 
 
 "the society ^^J3f«ipiC^f>Jl|f^iW'^LLEGIATE AND 
 THEOIJ^lt «St^l,lg4 AT i^^EWEST," 
 
 [UUIVBESITT 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHT, ETC., YALE COLLEGE. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD, 
 
 BRICK-CHURCH CHAPEL, CITY-HALL SQUARE, OPPOSITE THE CITY-HALL. 
 
 1851. 
 
L^ 
 
 4- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 •-^-9 
 
 Page. 
 
 Introduction 3 
 
 The Jesuits Characterized 4 
 
 The Puritans " 15 
 
 The Jesuits as Educators 19 
 
 Their Influence in Arresting the Keformation 24 
 
 Later History of the Society 35 
 
 Protestant Institutions 43 
 
 They Educate the Masses 44 
 
 Their Eeligious Character 47 
 
 Jesuit and Puritan Institutions in this Country 49 
 
 Advantages of Jesuit Schools 52 
 
 " Protestant " 60 
 
 Will the Jesuits be felt in this Country 73 
 
 Objections Considered 81 
 
 Conclusion 92 
 
 I 
 
^ OF TBI ^ f^ 
 
 [UNIVERSITY; 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 " The Jesuit" and ^' the Puritan" are names of prin- 
 ciples rather than of men. They do not so appropriately 
 designate sects and parties, as they describe opposite 
 tendencies in character and institutions. These prin- 
 ciples and tendencies are not, on the one hand, confined 
 to " the Society of Jesus," nor on the other, to the 
 Puritan party ; though they are most perfectly repre- 
 sented in each. The Romish church was the natural 
 mother of the Jesuit ; his principles and spirit were 
 already in being within her pale. He only separated 
 them from their incongruous and inconsistent elements 
 of good, and applied them with a consistency that was 
 fearfully rigid. It would seem, that every peculiarity 
 by which the Romish system is distinguished from 
 the Christianity of the New Testament, is represented 
 in the society of Loyola. On the contrary, the Puri- 
 tan is no more than a consistent Protestant. His prin- 
 ciples are those, and only those, which gave being and 
 life to the Reformation. He has only understood 
 
4 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 them more clearly, applied them more consistently, and 
 acted them out with a more heroic spirit. 
 
 It will be important to keep in mind the import 
 of these names, as thus explained, in the comparison 
 which we propose to institute between the Puritan and 
 the Jesuit systems of education. This only will save us 
 from a narrow and partisan view of the subject, and will 
 lead us to study principles rather than names. Let it 
 be understood, then, once for all, that by the Jesuit sys- 
 tem of education, we intend the system most perfectly 
 represented in the institutions of the Jesuits, in what- 
 ever schools it is found, whether Protestant or Romish, 
 whether developed in whole or in part. By the Puritan 
 system we mean, the one generally adopted in Protestant 
 schools and universities, but which, in some of its fea- 
 tures^ has been most completely realized in the educa- 
 tional institutes of the Puritans. 
 
 § The Society of Jesus was formed in and for a crisis 
 in the history of the Eomish church. A sudden and 
 violent onset had been made upon this vast structure, 
 under which it seemed to be tottering to its fall. The 
 ignorance and dissoluteness of the priesthood, together 
 with the glaring inconsistency of certain dogmas of the 
 church, when tried by the common sense and conscience 
 of man, furnished the most convincing arguments, by 
 which the Reformers all over Europe were reasoning 
 out the essential corruption and error of the entire sys- 
 tem. These Reformers were able debaters and fervent 
 preachers. Their intellectual activity had been quick- 
 ened into surprising energy by their new religious life, ; 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 5 
 
 and they had been trained in the schools that had stid- 
 denly sprung into being in the very heat of the earliest 
 conflicts. The strong supports of Rome, political power, 
 ancient custom, and priestly domination, were giving way 
 before influences stronger than them all — the convinced 
 reason and the believing faith of the individual man. In 
 Germany, the tide of victory had turned for llie Re- 
 formers. England had broken with the pontifi". In 
 France, in Switze^-land, and the Low Countries, powerful 
 influences were working with amazing energy beneath the 
 surface of society. Even in Italy and Spain, able and 
 conscientious ecclesiastics saw and confessed the corrup- 
 tions of the church, and believed more than they dared 
 to utter. The whole of the vast and mighty fabric, im- 
 posing from its gigantic structure, venerable for its age, 
 and consecrated by the associations of centuries, seemed 
 to be weakened in every part, and trembling in every 
 wall and pillar, ere it should fall in upon itself, a mighty 
 ruin. 
 
 At this crisis the plan of this wonderful society was 
 presented to the Pope. His Holiness, as the Jesuits 
 solemnly assert, saw in it the only, and perhaps the suf- 
 ficient means to stay and turn back the impending evil, 
 and exclaimed, " The finger of God is in it."* 
 
 * Cretineau Joly, Vol. i., p. 143. This work is entitled, His- 
 toire Religieuse, Politique et Litt^raire de la Compagnie de Jesus, 
 compos^e sur les documents in^dits et authentiques. 5 vols. 8vo. 
 Paris, 1845. This, it will be observed, is our principal authority. 
 Among the multitude of books written for and against the 
 Jesuits, it seemed desirable to refer to those written in their 
 
D EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 (The society was constituted in the year 1540, by a 
 bull from Pius III.^ Its zealous founder had already 
 spent years of enthusiastic fervor, and concentrated 
 thought, in maturing its principles. At the first mo- 
 ment of its organized existence, it was, in its most im- 
 portant features, the same which it has ever continued 
 to be. (it is true, its amazing efficiency, and the wide 
 extent of its influence, were neither of them anticipated 
 even in the^wiTdest dreams of Loyola^ Mad as he was, 
 he could never have been mad enough to dream, that he 
 had developed a power which should first educate the 
 youth of Europe, and then make kings and pontifis to 
 tremble upon uneasy thrones, or to disappear from the 
 seat of power, as at the whisper of an enchanter. As 
 the society was tested by actual trial, its hidden capaci- 
 ties and its secret energies were skilfully developed by 
 Loyola's able successors; new elements of power were 
 added to it, and the harmonious working of its several 
 parts was carefully adjusted, till its power and perfection 
 astonished as well as delighted its able architects and 
 directors. Nay, we cannot but suppose, that its head 
 was now and then struck with terror* at the awful energy 
 
 favor, rather than to those which were written avowedly against 
 the society. It seemed also better to select the most recent work, 
 as likely to be the most able and plausible. No writer would be 
 likely, at this day, to write largely in the interest of the Jesuits, 
 without having access to the most abundant stores of informa- 
 tion, and without being duly instructed how to put the most 
 favorable construction on the weak points in their history. 
 
 * As, for instance, when a general of the society said to the 
 duke of Brancas, " See, my lord, from this room — fVom this room 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 7 
 
 of the machinery which he essayed to guide, as the elec- 
 trician will at times watch with a solicitude approach- 
 ing to dread, the slumbering power that he has so quietly 
 accumulated in the frail enginery by his side. 
 f The constitution and spirit of the society are essen- 
 tially military^ Ignatius had been a soldier, and he 
 carried all the soldier into his new order. He aimed to 
 bring the ardor, the daring, and above all, the discipline 
 of the camp, to do their utmost in the service of the 
 church. /The name^_of^the he ad oi the order ,was Gen- 
 eral. All the g rada tions and divisions were military^ 
 The authority of each superior over his subordinates 
 was complete and despotic. Every member, from the 
 highest to the lowest, vowed the most implicit obedience 
 to any and to every order from the General. It was 
 obeyed on the instant, whether it reached them by day 
 or by night, in sickness or in health. It 'was obeyed to 
 the letter, whether it sent them to the North or the 
 South, to a point near at hand or to the opposite side of 
 the globe, whether it would conduct them into apparent 
 safety or certain death. {The Professed^ who were the 
 society proper, had made a solemn vow to God, in the 
 presence of the Holy Virgin, and tqjheir General, who 
 was to them in thej^iaceof God * )\j.i was a vow of per- 
 petual povertyTcliastity, and obedience.! This obedience 
 
 I govern, not only Paris, but China; not only China, but the 
 whole world, without any one knowing how it is managed." 
 
 * Je fais profession et promets ^ Dieu tout-puissant * * * et el 
 vous rdv^rend P^re General, qui tenez la place de Dieu.— Cv^t. 
 Joly, I. 110. 
 
a EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OP THE 
 
 extended to the use of the time, to the disposal of the 
 person, to the direction of the studies, to the control of 
 every thought and feeling of the man. The subject was 
 rendered up to the will of the superior — as was he to his 
 superior — not merely as the soldier surrenders his ex- 
 ternal self, nor even as the devotee yieldf his conscience 
 to the direction of his confessor, but in his entire being; 
 to be in body and spirit, in thought and feeling, nay, in 
 look and smile, the passive executor of his decrees, and 
 a machine controlled by his touch. Most frightful is 
 the truth which is uttered of this society by one of its 
 latest historians, that 'fit dex^lopedjiuman devj^t^dness 
 to its extremest capacity, and made of the most absolute 
 obedience, alever, tKe incessant and ever present activ^ity 
 of whtch, must necessarily take the place of every otlier 
 species of power."* [EflRciency was the law and the life 
 of this society.^ The accomplishment of its objects, in 
 the glory and strength of the order, for the defence and 
 enlargement of Rome, was the one aim to which every 
 rule was shaped, and by which it was directed. For this 
 reason, the authority of every superior was made abso- 
 lute. For this, the novice was broken down to the per- 
 formance of the most servile offices, and to every species 
 of austerity — to fasting, to watchings, to long continued 
 meditations and prayers. These austerities were no 
 end in themselves, for it was never Loyola's design to 
 train a company of painful ascetics, the only products of 
 whose energy should be bloody flagellations, marvellous 
 fastings, and unnatural self-tortures. 
 
 * Cr6t. Joly, I. 57. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 9 
 
 No, the men whom he would train were to be men 
 for active service. So far as austerities would fit them 
 for this object, so far were they imposed, even to the ex- 
 tremest limit of human endurance. Whenever they 
 interfered with this, they were despised and rejected. 
 ff they weakened the body for labor, or the mind for 
 study, they were strictly forbidden. The daily devo- 
 tions of the church, usually esteemed of the highest 
 consequence and enforced with the most rigid punctili- 
 ousness, were not enjoined upon the Jesuit priests. They 
 were even forbidden, if they would interfere with any 
 active duty. As each member must be understood by 
 his superior and the society, both in his weakness and 
 in his strength, it was made his duty to the order to 
 lay open to his confessor his most secret thoughts, not 
 only upon spiritual themes, but upon every topic what- 
 soever. Those thoughts which reserve would hide, those 
 feelings at which nature would blush, were to be re- 
 vealed, not merely to one, but to all. All those secret pro- 
 cesses of thought and emotion which are a man's most 
 sacred self, were subjected to the familiar and rude in- 
 spection of hundreds of men. That escape from in- 
 spection might be impossible, that disguise might be 
 precluded, and that the whole society might be fused 
 into a common mass of co-operating and harmonious 
 minds, each man was set as a spy over his fellow; every 
 look and smile, and even the lifting of the eyelids was 
 to be accounted for. Loneliness and individuality were 
 impossible, or rather they were absorbed and overborne 
 by the force of an omnipotent and omnipresent organi- 
 1* 
 
10 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 zation. If one was sent on secret errands, or dispatched 
 upon a delicate or difficult service, be might lay aside 
 the dress of the order, and assume any disguise, how- 
 ever unseemly. The Jesuit could perform priestly du- 
 ties in any diocese or cure. He might, at any moment, 
 take the place of any ecclesiastic to any man or woman. 
 He could preach, confess, or absolve wherever it might 
 seem expedient. Even the highest and most awful 
 function of the sovereign Pontiff, that of granting dis- 
 pensation from religious duties, from the most sacred 
 moral obligations and the plain commands of God, was 
 delegated to the General, that conscience need interpose 
 neither scruple nor delay to the execution of any mea- 
 sure, or to the prompt efficiency of the instrument in 
 his hands. To secure this efficiency, the novice was 
 obliged to pass through the most sinL'^ular training* 
 
 * See the Novitiate, or a year among the English Jesuits: a 
 personal narrative, &c., by Andrew Steinmetz : Harper & Brothers. 
 1846. 
 
 If any man desires to understand what kind of being a Jesuit 
 is made to be, especially in his internal self, and by what horribly 
 unnatural process he is trained, let him read this volume. Wc 
 confess that it gave us new conceptions of the possibility of a 
 system so formidable and detestable, while yet it exalted our esti- 
 mate of the masterly skill that has been expended upon its per- 
 fection. If it should be suggested, that this is a romance and 
 not a history, we have only to say, that if it is not true, it de- 
 serves to be, and the Jesuits will certainly make it true, by 
 adopting the system which it describes, for none could be more 
 admirably litted for the production of such men as that society 
 boasts of training. 
 
\ 
 
 PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. II 
 
 which the skill of man ever devised, to annihilate what- 
 ever is individual in will or character in a human being. 
 It was not till after fifteen years of probation, under the 
 most searching espionage, and the severest tests of duty 
 and self-denial, that he was received into the lowest 
 order of the Professed^ and properly became a member 
 of the society. To render him still more efficient, he 
 was taught to forget country, home, and kindred in his 
 order; he was trained to a complete command of his 
 temper,* and to the entire concealment of his feelings. 
 The storm might rage ever so fiercely within, yet it was 
 to be masked by a countenance the most placid and 
 serene. The opinions might be ever so distinct and the 
 purposes ever so definite, yet on occasions, they were to 
 be masked under words of doubtful import, or withheld 
 by a cautious and dexterous reserve. 
 
 The Jesuit labored for years under teachers, who 
 had themselves been trained by the most skilful masters 
 to attain every grace of manner and every accomplish- 
 ment of art and of science ; and more than all, he was 
 furnished with a convenient and corrupting casuistry 
 which has passed into a proverb, and has been visited by 
 the abhorrence of Christendom. By this aid, he could 
 be easy in his dealings with those who were important to 
 his plans, and by indulgent compliances, could win the bar- 
 barian from his idols, or gain the rich and powerful her- 
 etic to the church. While the individual was depressed 
 
 * Read the advice given by Ignatius to the representatives 
 of the order at the Council of Trent.— Cr^t. Joly, I, 258. See 
 also 269. 
 
12 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 and crushed, that he might subserve the efficiency of the 
 order, in all those respects in which he did not conflict 
 with this efficiency, he was encouraged and even compelled 
 to make the utmost of his powers. As an independent 
 and personal end, he was well nigh reduced to nothing- 
 ness ; but as a separate organ of a greater whole, he was ^ 
 taught to elevate himself to the highest possible import- d 
 ance, and to develope himself to his utmost capacity for 
 perfection. His intellect was trained by a severe pre- 
 paratory discipline. It was employed laboriously and 
 constantly in eloquence and disputation, in persuasion 
 and intrigue. His natural advantages of person or 
 disposition were polished and perfected by art. All that 
 he lost in conscious independence, and in individual 
 power, was supplied, so fiir as possible, by the satisfaction 
 of working the power of the great organism of which he 
 was a director as well as a servant. What he yielded in 
 conscious self-respect and self-reliance, was supplied by 
 the proud delight of seeing and feeling that the myste- 
 rious resources of this organism were all the while 
 developed in astonishing results. Into this corporate 
 existence, did he so perfectly transfer his individual self, 
 that, though an organization, it seemed to have compressed 
 within its single self, all the personal life of the separate 
 souls of which it was composed. With its interest vibrat- 
 ed all his sympathies, in all its movements did he feel 
 the thrill of his individual agency. In this society the 
 external rewards were the same. The dress and equipage 
 of the General were originally no more costly than those 
 of the humblest brother. The absolute domination that 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 13 
 
 rested upon each and all, came at last to be esteemed a 
 support rather than a burden. Against the espionage 
 which searched each heart with its ever-present watch- 
 fulness, the Jesuit would think of objecting no sooner 
 than he would complain of the All-seeing eye of Grod. 
 To a man trained for years to a life of such restraints, 
 the restraints themselves become first a dependence, and 
 then a necessity. 
 
 One other fact deserves, to be noticed. The Jesuit 
 was a devoted Romanist. The supremacy of the Pope 
 and the divine authority of the church were to him un 
 questioned and unquestionable verities. The necessity, 
 the aims, nay, the very life and being of his order were 
 based upon them. If these truths were even to be ques- 
 tioned, the society must cease to be. The Jesuit was 
 trained to serve and to obey the church, not to investi- 
 gate the ground of her authority. He was, indeed, 
 taught to be a reasoner. No man was more acute than 
 he in drawing nice distinctions, none more adroit in 
 constructing a plausible argument. But he used this 
 power for the defence only of the church. He did not 
 so much as dream of calling into question her claims, not 
 even to justify them to his own honest mind. His faith 
 was never the result of conviction, for to raise those pre- 
 vious questions, which are necessary to a rational faith, 
 would be to commit a mortal sin. To whisper them to 
 others, to breathe them to himself, would involve him in 
 suspicion, and terminate in his ruin. As a servant of the 
 churchy he might think and argue and inquire. There 
 was no boldness of investigation nor extent of research, 
 
14 
 
 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 for which he was not prepared that he might do her 
 bidding ; but to study and think, that he might satisfy 
 self-awakened doubts or questions, it were as easy for 
 him to breathe in water, or to swim in air. 
 
 In respect to politics, his position was not of necessity 
 fixed. He knew but one earthly government, and that 
 was the government of his order. He believed in no 
 politics, except the politics of his society, directed as 
 they were for the honor and service of the church. The 
 interests of this Civitas Dei, this visible kingdom of 
 God, were superior to the plans and projects of any 
 earthly politician. If these last conflicted with the first, 
 they were to be shattered in pieces as by the straight and 
 onward march of a cannon-shot, or skilfully circumvent- 
 ed by the wondrous resources of a practised society of 
 intriguers. Court could be set against court, kingdom 
 against kingdom, till the most skilful diplomatists were 
 perplexed by the new and inexplicable web, which had 
 been woven around them by an unseen hand. Plans, the 
 most carefully considered, in which were embarked all 
 that wealth and power could furnish, were suddenly 
 baffled by an ambushed foe, whose hiding-place could not 
 be traced. The Jesuit, in fact, most frequently sympa- 
 thized with the intensest despotisms of Europe, but it 
 was only because these despotisms were the most faithful 
 friends of his order and of Rome. The free spirit, tliat 
 was beginning to struggle after chartered rights, a re- 
 strained prerogrative, or a free commonwealth, was usually 
 his abhorrence, because the same spirit tended to weaken 
 the reverence felt for the church, and to become hardened 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 15 
 
 into the stubborn and refractory resistance of individual 
 convictions. But if a monarch strengthened himself 
 too haughtily against the authority of Rome, the Jesuit 
 knew how to waken against him the unseen spirit of 
 sedition, or if he were suspected of leaning to heresy, 
 the Jesuit did not scruple to preach the lawfulness of 
 tyrannicide in the name of liberty and the people's rights. 
 ^ The history of Puritanism claims next to be con- 
 sidered. It is a history far different from that of the soci- 
 ety of Ignatius. This interest did not spring into being 
 at once, for it was not the device of man. It was developed 
 by gradual advances and a continuous growth, for it was 
 the work of God. The movement commenced with the 
 Reformation, for the positions taken by the earliest 
 Protestants, implied every principle which the Puritan 
 afterwards developed. The Lutheran was not, however, 
 a Puritan. He did, indeed, protest against a corrupted 
 church and planted his foot upon the revealed word, but 
 he did not learn from that word, that the church was 
 designed to be independent of the State, nor that 
 Christianity secures to man his rights, as truly as it 
 prescribes his duties. Nor did he see that the form by 
 which the church is to be governed was not divinely 
 prescribed ; nor again that the same substantial truth 
 may be expressed in different creeds. The Huguenot 
 was not a Puritan, for though gallant in the field, 
 chivalrous in his bearing, courteous in his manners, and 
 martyr-like in his resignation, he adhered too fondly to 
 that feudal spirit which Christianity and freedom were 
 united to disintegrate and destroy. The English Non- 
 
16 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 conformist was not wholly a Puritan, for he but half 
 understood his own principles. At times he was narrow 
 in his views, bigoted in his intolerance, and fanatical 
 in his spii-it. But he dared to resist the power of king 
 and church on the faith of his allegiance to a power that 
 is higher than they, and to try the tenure by which each 
 claimed obedience, by an appeal to charters, to principles 
 and the sword. He dared to reform institutions and 
 laws which were perverted and outworn. The New- 
 England pilgrim had not entirely worked out the 
 problem of applying his master-principles, nor did he 
 fully understand the spirit he was of And yet, these 
 classes of Protestants, were all moving in the same 
 direction, though they did not know the end to which 
 they were tending. Their spirit and principles were 
 one, although the import and result of these principles 
 were in part unknown to themselves. 
 
 What was this peculiar spirit, what the character 
 which it formed, and what the principles which it de- 
 veloped ? Especially what were they as contrasted with 
 those of the Jesuit ? 
 
 The freedom and independence of the individual 
 man characterized the Puritan, as obedience and de- 
 pendence distinguished the Jesuit. It was not, how- 
 ever, a lawless freedom, but a liberty implied in that 
 separate responsibility, which each man holds to himself 
 and to his God. The Puritan must judge of a law, to 
 know why he must obey it. No authority and no 
 organization steps between himself and his conscience. 
 Hence, as he stands or falls for himself, he is independent 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPAREI>»^;^[*J^ 
 
 in his bearing, self-relying in his character, and marked 
 in his individuality. This is not because he scorns the 
 restraints of society or of law, but because he is over- 
 mastered by a restraint that is higher, — not that he 
 despises authority, but that he reverences so deeply the 
 authority that is highest of all. This feeling of responsibi- 
 lity, leads him to a personal and thorough investigation, an 
 investigation which is not content till it has tested every 
 question at the highest tribunal. He calls in question 
 every truth, not because he is sceptical by nature, but 
 that he may distinguish the True from the False. He 
 must examine all Truth. He questions his own being, 
 the powers of his own soul, the existence and character 
 of God, the authority of conscience, the reason of this or 
 that duty, the evidence of a Divine Revelation, the ge- 
 nuineness of the text, the exactness of its meaning. He 
 calls in question the tenure of kings and magistrates, the 
 right by which they bear the sword, the use or abuse of 
 the power entrusted to their hands. When he is convinc- 
 ed, no man believes so strongly, for he is strong in the 
 might of his own convictions ; no man so reverent, for he 
 has worshipped in the immediate presence of Truth. 
 Hence, in action, he is efficient, direct and daring. He 
 is efficient, not because he has been broken into mecha- 
 nical habits by the drilling of years, but because he 
 must do the bidding of his conscience and his Judge. 
 He is direct, because the word of the Lord within him 
 bids him to go, and he is daring, because he fears him 
 only " who can destroy both body and soul." The free- 
 dom and "the private judgement" of the Puritan do 
 
18 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 not, however, isolate him from his fellow-men, nor hinder 
 him from acting in unison with others. His convictions 
 consent to the value of earthly and spiritual societies, 
 and his conscience compels him to sacrifice to their 
 order and well-being, his selfish and private interests. 
 It is true, he is not taken into an organization, as an 
 inert atom, that receives its life from the central law of 
 the whole, but he himself consecrates to his family, his 
 country, and the church, all that he can do or suffer. 
 Hence, in society is he stronger than any other man, 
 because he contributes the strength of an independent 
 intellect and an individual will A union of elements, 
 like this, is as much mightier than that of less in- 
 dependent spirits, as one of Cromwell's regiments was 
 stronger than a llussian brigade. But if the organiza- 
 tion becomes tyrannical or corrupt, then is it disowned 
 as untrue to itself, and no longer binding on the man. 
 It is reformed, if possible, by lawful means, or it is 
 overthrown to make room for another and a better 
 society. As the condition of man is ever changing, so, in 
 his view, should organizations change. For this reason, 
 the Puritan believes in no fixed institutions, to be re- 
 tained as petrified memorials of the past, but in those 
 which are ever growing into a more perfect life, and which 
 adapt themselves to the changing wants of man. Hence 
 is he by nature a Reformer. He is intent upon chang- 
 ing old laws, old institutions, and old habits that they 
 may meet new exigencies and the new characters of 
 those for whose benefit they exist. 
 
 Thus far have we considered the principles and the 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 19 
 
 genius of these opposite systems. We will next inquire 
 what has been the actual influence of each on systems 
 and schools of education. 
 
 ^(The most important services for which the Jesuits 
 were trained, were those of missionary labor, the confes- 
 sional, diplomacy, and education^ This last was supe- 
 rior ia importance to all the others. It was foremost 
 in the view of the founders of the society, and it be- 
 came the mightiest agency that was wielded by the body. 
 The state of education in the church had been low. 
 The principle of dependence for salvation on a priestly 
 work, and on priestly authority, had wrought its appro- 
 priate result in intellectual stagnation. Literature and 
 art adorned the high places of society ; but earnest 
 thought and wakeful inquiry animated neither the pul- 
 pit nor the school. But when Protestantism began 
 then did Thought awake. The sluggish and mechanical 
 movements of society, its endurance of sensual and un- 
 lettered priests, and its unquestioning reception of 
 authoritative dogmas were now at an end. Schools of 
 learning sprung into being, in which the Scriptures were 
 studied in their original languages, and the principles of 
 the new faith were expounded by acute and eloquent 
 professors. Other schools were multiplied to prepare 
 the youth for their more advanced studies. The doc- 
 trine of Justification by Faith did not end with its appli- 
 cation to the conscience. It drew after it the inference, 
 that if every man must stand or fall by his personal 
 faith in the gospel, then the intellect and the heart must 
 understand and consent to this gospel. The conse- 
 
20 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 quences to Rome began to be alarming. The spirit of 
 inquiry was moving witliin her inclosures. It would 
 not be rebuked by authority. It would soon despise, 
 and even loathe, an ignorant priesthood. If no schools 
 were provided by the church, myriads would rush to 
 those infected with he4sy. To meet this crisis, the so- 
 ciety of Jesus stood forth as an organized educational 
 establishment, and it began with active zeal the work of 
 training both teachers and pupils, t Its Religious zeal, its 
 proselyting fervor, its perfect discipline, its omniscient 
 and omnipresent power, its control by a single mind, its 
 unequalled facilities for making the skill, the art, and the 
 science of one of its members, the possession of all, were 
 combined and concentrated upon the work of educa- 
 ting the youth of Christendom, in order to hold them 
 to their ancient Faith, or to turn them back from heresy.) 
 {This they hoped to effect, in ^art, by occupying the 
 awakened mind of Europe with the delights of classical 
 learning, the graces of rhetoric, the subtleties of logic, and 
 the labors of busy erudition, and thus diverting it from 
 too active an interest in^the truths of Protestantism.^ 
 Then they would arm the defenders of Rome with a 
 store of well-considered arguments, and train them to 
 their skilful use. (They aspir ed, also, to gain for the 
 church a splendid fame for wisdom and Jjeiin:B.ing. J ^ut 
 most of all^ did they aim, delibera<;^ly and^teadlly aim, 
 to gain aj)ersonal influence over Jhe youth of JEurope^^so 
 as to be able to mould and use them at tbeir willJThey 
 were an organized society, numerous yet compact, every 
 where present, yet never beyond the reach or voice of 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 21 
 
 their general. ( They selected their qrcQ- instruments 
 from their own seminaries, and they trained them too J 
 Their energies were concentrated on the single object of 
 becoming the ablest and the most attractive teachers of 
 Christendom. If an able and influential college were 
 needed in an important city, they could call one into be- 
 ing in a week, and furnish it with the teachers exactly 
 fitted for the place. If a rival was to be set up to 
 another already existing they could find, or make, abler 
 and more attractive instructors than this possessed. 
 (^The^tudy of the^est methods of instructio n occ upied 
 their earnest attention^ (What they discovered they 
 could test in a thousand ways ; what they approved 
 could be set in operation in their thousand school^. All 
 that one generation had learned could be secured for 
 the next, (For living teachers were all the while training 
 living teachers.^ Thus did this society become one ex- 
 tended normal school, (jt inventeiiand applied what we 
 call by that name. ) At one period it prepared the school- 
 books for Catholic Europe. It edited and illustrated 
 the classics. /It stimulated^its pupil s by rew ards, and 
 prizes, and commemorations, fit studied to make learn- 
 ing attractive. ) Its professors were patient and mild, 
 artful and eloquent ; yet learned, self-possessed, and 
 rarely at fault. Their scholars were thoroughly trained, 
 not merely in the heavier acquisitions of scholarship, but 
 finished in its lighter accomplishmentsk ^ The Jesuit 
 schools were also severely religious/ (I'hejx.moraLatmo- 
 sphere was pure, their j^otions_were rigid, and their 
 discjLgline exact. ) fThey were gratuitous The instruc- 
 
22 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 tion was imparted freely, not only to pupils of the 
 Romish faith, but to all who chose to attend upon it. 
 provision was made for classes who would listen to the 
 lectures of the teacher, but declined to submit them- 
 selves to the regime of the college^ Three descriptions 
 of pupils might be seen at every establishment. (J'irst, 
 were the candidates for the society itself;^those who 
 offered themselves, or were persuaded by others, to try 
 the hard yet attractive novitiate.) fNext, were the 
 Komish pupils, who resorted to these renowned schools 
 to acquire the learning and accomplishments which 
 should fit them to serve the state or the churchp /Last, 
 were the sons of Protestant parents, who could not re- 
 sist the attractions of these thronged institutions^ These 
 last were not the least, as objects of interest and impor- 
 tance. The majority of these pupils, of all classes, 
 would be men of commanding influence ; not a few 
 would be men of rank and wealth. Some of them would 
 be electors of the empire, others, proud and haughty 
 nobles, now and then would be present the heir to a 
 throne. The few thousands in Europ4 at that pe- 
 riod receiving an education, were the thousands, who, if 
 lost to the church, would carry the masses of their de- 
 pendents and retainers with them ; who, if gained, would 
 bind the next generation to E-ome. Out of this mass of 
 intellect and wealth and rank, the sagacious eye of the 
 teacher selects -one, who may be to the society a tower 
 of strength, and ^rthwith he plies all his art to gain 
 him. The eye that has once fastened upon its victim, 
 never after releases him from its gaze, till it has charmed 
 
PUIUTANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 23 
 
 him within the magic circle and made him forever sure. 
 Another is marked, as promising to be of the greatest 
 service, by remaining separate from the order, while yet 
 he shall be swayed by its influence. I Every noble of the 
 highest rank, every statesman of superior talents, who 
 shall have a Jesuit for his confessor and friend, will 
 through his conscience be so directed as to further the 
 ends of the society and the politics of the Holy See. 
 Another, an inquiring Protestant, is observed among the 
 charmed hearers who hang upon the lips of an eloquent 
 teacher. His eager yet self-relying spirit, his deferential 
 yet unbelieving air, his fixed yet not unshaken principles, 
 all mark him as a most attractive prize. iTo secure these 
 prizes of various worth — to gain one half of these youths 
 — (the Jesuit has vast and ready resources.^ First of 
 all, he can completely understand his man — can probe 
 his heart, trace out his secret thoughts and note his ac- 
 tions, by those hundred eyes, through which he can see 
 him in darkness,' watch him when alone, and gaze upon 
 him in sleep. He can summon to his aid and make the 
 partners of his plans, a hundred or a thousand helpers, 
 all of the same spirit with himself Through the re- | 
 sources of his extended organization, he can spread his 
 net in the remotest distance. He can surprise his vic- 
 tim, by some unexpected and strange event which shall 
 seem to answer his prayers, as the voice or vision of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 It was with these resources that the members of this 
 society, in the words of its Catholic historian, being 
 "masters of the present by the men whom they had 
 
^ 
 
 24 EDUCA'i.. \L SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 trained, and disposing of the future by the children who 
 were yet in their hands, realized a dream which no one, 
 till the times of Ignatius, had dared to conceive."* 
 
 ^ The question isl often asked, what agency arrested 
 the Reformation in its onward and apparently triumph- 
 ant advances? How happened it, that all these ad- 
 vances were on a sudden arrested, and as by the myste- 
 rious fiat of Fate, the dividing line was fixed between 
 the Catholic and Protestant sections of Europe, to re- 
 main till now almost precise^ where it was drawn, thirty 
 years after Luther had broken with Rome. The Catho- 
 lic wonders as he looks I ick upon the tide of destruc- 
 tive lava which rushed d . n upon the church and threat- 
 ened to desolate its fair aomains, when, in a moment, its 
 / liquid waves are hardened into rock. No one who re- 
 / fleets upon the resources of the Jesuits can hesitate to 
 pronounce them to be the cause, or can wonder at the 
 greatness of the effects. TTdou this point Catholic and 
 Protestant historians ht been singularly agreed. It 
 V is interesting to go back, and stand in the midst of 
 the conflict, and be present in the councils of the lead- 
 ^ ers on the Catholic side. We are at the council of 
 \ Trent, which had been called at the bidding of Catholic 
 J Europe, for the express purpose of devising an effectual 
 / remedy against the dangers that impended over the 
 L church. ' Its sessions had been protracted and adjourn- 
 
 * "Maitresdu present par es hommes fails, disposant de 
 I'avenir par les enfants, ils n» lis^ iin r6ve que jusqu' k Saint 
 
 Ignace, personne n'avait os6 concovoir Cr^t. Joly, I., 5." 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 25 
 
 ed for years. ) The Articles of Faith are at last agreed 
 upon, and the attention of the council is now turned to 
 the reformation of the church, that it may be saved 
 from disgrace and ruin. Th( iption of morals is 
 
 allowed to be deplorable, and a ^owledge that some- 
 
 thing efficient must be done. The Society of Jesus had 
 then existed for nearly a quarter of a century. It had 
 shown its capacity. It had developed and tested its re- 
 sources, (f In view of what it had shown itself able to do, 
 the council gave the church into its hands, for rescue 
 and defence.^) It was as when Napoleon sent, as his last 
 hope, the old Imperial guard L.to the desperate field at 
 Waterloo. Says our historian, J' It was required by the 
 honor of the assembled church to propose and to accept 
 efficacious measures, to extirpate the evil by its roots. 
 The evil was confessed by all. All sought for the rem- 
 edy with the same faith and the same earnestness. They 
 believed it necessary to go t9^ Itie source of the disorder, 
 and to give the chief attention to education. A multi- 
 tude of bishops demanded t^.at the Society of Jesus 
 should multiply every where its seminaries and its col- 
 leges. The Count of Lune, the ambassador of Philip 
 II., was most thoroughly acquainted with the state of 
 Germany and the Peninsula. The council interrogated 
 him as to the measures which ought to be adopted. ^ I 
 know only these two,' replied he ;^' train good preachers, 
 and propagate as far you can the Society of Jesus^ 
 Commendon, the Nuncio in !;^oland, when addressed in 
 his turn expresses himself '^\ the same terms, and re- 
 duced his opinion to writing that it might be sent to 
 2 
 
26 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 Rome. The ministers of the Emperor declare that the 
 introduction of reform among the German clergy would 
 "be attended with many difficulties, but they add, and we 
 translate from their very words, the Jesuits have shown 
 to Grermany what she can expect, for, by the probity 
 of their life, and by their sermons, they have preserved 
 and are even now preserving the Catholic religion. For 
 this reason, it cannot be doubted, that incredible fruits 
 will follow, if many colleges and gymnasia are estab- 
 lished, from which the church may draw a multitude of 
 laborers. But it is time to begin."* 
 
 /"This testimony was given 1563, nearly twenty-five 
 years after the society had begun its workj Let us now 
 go back to an earlier period and trace the progress of 
 its colleges through the several countries of Europe. 
 We begin with Spain and Portugal. It may be thought 
 that, in these countries, there was little need of the 
 Jesuits to provide against heresy, for, against that, the 
 inquisition would be a sufficient security. Much, however, 
 remained to be done in the revival of zeal for the church, 
 ^n the space of two years (from 1553 to 1555) the order 
 had advanced so rapidly, "that houses and colleges 
 seemed as by a miracle, to appear in the city.''\ The 
 Director needed only to stamp with his foot on^Spanish 
 soil and there sprung up, at once, edifices for the use of 
 the society.! After a short but sharp conflict with the 
 other religious orders, the society had possession of the 
 Peninsula. In France it encountered a vigorous oppo- 
 
 * Cr^t. Joly, I., 276-7. t Cr^t. Joly, I., 303. 
 

 PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 27 
 
 siticn, from the University and Parliament of Paris, 
 and from the regular clergy. The Gallican church was 
 true to itself in an earnest and continued opposition to 
 this intruder upon its rights. Notwithstanding this, the 
 society slowly gained a footing. It was adopted by the 
 Guises, and became their ready instrument during the wars 
 
 ( of the League, and was signally active and efficient through 
 jail that fiery struggle in which the Huguenots were at last 
 overthrown. In Germany, it first appeared in what are 
 now the Catholic states, but which then, were trembling 
 in the balance between Rome and Luther. At Ingol- . 
 
 '\Stadt, in 1550, Canisius was made Hector of the Univer- 
 sity already existing in that city. Before this, as we 
 are told,* " in all the Faculties, particularly in the higher 
 sciences, the reformers had succeeded in introducing a 
 method which was alike hostile to Logic and to Faith." 
 These disorders disappear at his presence. In 1551, he 
 goes to Vienna at the earnest entreaties of Ferdinand 
 the king of the Romans, and at his instance founds a 
 college. Before this time, " heresy had been making 
 extensive ravages throughout that kingdom. During 
 
 I more than twenty years not a person had been admit- 
 ted to the Holy Orders in the city of Vienna. There 
 was no longer a clergy, no longer priests worthy the 
 episcopate, and consequently religion ceased. The older i 
 ecclesiastics reluctantly resumed their earlier duties. 
 Some of them lived in the neglect of religion, others 
 were treated with contempt, because they spoke of it to 
 
 * Ci6t. Joly, I., 325. 
 
28 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 the people ; tlie majority had embraced some one of the 
 sects which divided Germany."*/ Canisius found it "ne- 
 cessary to commence the work from the foundation.) He 
 selected fifty young persons. He gathered them into a 
 house near the college, and there caused them to be edu- 
 cated after the principles prescribed by the G-eneral." 
 About this time he prepared his catechism for children, 
 which was used extensively throughout Germany as a 
 means of educating the youth in opposition to Protest- 
 antism. This ''has been translated into all languages, 
 . has been approved by the Holy See and by all the bish- 
 ops. It has passed through more than five hundred 
 editions. It was but a little work, yet it demonstrated 
 the truth so triumphantly, that the Protestants could 
 answer only by satires."! The letter in which Ferdi- 
 nand requests the preparation of this catechism, is 
 well worth study, as showing the sagacity with which 
 the prince discerns and describes the influence of the 
 Protestants and its causes, and proposes to contend 
 against them with their own weapons. The fame of the 
 Jesuits spreads quickly throughout Germany. They are 
 sent for from Transylvania, from Hungary by the Arch- 
 bishop of Strigonia, from Silesia by the Bishop of Bres- 
 lau, from Poland by the Polish ambassador at Vienna. 
 1^ Canisius "was the teacher of Germany.^ Catholic Ger- 
 many gave itself up to the Jesuits. To continue his 
 
 * Cr^t. Joljr, I., 326. 
 
 t Cr6t. Joly, I., 327. It will be kept in mind that these asser| 
 tions are from an ardent partisan of the Jesuits, and an enemy 
 of Protestantism. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 29 
 
 work, he tliought no means were so efficacious as to es- 
 tablish colleges. That of Vienna still prospered. In 
 1555, he founded another at Prague."* This college 
 was freely opened to the enemies of the faith. In 1550, 
 the foundation was laid for the Jesuits' college at Kome. 
 In 1553, it began to furnish instruction in Scholastic 
 Theology. (Ignatius, ever on the watch for the best me- 
 thods of instruction, preferred above any other that 
 adopted by the University of Paris, and procured all 
 his teachers from thencey Instruction was given gratui-V 
 tously and with eloquence to all who chose to receive it.' 
 " It was not a seminary for the Society of Jesus alone^ 
 it was a house, at which every child and every man could 
 receive instruction and pursue the entire course." In 
 1555, the first company of a hundred scholars distributed 
 themselves throughout Europe. Two hundred others 
 took their place. In 1557, there were among its scho- . 
 lastics Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Greeks, 
 Ulyrians, Belgians, Scotch, and Hungarians. These 
 Scholars, though from so many different countries, were 
 all subjected to the same rule. They conversed, now in 
 the language of their native country, now in Latin, 
 sometimes in Greek and Hebrew. On Sundays and fes- 
 tival days, they employed their hours of recreation in 
 visiting hospitals, prisons, and the sick. They made ex- 
 cursions into the Sabine country and ancient Latium, 
 but these excursions, which would have been pleasant 
 as a relief from study, had an object more Christian. 
 
 * Cr6t. Joly, L, 330. 
 
 k 
 
30 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 They evangelized, tliey confessed, tbcy catechised. 
 Every thing in their life, even the most innocent plea- 
 sure, was referred to Grod. Here were educated youths 
 " full of the future" like Possevin, Bellarmin, and Aqua- 
 viva. Here instructed Avillaneda and Tolet.^ The Je- 
 suits, formed under these great masters, spread them- 
 selves throughout the world. ) In 1564, Laynez, the 
 second general of the order, devised the public distribu- 
 tion of prizes, with much pomp and public display, which. 
 * custom was followed by the several colleges of the so- 
 ciety, and by the literary world. In 1576, Bellarmin 
 began at this college his celebrated controversial dis- 
 courses. In 1584, the number of its scholars was 2107,| 
 and it retained as great a number for several successive 
 years. Here were trained Pope Urban the 8th, Inno- 
 cent the 10th, the 12th, the 13th, and Clement the 9th, 
 10th, nth, and 12th. "It was at last no longer the 
 college of the Jesuits, but it became the college of the 
 entire world, for all the other establishments at Rome 
 did themselves the honor of being only appendages to 
 this. /Rome had the supremacy in education^ It is 
 pretended that the Catholic Church was the enemy of 
 light, and yet in this single city there existed fourteen 
 schools, which besides their particular courses, attended! 
 upon those of the Jesuits. By the simple enumeration 
 of their names, it will be seen in what way the Holy See 
 answered the reproach of darkness and of ignorance, 
 which falsehood had so often urged against her. The 
 colleges of the English, the Greeks, the Scotch, the Ma- 
 ronites, and the Neophytes ; the colleges Capranica — 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 31 
 
 Fuccioli — Mattel — Pamphili — Salviati — Ghislieri— -the 
 German college and the college G-ymnasio, constituted 
 this brilliant constellation."* 
 
 The history of the German college at Kome is still 
 more interesting, especially as the cAuses of its founda- 
 tion, its successes, and its influence upon Germany are 
 given so frankly and so much at length by the historian 
 of the order. t^ "Heresy had bitten Germany to the 
 core. 1 Every year the church saw one of the German 
 provinces detaching itself from the centre of unity, in 
 order to follow Luther and his disciples. To defend 
 this empire, one of the most beautiful gems in the crown 
 of St. Peter, Loyola had directed to Germany all the 
 efforts of Lefevre, Bobadilla, and Lejay ; of Salmeron, 
 and Canisius ;" but in vain. He then conceived the pro- 
 ject of a special college, in which those Germans who 
 could be wrested from heresy, might be educated at 
 Rome. He could command priests from Italy, Spain, 
 France, and even from beyond the Rhine, but he needed 
 others ; those who, full of life and ardor, would carry 
 back into their own country the zeal with which he 
 would animate them. " Upon these priests, the excel- 
 lence of whose virtues would make them missionaries, 
 and the perfection of whose studies would make them 
 preachers and theologians, he hung his hopes for the 
 safety of Germany. He calculated wisely, as the Lu- 
 therans themselves confess." This college was founded 
 at a time of pecuniary distress^ The Pope subscribed 
 
 * Cr^t. Joly, I., 347. t Cr^t. Joly, I, 347-359. 
 
 X 
 
32 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 an annual^ endowment of HOO jollf^:s \\ the cardinals, 
 each of them, a less sum, and^the entire amount of sub- 
 scriptions raised in a few minutes was 8500 dollars 
 a year, which in our day would be equivalent to seven 
 times the same sum.) This college was opened in October, 
 in 1553, with eighteen 4)upilsJ In the Koman college 
 only Greek, Latin, and Hebrew were taught, but stu- 
 dents who were to contend against Lut^ranism needed 
 a peculiar training, and hence in the German college, 
 chairs were established in Philosophy, Theology, and the 
 study of the Scriptures. The influence of this college upon 
 Germany is thus summed up : — Germany furnished its 
 youth for this college, and received them again as well in- 
 structed priests, who, on their return, imparted what 
 they had learned to their families and friends. The re- 
 formers had reproached the clergy with dissoluteness, 
 but against these ecclesiastics, this reproach was impos- 
 sible. /^They had accused the regular clergy of celebrat- 
 ing the offices of the church with an indifference amount- 
 ing almost to contempt :") but these German students 
 were so devout before the altar that they secured new 
 reverence to its sacred mysteries. They had accused the 
 clergy of avarice, but these scholars were disinterested 
 and liberal. The priests had been suspected of ignorance. 
 Over them the heretics had secured an easy triumph, 
 by wresting passages from the Scriptures. They had 
 challenged the priests to argument, the priests had been 
 silent, and the multitude had abandoned them to follow 
 the Lutherans. The first pupils from the German col- 
 lege dissipated these notions. The people saw them 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 33 
 
 confound the l-ogic of the sectaries. They knew they 
 came from Rome, the source of all learning, and they 
 received them as philosophers. " To this day it is im- 
 possible to appreciate the advantages of every sort, which 
 the Catholic Religion has derived from their agency." 
 The greatest houses of the empire, had their representa- 
 tives at this college every scholastic year. The most 
 illustrious nafaes of Germany, of Italy, and other coun- 
 tries, are to be read upon its catalogues. At the end of 
 the 18th century one could count twenty-four cardi- 
 nals. Pope Gregory XY., six electors, nineteen princes, 
 twenty-one archbishops and prelates, one hundred and 
 twenty-one titulary bishops, one hundred bishops in 
 partibus wfidelium I forty-six abbots or generals of the 
 order, eleven martyrs for the faith, thirteen martyrs of 
 charity, who had sat upon the benches of this college.* 
 
 Our limits will not allow us to trace with the same 
 detail as hitherto, the progress of the society through the 
 several countries of Europe. In the Low Countries it 
 appeared at the critical moment, sustained much oppo- 
 sition and many reverses, and at last gained possession 
 of the colleges already existing in Belgium, as well as 
 established its own. It was the principal agency, that 
 " transformed Belgium, which had been half Protestant, 
 into one of the most Catholic countries of the world. "f 
 In Switzerland, in 1580, we find the papal nuncio in the 
 Swiss cantons giving to the Romish rfourt a gloomy 
 picture of the state of the church in that country. 
 
 * Cr^t. Jo^y. I, 257-8-9. f Ranke, Book V., § 8. 
 
 2* 
 
34 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 Every thing in his view betokened its speedy ruin. The 
 present remedies are declared to be insufficient, and the 
 letter terminates as follows : " There is only one means 
 to destroy these irreligious principles, and to restore to 
 our corrupted morals their ancient purity, and that is 
 the establishment of a ^college at Fribourg." The col- 
 lege at Fribourg was founded, and its influence on 
 the destinies of Switzerland has not yef ceased to be 
 powerful. 
 
 To act upon England, a college was established at 
 Douai, for the education of English youth. From this 
 institution " were dispatched every year into England 
 the most intelligent and courageous of its scholars." 
 Against the " seminarists " educated at this and other 
 colleges on the Continent, the English government was 
 ever on the alert. This institution was afterwards 
 removed to Rheims. Besides this, the English college 
 was established at Rome, which is still in being. 
 Eight colleges were planted on the soil of Britain 
 between 1622 and the suppression of the order in 1773, 
 together with six residences.* Within the last few 
 years, the number of Jesuit establishments has increas- 
 ed in that country with astonishing rapidity. 
 
 It would be most instructive to trace the influence 
 of the Jesuits in Poland. That unhappy country 
 had become so decidedly Protestant at one time, 
 
 * Collections towards illustrating the biography of the Scotch, 
 English, and Irish members of the Society of Jesus, by the Rev. 
 Dr. Oliver. London, 1845. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 35 
 
 that its nobility could have elected a Protestant 
 king. What is worth recording also is, that it gave to 
 Europe the first example of religious toleration, and 
 this, centuries ago. But the Jesuits were soon in 
 the field. They established colleges at Cracow, Grod- 
 no, and Pultusk. They took possession to a great 
 extent of the nobility. The college at Pultusk con- 
 tained 400 pupils, all nobles. In Poland proper, says 
 one of their number, "hundreds of learned, orthodox 
 and devout men of the order are employed in rooting 
 out errors, and implanting Catholic piety, by schools and 
 associations, by preaching and writing." The conse- 
 quences were fatal to Protestantism. " But shortly be- 
 fore," says a papal nuncio in 1598, "it appeared as 
 ^ if heresy would completely supersede Catholicism in 
 Poland ; now Catholicism bears heresy to its tomb."* 
 w ^ The order continued with various successes, yet on 
 /the whole gaining strength, till the year 1773, when 
 lat the demand of several Catholic sovereigns, it was 
 suppressed by Clement XIVN The struggle which pre- 
 ceded its dissolution was long and desperate. Nothing 
 but the determinate energy of the most powerful 
 monarchs and nobles of Europe, effected an event so 
 important in the history of the world. But it fell, be- 
 cause it could be endured no longer. Neither the church 
 nor the state could live under this once useful servant, 
 now grown to be a tyrannical master. It had, indeed, 
 
 * See Ranke's History of the Popes. See, also, Krasinski'a 
 History of the Reformation in Poland. London, 1838. 
 
36 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 been a most useful servant, but it had gathered an in- 
 dependent force which was felt to be capable of most 
 terrific perversion. Already Popes and Kings had more 
 than once felt this force used against themselves, as a 
 second Providence ; or breaking their counsels in pieces 
 like another Nemesis, certain, remorseless, and inscruta- 
 ble in its revenge. 
 
 The height of power to which it had attained, and 
 the degree of influence which it had exerted, may be 
 judged from the following view of its establishments, as 
 taken from a catalogue sent from Eome in 1762. This 
 catalogue exhibits five Assistances ; 39 Provinces ; 249 
 houses for the Professed; 699 Colleges; 51 Novitiates; 
 176 Seminaries; 335 Residences; 223 Missions; 22,787 
 Jesuits, of whom 11,010 were priests. But the order, 
 though suppressed, did not cease to exert its influence. 
 In Catholic countries, the priests took their placA 
 among the regular clergy of the church, the professors* 
 and teachers were sought for their scholarship, and in! 
 many instances, as in the English college at Bruges, the 
 head of the college was continued at his post, and the 
 institution, under the name of an Academy, exerted the 
 same influence as before. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the Jesuits owed their pre- 
 servation as an order, to the Empress Catharine of Rus- 
 sia. She owed no allegiance to the Pope, and yet she 
 was a zealous friend to the Pope's imperial gjiard ; part- 
 ly, it may be, because she valued their influence as edu- 
 cators of her people; partly, because she sought to draw 
 into her kingdom the ablest and most sagacious men 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 37 
 
 from western Europe, that she might use their know- 
 ledge and sagacity in her plans of empire, and perhaps 
 that she might, under their tuition, perfect that system 
 of bribery, espionage and skill, which is the wonder, as 
 it is the abhorrence, of Christendom. Under Catharine, 
 Paul and Alexander, the order was re-constituted as at 
 first. In the other countries of Europe it still held a 
 being, but under feigned names, and as a broken and 
 suspected, though strong and formidable body. The 
 Pope, though aware of its existence, was forced to ignore 
 and deny it. But in Russia, it boasted of its name, 
 plied to the utmost its energies, and under the protec- 
 tion of the barbarian of the North, conspired for the re- 
 storation of legitimized despotism to distracted Europe. 
 / Here too its forces were recruited by a seminary for 
 V novices upon Russian soil, till at last the Pope dared to 
 ygive his sanction to the society in Russia, while still an 
 joutcast from every Catholic country. The Jesuits were 
 /encouraged to direct the extensive colonies, which Alex- 
 ander planted in the steppes of eastern Russia. They 
 carried there religion and the arts, and exerted a most 
 important influence. So confident were the Jesuits of 
 great influence over the empire, that they meditated an 
 extensive educational establishment, separate from the 
 University of Russia. They addressed a memorial to 
 this efi'ect to Alexander in 1811, which was favorably 
 received. After the French invasion, when the Em- 
 peror resumed the arts of peace and his projects of in- 
 ternal reform, he had become so alarmed at the Catholic 
 movement, which had been quietly advancing among his 
 
38 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 people and his nobles, that he declined the proposition. 
 For ten years or more, the Russian cabinet watched 
 ' with suspicion their cherished ally. At last, when leading 
 nobles declared themselves for Rome, the court awoke to 
 the fact, that by means of education the Jesuits had influ- 
 enced thousands of influential youth towards the Roman 
 faith, and in 1829 they were banished the empire. No 
 fact speaks more loudly of the determined sympathy of 
 the Jesuits with despotism, than that the Russian pow- 
 er, though fanatical in its bigoted hostility to the Rom- 
 ish church, called into its service, and admitted within 
 its borders, that society, which was more Romish if 
 possible, than Rome itself. No comment can be more 
 significant upon the strength of that bond of interest 
 and of fear, by which the Pope was fastened to the Jesu- 
 its, than that furnished by the countenance which he ex- 
 tended to them during their long banishment. No fact, 
 can better illustrate their subtlety, their ingratitude, 
 their dangerous art, and their magic resources, than the 
 boldness and success of their proselytism of the Russian 
 youth. No testimony can be more striking of the value 
 of their services in the cause of despotism, than ^ that 
 each legitimate monarch called them to his aid as soon as 
 he dared, and when " order reigned" in Europe after the 
 Congress of Vienna, the Jesuits were again restored, 
 in the freshness and strength of their eternal youth. 
 From Russia, the Duke of Parma in 1793 recalled Je- 
 suit teachers into his Duchy, who at once opened five 
 establishments, around which rallied the youth of the 
 country, and in 1804 the king of Naples received them. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 39 
 
 also, and made them the teachers of his subjects. In 
 1814, the order was formally revived, as the most im- 
 portant defence to the cause of absolutism, which was 
 then renewing its hold of Europe, and from that time 
 till very recently, with the exception of a nominal ban- 
 ishment under Louis Phillippe, it has had free access to 
 almost every country in the world. Their recent history in 
 Belgium and France, deserves a moment's attention, es- 
 pecially from those who affect to believe that their 
 energy and influence as educators has declined. We 
 find them in 1816, resisting the constitution of Hol- 
 land, which secured freedom of instruction, because it 
 took from the church its birthright, to direct the educa- 
 tion of the young. In consequence of these movements, 
 they were expelled the kingdom. They immediately set 
 up schools of a high character near the frontier, and edu- 
 cated the sons of rich and noble Catholics, who returned 
 filled with hostility to the government, and ready for 
 any sedition. After 1830, the Jesuits returned to the 
 kingdom of Belgium, when under the new constitutional 
 guaranties of the " liberty of instruction" and " the li- 
 berty of association," they multiplied their institutions, 
 drew into them all the youth of the nobles, and largely 
 shared in the education of the poor. They attacked the 
 free University of Brussels, which had been established 
 in 1834, by every species of calumny, as an immoral and 
 godless institution. Next we find them in 1844, en- 
 gaged in a determined effort to control the Catholic Uni- 
 versity of Louvaine, and arrayed against the highest ec- 
 
/ 
 
 40 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 clesiastics of the kingdom, who would not submit to 
 their dictation. 
 y In France, after the Restoration, the Jesuits had a 
 
 "^ difficult game to play, but they played it boldly. A 
 strong current of popular feeling was against them. 
 The liberal party was avowedly hostile, and Louis 
 XVIII. did not dare to give them open toleration. And 
 yet from 1800, they had been secretly at work, and 
 under the protection and favor of the mother and uncle 
 of Napoleon, they had inflamed the common people with 
 a new religious zeal by their itinerant missions, and 
 had gained multitudes of pledged defenders and friends 
 under the name of " the Congregation." This association 
 I included early in the reign of Charles X. from eight hun- 
 dred to one thousand of the nobles, and six millions of 
 the people of France, all pledged to the Jesuits, and 
 v^ ready to act with them. Through the influence of this 
 society, the three famous laws were passed in 1820 
 f against the press, individual liberty, and the elective 
 / system, which for the time annihilated the liberal party. 
 After the accession of Charles X. a reaction ensued, 
 and in 1828 eight Jesuit colleges were required to yield 
 to the inspection and control of the University. This 
 they declined to do, and were closed. After the revolu- 
 tion of 1830, of which this movement against the Jesuits 
 was a prelude, their efi'orts were again renewed, and yet 
 when, in 1837, it was proposed to introduce some legal pro- 
 vision against their intrusion into the secondary schools, 
 Girardin thus expressed himself, with the applause of 
 all parties : " What ! shall we cherish any longer fear 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 41 
 
 of the Jesuits ? With our institutions, with this tribune, 
 with our two chambers, with the philosophical arsenal 
 which we possess in our libraries, shall we fear the Jesu- 
 ( its ? Let us not so disgrace ourselves in the esteem of 
 ^ all Europe." Notwithstanding this boasting confidence, 
 France soon found that the Jesuits were not dead, and 
 that all the defences against their influence, did not pre- 
 vent them from making an onset upon one of the best 
 f established institutions. In 1842, they instigated the 
 4 Catholic clergy to an attack upon the system of public 
 instruction, which had remained unchanged since the 
 y year 1808. Under this system the regulation of all 
 \ schools and colleges, except those designed expressly for 
 ^\ the education of the priesthood, was committed to the 
 V University. It was contended by the Jesuits, that this 
 scheme was Atheistic, and was designed to destroy the 
 church, and the restoration of Jesuit institutions was earn- 
 estly advocated on the basis of the charter of 1830, which 
 secured freedom of instruction to all. This contest was 
 earnest and continued for years Some of the most emi- 
 nent of the French writers contended for the continuance 
 of the established system. The Catholic clergy united 
 with the Jesuits in an earnest and zealous co-operation. 
 The bishop of Chalons, in a letter addressed to the king 
 (20th of June, 1845), thus expressed himself in his own 
 name, and that of his brethren in office : " The cause of 
 the Jesuits is the cause of the church, and our cause ; 
 we know it right well, that every word against the Je- 
 suits is a war-cry against ourselves." The king was em- 
 barrassed. On the one side, he dared not disobey the 
 
42 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 voice of the nation as expressed through the deputies ; 
 on the other, he dared not offend the Jesuits and the 
 church. At last an arrangement was effected, by which 
 one or two of the more prominent of the Jesuit col- 
 leges were closed, and the hosts of others throughout the 
 kingdom were winked at by the police. At this mo- 
 ment in France, as well as throughout all Europe, the 
 Jesuits are in the field, as busy, as subtle, and as influ- 
 ential as ever in the service of despotism and the Holy , 
 See.* 
 
 If in the review of this historical sketch, we ask what 
 the Society of Jesus has accomplished for the church of 
 Rome, we need only refer to the following testimony by 
 their eloquent historian and advocate. '' Have they not 
 wrested from heresy Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Mora- 
 via, Silesia, Bavaria, Austria, a portion of the Swiss can- 
 tons and the Khenish provinces ? Have they not driven 
 back Calvinism from France, and Italy, after it had al- 
 ready bitten to the core these two Catholic countries ? 
 Have they not preserved in England, that germ, which 
 is now expanding with such vigor, and which in Ireland, 
 after three hundred years of martyrdom, is become a 
 lawful revolution?"! 
 
 If we ask by what means, above all others united, it 
 
 * Since this essay was written, the Jesuit influence has again 
 been felt at the Capital, has shaken the National Assembly, and 
 convulsed the republic, by a desperate and nearly successful 
 movement to obtain the control of the education of the whole 
 country. 
 
 t Cr^t. Joly, III., 510. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 43 
 
 has accomplished this work, its friends and enemies will 
 
 reply in one earnest answer, by means of education in 
 
 ' their seminaries of learning. This was avowed in the 
 
 ) plan of the founder. This, of all others, is best suited 
 
 \ to the genius and spirit of the institution. The convic- 
 
 \ tions of the passionate friends and the bitter enemies of 
 
 I the order throughout Christendom, declare that Jesuit 
 
 \ teachers, Jesuit seminaries, and Jesuit education, have 
 
 I been the central agency by which for three centuries the 
 
 Iwork of the Jesuits has been accomplished. 
 
 § The limits of this essay will not allow us to trace 
 the history and the influence of Protestant institutions 
 and of Protestant systems of education. This history is 
 familiar to our readers, and it is not necessary for the 
 argument, that it be drawn out at length. We need 
 only name the Protestant universities of Germany in 
 their ancient and modern fame ; the Prussian common 
 school system, with the other similar systems to which 
 it has given the impulse ; the universities of Denmark, 
 Sweden, and Scotland, with the parochial and domestic 
 education of these countries : the English universities, 
 for whose imperfections Protestantism is not respon- 
 sible, and the college and school systems of the United^ 
 States. In these institutions, those principles, which 
 are the glory and strength of the Protestant interest, 
 have been expounded and defended. From them have 
 proceeded those influences which have made Protestant 
 civilization, Protestant freedom, and Protestant piety, to 
 be what they are. In them have been instructed and 
 disciplined, Protestant children, to read and understand 
 
44 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 the Scriptures, and to act as independent members of the 
 church and state. From their minor schools, as from 
 innumerable crystalline points of light and order, have 
 proceeded those influences which make the Protestant 
 masses to dijBTer from the Eomish, as the sparkling and 
 
 * lifelike marble differs from the earthy limestone. From 
 the higher institutions have been derived those states- 
 men, who have been educated to govern citizens more or 
 less free, — who have for themsehes been independent 
 students, and have formed an independent character. 
 From them have issued those preachers of Christian 
 truth, who have been led directly to the word of God as 
 the fountain of truth, and directly to God himself as 
 the object of their worship. Should these institutions 
 cease to exist, or should they abandon their principles, 
 and their methods of instruction, then would Protestant- 
 ism in its freedom, its science and its religion, cease to 
 exist. 
 
 Two features of the Puritan system of education 
 seem, however, to demand a special consideration. 
 r \ The principles of the Puritan require him to edu- 
 V cate the masses ; those of the Jesuit, compel him to con- 
 Jsider popular education as unnecessary and dangerous. 
 /Christianity, as understood by the Puritan, is based 
 
 / upon thought and reflection. The faith which is the 
 condition of salvation, is a conviction of personal neces- 
 sities, which is promoted by the cultivation of the intel- 
 lect, and by the training of this intellect to a faithful 
 dealing with itself. The moral and religious feelings 
 are cherished by the clear perception of duties which 
 
 I 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 45 
 
 can be understood, and of truths which commend them- 
 selves to every man's conscience. The want of intellec- 
 tual culture in any man, in any family or community, is 
 both an occasion and sign of moral debasement and of 
 religious error. No exactness of formal compliances, no 
 abjectness of superstitious dread, no wildness of reli- 
 gious terror or rapture of religious joy, no blind devot- 
 edness to the will of a priesthood, are sufficient to prove an 
 uninstructed people religious. The Puritan will not 
 be content, till he has carried the Scriptures into every 
 cottage, however humble its structure or poor its in- 
 mates ; nor will he believe his duty to his God has been 
 performed, till he has taught the inmates of that cottage 
 to read and to comprehend those Scriptures. Hence, 
 wherever he builds a church, he erects a school-house, and 
 the same faith which inclines him to do the one, compels 
 him to do the other. To educate a whole people, is to 
 obey in one most important point, the command of his 
 Master to carry the gospel to all nations. This gospel 
 cannot be received nor can it be retained, certainly, it 
 cannot be fully comprehended and fervently loved except 
 the intellect be instructed. As this gospel is preached 
 to the poor, there must go with it that education for the 
 [poor which the gospel presupposes, in order that it may 
 be received, and which it will be sure to create and to 
 cherish wherever it is received. This is not merely a theory 
 of the Puritan, held as a part of his speculative system. 
 It has become a fact wherever his system has been re- 
 ceived. No fact is more clearly and vividly written 
 upon the page of history, than that all those countries in 
 
46 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 which Puritan principles have prevailed, have been dis- 
 tinguished for successful efforts to educate the whole 
 peoi^le. 
 
 The Jesuit does not believe in popular education. 
 The masses of men, those who toil in the lower ranks of 
 society, are not, in his view, fit to be educated. To 
 teach them to read and to think, will only make them 
 uneasy and" seditious in the state, and faithless and dis- 
 obedient in the church ; nor is it necessary that they 
 should think in order to believe. Faith in the priest 
 and the church can be exercised without the education 
 of the school, and a compliance with the prescription of 
 the church does not require a thinking man. Hence the 
 Jesuit not only is not impelled to educate the lower or- 
 ders of society, but he prefers that they should be left 
 in ignorance, or be taught by the priest the little that 
 it is safe for them to know.^' The theory of the Jesuit 
 has been realized in fact.) Notwithstanding the zeal, the 
 devotedness, and the success, with which the order have 
 given themselves to the work of education, they have never 
 sought to instruct the masses of any single country. It 
 was never a part of their plan to train the lower orders 
 of society. (With all the apparatus for this purpose 
 which they have had at their command, with the rulers . 
 of Europe under their influence, and with Pope and 
 priesthood ready to further their projects, with wealth 
 and time and men all at hand, they never originated a 
 project to educate the people. ) They have never regarded 
 these projects except with hostility, yielding to them 
 only when forced to do it, and connecting themselves 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COM: 
 
 
 "" ^ 
 
 with them, only when they had become too formidable 
 to be let alone.* 
 
 § We name also a second feature of the Puritan sys- 
 tem. It is earnestly religious. The Puritan educates 
 mankind, not to develop e the race for this life only, but 
 to fit them for the life to come. His aim is not to bring 
 out splendid triumphs of intellectual power, nor to ad- 
 vance the sciences to their highest perfection, nor to in- 
 crease the comforts and elegancies of life, nor to elevate 
 and adorn society. It is not to serve any or all of these 
 
 * We quote as apposite the impassioned words of Victor 
 Hug^o. "You (Jesuits) claim the liberty to instruct. For some 
 centuries you have held in your hands, at yoiu discretion, at 
 your school, imder your ferule, two great nations— Italy and 
 Spain, illustrious among the illustrious ; and what have you done 
 with them % I am going to tell you. Thanks to you ; Italy, of 
 which no one can think nor even pronounce her name without 
 inexpressible filial grief— Italy, that mother of genius and of na- 
 tions, which has diffused over the whole world the most aston- 
 ishing productions of poetry and art— Italy, which has taught 
 our race to read, does not to-day know how to read herself! 
 Yes, Italy has, of all the states of Europe, the smallest number of 
 native inhabitants who are able to read ! Spain ; magnificently 
 endowed — Spain, which received from the Romans her first civil- 
 ization, from the Arabians her second civilization, from Provi- 
 dence, and in spite of you, a world — America — Spain has lost — 
 thanks to you, thanks to your brutal yoke, which is a yoke of 
 degradation — Spain has lost that secret of her power which she 
 received from the Romans, that genius in the arts which she re- 
 ceived from the Arabs, that world which God gave her. And in 
 exchange for what you made her lose, what has she received 1 
 She has received the Inquisition y 
 
48 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 objects as ends^ but chiefly as they relate to a higher end, 
 in the preparation of man for a happier and holier life 
 hereafter. Hence his whole system of training is di- 
 rected to a religious object. All his institutions are 
 animated by a religious spirit. The motives, the re- 
 straints, and the hallowed influences of the Christian 
 faith, are prominently recognized at every step of the 
 education which he gives, and are largely employed in 
 controlling the passions, and in forming the character. 
 The Puritan system has no sympathy with, nor relation 
 to, those infidel and atheistic systems, which, forsooth, 
 because science is not faith, and learning is not theology, 
 banish all religion from the school-room and the college, 
 or render to faith that polite but heartless courtesy, which 
 is more dangerous than to ignore faith altogether. 
 
 But, while on the one hand, the Puritan scheme is 
 earnestly religious, while it rejects with abhorrence 
 all those systems which seek to train the young without 
 the aid of faith — it is not religious in the abject sense in 
 which the Jesuit system is, and must be. The Puritan 
 has that confidence in the foundations of his faith, which 
 leads him to give to science an independent activity, and 
 to prosecute every kind of study in a fearless spirit. His 
 motto is — if religion will not endure the searching test 
 of free thought, she is not worth retaining ; if science 
 can annihilate the claims of faith, or invalidate her re- 
 cords, let science do her utmost. He utters this, not be- 
 cause he doubts, but because he believes the more 
 strongly. For in his view, the Grod who requires faith, 
 is also the Grod who has made science necessary. He 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 49 
 
 who has revealed himself to man's believing eye, has also 
 declared the eternal truths of philosophy. The spheres for 
 these two movements of the mind are never inconsistent, 
 yet are they in their nature independent. Each has its 
 own laws, yet the laws of each are uttered by the same 
 lawgiver. They revolve, not as a wheel within a wheel, 
 but as two separate circles, do they conspire together. 
 Hence, each may, nay each must^ be studied by its lighi, 
 and stand by its own principles. The Jesuit, on the 
 other hand, introduces religion into his schools to watch 
 each movement of thought, and to pass judgment upon 
 every conclusion of science. He will not leave science 
 alone, not even for a moment. If she move at all, she 
 must move as a slave, chained within prescribed limits, 
 and forbidden to use her appropriate freedom. Hence 
 is it that thought is distrusted ; reasoning is perpetually 
 reproved ; and the reason and conscience of man are 
 placed in an unnatural conflict with each other, vexing 
 each the other by a perpetual strife : Hence, religion is 
 hated and feared ; the reason of man is prostrate ; and 
 that faith to which science would have willingly ap- 
 proved her proudest achievements, if she had leave to 
 think and search with freedom, must content herself with 
 the scanty products of a constrained and reluctant 
 service. 
 
 § The Jesuit and Puritan institutions in all their 
 varieties and gradations are already in existence in the 
 United States. Both are likely to increase in their 
 % 
 
50 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 nnniber, their resources, and their influence. What each 
 have been in the past in their genius and power, we have 
 already seen. We now ask, what are they at present 
 and what are they to be in the future ? What is, and 
 what is to be, their character, and what their influence ? 
 
 First, What are the actual peculiarities of these insti- 
 tutions as they exist in this country ? What kind of 
 discipline do they give, and what sort of men will they 
 educate ? These questions we propose to consider with 
 candor. We would do justice to the excellencies and 
 the defects of both of these systems. We would recog- 
 nize the best examples of each, the best teachers, the 
 best colleges, and the best results. 
 
 We warn our readers beforehand, that they must 
 neither be surprised nor offended, if we concede certain 
 points of superiority to the Jesuit institutions. Despot- 
 ism in civil government, as all will own, presents some 
 advantages over freedom. The administration of law 
 may be more prompt, more energetic and impartial. 
 Plans of conquest may be formed with greater sagacity 
 and forecast, and they may be executed with complete- 
 ness and energy. The glory of a nation in arts and 
 letters may be more sedulously cherished, and every 
 resource may be combined and directed to this one end 
 with a skill and success which a freer government can- 
 not imitate. And yet no wise and good man, on these 
 accounts, prefers an absolute government, to one that is 
 free. 
 
 The Jesuit system, as we have seen, is in all its fea- 
 tures, a thorough despotism. It is a despotism far more 
 
 I 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 51 
 
 dreadful than any civil or ecclesiastical system ; for it 
 takes into its iron grasp the intellect and soul of a living 
 man. It seeks to crush and break in pieces the will 
 which God gave to him when he made him a person, 
 and to mar and wrong the conscience, with which he 
 has made him responsible to himself. In its fundamen- 
 tal principle it commits " the sin against the life of the 
 soul^^ by robbing it of that freedom which its Creator 
 has made the condition of its full developn^ent, and its 
 true well-being. It commits also a wrong against the 
 Creator, by taking to that soul " the place of God," not 
 only with respect to its external movements, and the 
 conditions of its outward being, but also with respect to 
 its very thoughts and feelings. It ought not to surprise 
 us, if this monstrous usurpation should bring with it 
 certain advantages. We should rather expect that a 
 system which has an access so complete to the internal 
 machinery which it seeks to direct, and a power so 
 irresistible over its minutest spring and wheel, would 
 train the mind to a certain kind of perfection which no 
 other system can realize. But this perfection, as will 
 appear, is in some of its aspects a monstrous imperfec- 
 tion. Its proudest results, as they are based upon a sin 
 against the rights and freedom of the individual man, 
 are certain to be attended with imperfections as striking 
 as the principles are false upon which the training has 
 been conducted. While, then, we may expect to find 
 certain peculiar excellencies in the Jesuit schools, we 
 ought not to forget at what a vast expense they are pur- 
 chased. Nor ought we, while in all honesty we own 
 
52 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 them to be excellencieSj to be less honest in our expo- 
 sure of the fatal defects under which they labor. 
 
 Let us, then, enter the best Jesuit college which may 
 be supposed to exist, or to be likely to exist, in this 
 country, — one which is situated the most favorably, which 
 is,furnished the most amply with conveniences and appa- 
 ratus, which is manned by the ablest and the most ac- 
 complished teachers, and enrolls the choicest selection of 
 pupils. Let us compare it with one of our best Protes- 
 tant or Puritan colleges. 
 ^ § We shall j&nd in the former, the spirit of labor 
 more prevalent, and more generally acquiesced in, as the 
 only condition of success. To this, has the pupil been 
 trained from his earliest studies. Tasks disagreeable, 
 and alleviated by few attractions, have been imposed 
 upon him, and he has been compelled to fulfil them. 
 Dry and severe lessons have been the familiar duty of 
 his school life. He has been taught that to know a 
 thing he must learn it, and that in order to learn any 
 thing, he must labor hard and long. The genius of the 
 Romish system is austerity itself. The teachers have, 
 each one in his turn, been subjected to the same process. 
 They have been familiar with men of the highest attain- 
 ments ; they know that labor is the only condition on 
 which eminent scholarship can be acquired, and that the 
 earlier and the more effectually this question can be de- 
 cided with the pupil, the better will it be for him. They 
 are accustomed, also, to use compulsion, and to exact 
 obedience. . Law, — authority that is supreme, decisive, 
 and merciless, — is the very spirit and life of their order. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 53 
 
 They have learned themselves to obey, and in so doing 
 have learned to command. They know no condition of 
 being, no possibility of life, except in prompt and un- 
 questioning submission ; they cannot but exact the same 
 from their pupils. 
 
 In the Protestant school or college, it is not so easy 
 to find, or to create the spirit of severe and iron industry. 
 The prevailing notions of the labor required to become a 
 scholar are lamentably inadequate and low. The prac- 
 tice so common in the family and the primary school, of 
 making learning easy to the child, and of deferring till 
 too late a period the severe tasking of the intellect, and 
 the practice which is scarcely less pernicious, of enfee- 
 bling the intellect by diluted matter in the form of '- books 
 for children," are all unfavorable to habits of severe in- 
 tellectual effort. If such efi'orts are occasionally made, 
 they are not patiently persevered in. They are fitful, 
 self-exhausting, and convulsive. The student is in such 
 eager haste to be in the field of active life, that he must 
 rush rapidly from one study to another, and will only 
 just begin in any, before he applies himself to some new 
 enterprise. To this condition of things our best institu- 
 tions must adapt themselves. Their students are im- 
 perfectly prepared, and much of the business appropriate 
 to the lower school is transferred into the higher seminary 
 or the college. Studies that belong to a later period are 
 crowded upon the attention prematurely. 
 
 In respect also to discipline, the Protestant institu- 
 tion cannot maintain that severity of rule, and that rigid 
 authority, to which the Romish system trains its youth 
 
54 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 and its men. There may be law, and the law may be 
 strictly enacted and severely enforced, but the laws must 
 be reasonable, and their reasonableness must be made 
 apparent. They must justify themselves to the pupil 
 and his guardians. The guardian and his pupil may be 
 entirely incompetent to judge of such subjects, or they 
 may be strongly inclined to judge wrongly. Hence 
 there may be much friction when there is obedience, or 
 an atmosphere of discontent may pervade tne institution 
 which will deprive the discipline of its best influences. 
 
 And yet on the other hand it is true, that when the 
 student learns at last how much labor is required to 
 attain to eminence, and gives himself to it of his own 
 will, his self-imposed toil has an energy and a fire, which 
 rarely attend those efforts which have been learned by 
 the mechanical drilling of years. AVhen, too, the spirit 
 of order and obedience makes its abode in a Protestant 
 college, it produces a harmony and a confidence which 
 are of higher worth and beauty than any constrained 
 service, however perfect and precise. 
 
 The standard of attainment in particular depart- 
 ments of knowledge, which in the Jesuit college is pre- 
 sented to the pupil, may be far higher than that which 
 the Protestant teacher can furnish in his own person. 
 The Jesuit comes from the colleges of Europe. He has 
 been a student from his infancy under exacting and skil- 
 ful teachers. Labor and obedience are the law of his 
 life ; nay, they are hallowed by his religious vows and 
 the spirit of his order. He has been familiar with pro- 
 digies of learning from the first ; and has been stimula- 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 55 
 
 ted by an eager competition with them for some scholas- 
 tic prize, or for fame in the wider world of letters. Such 
 a standard in the person of a living teacher, or in a corps 
 of teachers, is of the highest service to the pupil. The 
 exact and abundant knowledge, the ready command of 
 the powers, the reach of thought, the scholar's enthusi- 
 asm which such a teacher exhibits, are of all the means 
 of inspiring to study, as well as of showing what know- 
 ledge is, the most effective. 
 
 With such standards of scholarship, the methods of 
 instruction will naturally be rigorous and thorough. 
 They are expected from men who themselves are scho- 
 lars, and they will be endured from them. In the 
 learned languages, especially in the Latin, the student 
 will be instructed most thoroughly in its principles, and 
 will be taught to write and converse in this language of 
 the learned. In the mathematics and the natural scien- 
 ces, he will be the master of what he professes to know, 
 and in such a sense a master of his knowledge, that it 
 will become a part of himself, and he cannot let it go if 
 he will. In logic and grammar, in geography and histo- 
 ry, he will be drilled to such a control of what he learns, 
 that it shall be a possession for life. 
 
 In the modern languages, too, he will be taught by 
 scholars who are the masters of the languages which 
 they teach, and who understand the principles of lan- 
 guage generally. The majority of the teachers in these 
 institutions are themselves Europeans, to many of whom 
 these languages are vernacular, and all of whom have 
 mastered them in a way which to an American is a mar- 
 
56 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 vel and a mystery. The pupil, instead of his smattering 
 in French or German, together with not a little contempt 
 for his untaught and perhaps his charlatan teacher, will 
 learn these languages as a scholar should, and make his 
 study of them an aid to his general training. 
 
 The Jesuit teacher has another advantage, if indeed 
 it be an advantage. He makes few experiments in 
 teaching. His attention is not distracted by new de- 
 vices to make the road to knowledge easier and shorter. 
 He is not tempted to exchange one text-book for another. 
 His methods have been tested for generations — his books 
 are the work of the ablest men of his order. For his 
 purposes in instruction, it is probable that little would 
 be gained by any change ; but whether there would or 
 not, his attention is rarely directed to a change as possi- 
 ble. His entire energies are devoted to the single effort 
 of making the most of the method and of the authors 
 which are prescribed. These are for him and his pupils 
 fixed and unchangeable. With a definite aim before 
 them, and a prescribed course by which to reach it, the 
 pupil and teacher both give themselves to their work 
 with the utmost energy. 
 
 The Jesuit institutions are not limited in the mat& 
 riel of instruction. Money, buildings, apparatus, and 
 libraries are supplied in sufficient abundance. The 
 teachers have no families for which to provide, and no 
 inadequate salaries to eke out, by distracting and life- 
 consuming services. As they are sure of a subsistence 
 for life, and are masters of their own movements to but 
 a limited extent, their business is simple, and that is, to 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 67 
 
 labor with all their might in the study and the class- 
 room. Ample and learned libraries are at their com- 
 mand. Costly and substantial edifices are located in 
 the choicest situations, which are often attractive in 
 their natural beauty, and rendered doubly attractive by 
 art. To add to all this, the instruction is to a certain 
 extent gratuitous, and it may be made so to any degree 
 which plans of proselytism may render desirable. 
 
 Last of all, there is no ruinous competition nor de- 
 grading jealousies between the several institutions. 
 Their interest is one. Their cause is one. The teach- 
 ers and the institutions are not dependent on popular 
 favor. They are not crowded and multiplied to the im- 
 poverishment of each other, and the degradation of 
 sound learning. But they conspire together, each help- 
 ing the other with its talent, its skill, and its discoveries. 
 In their united relation to the same object, and in their 
 harmonious co-operation, as they are watched by one eye 
 and moved by one hand, they have in one another, 
 strength and resources which no man can compute. 
 
 It is very possible that this view of Jesuit schools, 
 of Jesuit teachers and their pupils, may seem to many 
 too highly colored. There may be some of our readers 
 who will think it poorly corresponds with what they per- 
 sonally know of Jesuit seminaries in this country. Of 
 such we would ask. whether they have ever had personal 
 acquaintance with a scholar trained by Jesuit teachers 
 in Europe or in this country; and whether they have 
 informed themselves with accuracy as to the kind of 
 training which they give, and the rigor and thorough- 
 
58 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 ness with which it is prosecuted. We speak with en- 
 tire confidence when we assert, that there are colleges 
 in this country, which for a certain kind of education in 
 the classics, the mathematics, the natural sciences and 
 logic, are unmatched by any Protestant institutions. 
 Some of the pupils from these institutions, in respect to 
 habits of iron industry, to a mastery over the know- 
 ledge which they possess, as well as in their polished 
 and manly bearing, are unsurpassed, and perhaps une- 
 qualled, by any scholars from our best colleges. We have 
 also the personal testimony of an accomplished scholar, 
 who had himself been a pupil and a teacher in that 
 Protestant institution in this country which is most 
 thoroughly European : and who, after being acquainted 
 with the course of instruction in some of the best Jesuit 
 colleges, expressed in the strongest terms his delight 
 and admiration at its superiority.* Many reasons might 
 
 ISi' 
 
 * One cause of the ready impressions which are adopted, to 
 the disadvantage of the Jesuit schools, is the scholastic spirit in 
 which their instructions are given, and the scholastic aspect of 
 many of their text-books. It is readily concluded that their 
 highest aim must be to train accomplished schoolmen, and to 
 sharpen the mind to the arts and resources of a useless logic. 
 It is argued at once, that such ghosts of a past age are not at all to 
 be feared, and that they need only to stalk forth from the cloister, 
 to try their refinements upon our enlightened scholars, to be 
 driven back to their hiding-places with derision. It is forgotten 
 that these studies, which in their first aspect are so unattractive, 
 are yet the most effective discipline that the world has ever seen, 
 to precision of language and precision of thought ; and that, other 
 things being equal, the men who have learned to excel in pre- 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 59 
 
 be given why some of these schools and pupils present 
 an appearance of neglect and vulgarity, and why the 
 number of accomplished scholars which they have pro- 
 duced has been so small. 
 
 We do not contend, however, that Jesuit teachers 
 insist on giving to all their scholars an equally thorough 
 education, or that they are not ready to gratify those pa- 
 trons who may desire for their children a superficial cul- 
 ture. They are so flexible in their disposition, and so 
 politic in all their arrangements, that while they can 
 furnish erudite and rigid teachers for those who wish to 
 
 ciaion of language and precision of thought, have been the men 
 who hff.ve ruled the world. The Jesuit understands this advan- 
 tage — he has often proved its eflSciency. He strives to find amends 
 in this superiority for the falsehood of his statements, and the 
 monstrous assumptions of his first principles. It is true at times, 
 that he strives in vain ; these falsehoods in principle and false- 
 hoods of fact. will roll back and crush, as with a mountain 
 weight, the most nicely adjusted enginery of his logic, and break 
 in pieces all the well-placed securities of definition and of sophis- 
 try. But there ate times when it is not so ; when the worse is 
 made to appear the better reason, as the practised fencer will over- 
 master an antagonist who in strength is far his superior. These 
 occasions will be more frequent, if the Jesuit is left alone to his 
 uncouth logic, and the Protestant teacher inflates his pupil with 
 a shallow contempt for the scholasticism which he does not 
 understand. Let a so-called practical education be the watch- 
 word in our seminaries, and the principle of demand and supply 
 shape and regulate the studies of our schools, and we may find, 
 sooner than we anticipate, that there will be a " demand" in the 
 service of the Truth for a kind of men whom we may seek in 
 vain to " supply." 
 
60 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 be scholars, they can furnish to those who are to be 
 trained for fashion and society, the petit-maltre^ who will 
 teach thera little more than fashionable French with music 
 and dancing. If scholars are to be formed, the Jesuits 
 will not be outdone in the appliances which are required. 
 If men of fashion, they will furnish the most elegant 
 and fashionable masters. They know well, also, how to 
 study the tone of society about them ; and as, from the 
 first, all that relates to the accomplishments and lighter 
 graces of learning has been embraced within their plan, 
 they will seek to adjust their seminaries to the demands 
 of the community which they seek to draw within their 
 influence. 
 
 "While we concede to the Jesuits all those points of 
 superiority which they can claim with any show of rea- 
 son, we assert, on the other hand, that there are import- 
 ant features in which Protestant institutions cannot but 
 surpass them. 
 
 ^ First of all, the pupil in the Protestant school is far 
 more likely to be self-developed and self-relying. His 
 spirit in all his studies is a spirit of freedom. Hence 
 his constant inquiry. What is the use of this or that 
 study ? What end is proposed in this or that painful 
 mechanical training ? When at last he learns to appre- 
 ciate its value, he gives himself to it with a self-sustain- 
 ing energy, which often accomplishes wonderful results. 
 If he cannot supply the defects which arise from his 
 earlier negligence, he may far surpass the more finished 
 scholar in the mental energy and ready tact with which 
 he applies his acquisitions to their actual uses, and espe- 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 61 
 
 cially may he surpass him in the elasticity with which 
 he continues to study both books and men through a long 
 professional life. Studies pursued with this kind of ea- 
 gerness, and acquisitions sought after with such an awa- 
 kened and cheerful spirit, are gained at less expense of 
 toil, with less wasting of the spirit, and are also retained 
 more freshly in the memory, than under a system of 
 constraint and mechanism. If less knowledge is gained, 
 and an inferior power is attained, what is gained is 
 worth more to the scholar, and is likely to be worth more 
 to the world. The pressure and over-mastering pres- 
 ence of an eminent teacher, under a system in which 
 every thing is directed by the master, and constant ref- 
 erence is made to his will, represses the independence 
 of the pupil, and forbids those struggles of his own, 
 which, though awkward, and feeble, and unsuccessful at 
 first, are as essential to a vigorous intellectual activity, 
 as are the feeble essays of the bird newly fledged, to the 
 strong pinions and the unwearied flight of the full-grown 
 eagle. The hardness, the finish, and the perfect adjust- 
 ment of the completest armor, may cripple and confine 
 the frame for which it is fitted. The spirit and the en- 
 tire rigijne of the Jesuit college forbid the acting of 
 the pupils on each other. They are indeed invited to 
 vie in the class-room, and to struggle for superiority in 
 the labors of the closet ; but the free and reciprocal ac- 
 tion of character and intellect, in circles formed by the 
 students themselves, is unknown. This, which marks 
 the college or university life as an era so important in 
 the intellectual history of an English or American stu- 
 
62 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 dent, is a thing unknown to the Jesuit seminary. It is 
 contrary to the spirit of the order, to the very genius of 
 the system. In the Jesuit college, the training, the in- 
 fluence, the very atmosphere of the place must proceed 
 from the teacher. He must direct every motion in the 
 establishment by his hand, and be present in every part 
 by his eye. If he were able, he would search every 
 closet and inspect every desk, nay, he would mould each 
 rising thought, and form or repress each luxuriant emo- 
 tion. He knows not the wisdom of leaving his pupil 
 alone, of trusting him to his own energies, and of leav- 
 ing him to his own. responsibility. His college resem- 
 bles an old French garden, of which the walls are 
 smoothly cut, the turf is closely shorn, the walks are hard 
 and polished, the plants abound in leaf, and flower, and 
 fruit ; but every leaf, bud, and branch has felt the hand 
 and the shears. The Protestant college, on the other 
 hand, is a modern English garden, in which nature and 
 art conspire together with a harmonious grace ; and 
 though nature may sometimes rebel against art, or out- 
 grow her watchful care, and here and there we discern 
 neglect, yet we do not hesitate which to prefer. 
 
 The Jesuit college will train to erudition, the Prot- 
 L estant to independent thought. It will be the aim of 
 th6 one to furnish its pupils with a knowledge of what 
 men have thought and accomplished. The other will 
 train them to inquire what is now to be believed, and 
 what is now to be done. The one will give his pupil 
 the history of opinions and arguments in the past, and 
 will instruct him to make the future like the past. The 
 
 I 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 63 
 
 Jesuit lives in the past, he adores and reverences the 
 men and institutions that are gone by, with the blended 
 enthusiasm of the scholar and the devotee. The Protest- 
 ant will discipline his student to know what is true and 
 useful for the present generation, and how the men of 
 this generation are to be led to receive it. The one will 
 only look backward, to make the future an exact trans- 
 cript of the past. The other is ready to concede to the 
 present and the future their claims. 
 
 Their methods and aims in reasoning will be differ- 
 ent. The one system will train its pupils to investigate 
 Truth. The other will discipline its scholars to defend 
 opinions. The one will make philosophic thinkers, the 
 other acute and skilful advocates. The one will proceed 
 on the assumption that every doctrine may be examined 
 to its foundations — that new discoveries and new argu- 
 ments are to be allowed their lawful weight in the re- 
 examination of long-acknowledged dogmas. The other 
 assumes the position that certain opinions are true, that 
 they are not to be examined for inquiry, but only for 
 defence. It will render its pupils acute logicians, able 
 and adroit reasoners, skilful debaters, and it may be, 
 puzzling sophists, but it will guard them from a too 
 thorough scrutiny of the facts and premises on which 
 the superstructure is reared. 
 
 The method in which the students will prosecute the 
 sciences of nature will be . affected by the spirit of the 
 opposite systems. The Jesuit will train erudite stu- 
 dents, careful observers and admirable expounders of 
 truths already received. The Protestant will be more 
 
64 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 likely to start a new theory, to invent a new method, or 
 make a new discovery. The attitudes and expectations 
 with which the two will present themselves before na- 
 ture, and contemplate her hidden mysteries, will natu- 
 rally tend to these opposite results. 
 •C The Puritan and the Jesuit instructors will teach 
 history very differently. Supposing they are equally 
 honest and fair in their representation of the events 
 and facts of history, how different will be the principles 
 by which they will explain these facts ! In the eye of 
 the Jesuit, what are the usurpations of the Spanish 
 monarchy over the free and independent spirit that 
 once animated its spirited people, and haunted its an- 
 cient mountains ? They are the lawful and righteous 
 repression of tendencies dangerous to the crown and 
 the church ; the summary destruction of rebellious ten- 
 dencies against holy and venerable authority. What 
 are they in the view of the Protestant and the Puritan ? 
 They are the tyranny of the priestly and kingly power 
 united, whose symbol and agent is the inquisition. 
 What, in the view of the Jesuit, is the noble resistance 
 of the Low Countries against Spain ? and what their free 
 and tolerant spirit ? What does he think of the free 
 movements of the gentry and citizens of France ? What 
 of the long and painful struggle against prerogative in 
 England, by which the great charter of human rights 
 was wrested, fragment by fragment, from the iron grasp 
 of power, and at the cost of blood on the battle-field, of 
 the sighing of the prisoner in the dungeon, and of de- 
 bate in the stormy senate-house ? And what are all 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 65 
 
 these struggles in the judgment of the Protestant histo- 
 rian ? How diJBTerent must be the estimate of these 
 events by these two classes of teachers ! With what 
 opposite feelings will the two train their pupils to re- 
 gard the same occurrences and the same individuals ! 
 How diverse will be the views of each, concerning the 
 plans and purposes of God, concerning the developments 
 of His Providence, concerning the progress of society, 
 and the means of its ultimate perfection ! With what 
 opposite views will they regard the martyrs to liberty, 
 and the great and good who have contended against 
 power and wrong ! With what a different spirit of he- 
 roism and faith will each animate his pupils, in view of 
 the great events which have made Europe, and England 
 and the United States what they are ! In what oppo- 
 site directions will the youthful enthusiasm of the pu- 
 pils of each be directed ! How will this ethereal ele- 
 ment be shaped and hardened either into bitter prejudi- 
 ces or generous principles ! To what different move- 
 ments in society will each attach themselves, with their 
 youthful ardor and their confirmed and settled princi- 
 ples 1* 
 
 * The Jesuit dare not teach the History of Freedom, which 
 is true history. For it is a history of the conflict of reason, of 
 conscience and of right, against unlawful usurpations. He dare 
 not teach the history of the progress of man, which is the his- 
 tory of the sublime unfoldings of the counsels of God ; for he 
 himself is committed against progress with all the energies, and 
 the desperation too, of a giant battling with Heaven. The history 
 which he teaches, if true in its dates and events, must be false and 
 
66 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 We do not believe that the Jesuit will think it wise 
 to array himself or his instructions against republican 
 principles and institutions. It is far more probable 
 that he will now and then astonish himself and his pu- 
 pils, by the intensity of his republican sympathies. 
 But he will never dare to study closely the struggles by 
 which free principles have been developed, nor to exam- 
 ine the relative position which the Romish and Protest- 
 ant parties have taken in these contests. But it is not 
 unlikely that he may confess his admiration for institu- 
 tions under which the people are free, if the people will 
 be induced to obey the church. He may find it easier 
 to bribe a demagogue or to manage a party, than to flat- 
 ter or frighten a monarch. The Pope may yet become 
 the noisiest demagogue which the world has ever seen, 
 and marshal the democracy under a new banner indeed, 
 but for the old conflict with the thrones of Europe. If 
 the Jesuit can serve him in this enterprise, it will be noth- 
 ing new. That, however, the Jesuit will be a hearty 
 friend to those principles of independent thought, and 
 private judgment, and personal responsibility, which are 
 the strength and security of republican institutions, is 
 impossible. Should he attempt to teach them, he could 
 not succeed. His very nature and being revolt against 
 them. 
 
 sophistical in its philosophy. It must be steeped in sophistry — 
 craven in its cowardice— or brazen with conscious lies. It must 
 read backward the records which Truth has engraved on the 
 records of Time, and set itself in perpetual opposition to the con- 
 victions of the human race. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 67 
 
 The relation of Reason to Faith, is one thing with 
 the Jesuit, and quite another with the Protestant. The 
 one will continually impress his pupil with a sense of 
 the impotence and the blindness of the human intellect, 
 when employed upon moral and religious truth. He 
 will frighten him with a history of its dismal wander- 
 ings, he will confuse him by its conflicting arguments, 
 and, if need be, will drive him to hopeless perplexity and 
 despair, that he may lead him to the refuge of authority ; 
 and having made him a convert to authority, will dex- 
 terously substitute the authority of the church for the 
 authority of the Scriptures — the authority of man for 
 the authority of God. The Protestant teacher will 
 show him that Reason is never hostile to Faith, but that 
 by the very arguments which she suggests, and the inqui- 
 ries which she awakens, she conducts the soul up to the 
 very portals of Faith ; — that the tasking of the powers 
 in the service of Reason, and the awakening of the en- 
 ergies to grapple with her problems, is the best prepara- 
 tion to the full understanding and the hearty reception 
 of the mysteries of Revelation. 
 
 Religion, as taught and exhibited in the two classes 
 of institutions, will wear a diflerent aspect. If we sup- 
 pose the teachers to be equally sincere and equally in- 
 tent upon forming their pupils to Christian piety, it will 
 be obvious that they will inculcate a very different kind 
 of religion. The religion of the one rests upon author- 
 ity. It summons to set and prescribed devotions, which 
 are insisted on as being of the utmost consequence. Fast- 
 ings and vigils, penance and confession, are not the signs 
 
68 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 but the substance of devoted piety, and in proportion as 
 these are increased is piety fostered, and the soul 
 blessed. Every thing that exalts the church, the sa- 
 craments, and the priesthood, and that prostrates the 
 devotee in the completest subjection to the interests 
 and requirements of the church, is regarded with pe- 
 culiar honor. The rights of the church are never ques- 
 tioned, its authority is never to be arraigned before any 
 tribunal — its being and its authority are both taken for 
 granted. To question is to rebel, to inquire is to show 
 a perverse and wicked spirit. The application of religion 
 to the life, to the formation of the temper for heaven ; 
 the direction of the energies to render man blessed 
 here, and the world as nearly like heaven as is possible ; 
 all this is acknowledged to be important, but these ends 
 are to be secured by the church, and it is by perform- 
 ing the services which the church enjoins, and by obey- 
 ing the direction of the priesthood, that man will bless 
 himself and his race. 
 
 The pupil may be attracted by this system of Faith. 
 He may fulfil its services with zeal, and bend or break 
 his spirit to all its requirements. He may be learned, 
 accomplished, and devout, and display in himself the 
 most amiable and attractive specimen of a Catholic devo- 
 tee. Or he may be repelled by it. His daring spirit 
 may cherish doubts which he dare not utter, but which 
 will rankle like a barbed arrow within his bosom. He 
 may be disgusted by those devotions which seem to him 
 wearisome and hollow, but through their monotonous 
 and weary round he is still forced to drag himself from 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 69 
 
 day to day. He may loathe a system, which bids him 
 renounce his reason in order to cherish his faith, and 
 abhor a religion which does not lay its strong grasp on 
 his convictions of what is true and right and binding — 
 and come forth a heartless, faithless, and scoffing Infidel 
 or Atheist, outwardly courteous to the church and the 
 priesthood, but inwardly despising and loathing both, 
 with all the energy and spirit which make him a man. 
 
 The religion of the Puritan college comes to the 
 pupil to confer with him concerning his duty to himself 
 and to his Grod. The service which it requires of him 
 is a reasonable service. It calls him to the only right 
 and worthy employment of the powers which make him 
 a man — to the consecration of his living soul to his Cre- 
 ator and to his race. It enjoins upon him the duties of 
 devotion, of self-denial, of sobriety, and of temperance, 
 because these all commend themselves to his convicted 
 judgment and his better feelings. It encourages him to 
 attain the highest perfection in intellect, in character, 
 and in all real graces and accomplishments, as a religious 
 duty. It holds before him the example of Christ, as a 
 beneficent Redeemer of man, by a life of active love, and 
 this is the model by which it attracts and commands, 
 and not the legend of some illuminated saint, with its 
 absurd imaginings, its ofi'ensive asceticism, and its sick- 
 ening experiences. It sends him to this Redeemer, to 
 confer directly with him concerning his sins and his 
 temptations, instead of directing him to the Holy Virgin 
 to repeat his " Ave Maria, ora pro nobis." It accus- 
 toms him to the Scriptures as to a book that will task 
 
70 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 and invigorate his intellect, that will kindle his better 
 feelings, and elevate and purify his imagination. It does 
 not exalt the sacred book to a mysterious idol, into 
 whose inner mysteries the profane may not intrude, 
 and whose oracular responses the priesthood alone can 
 interpret. 
 
 This religion may sometimes be very imperfectly 
 taught. It may be narrowly, inconsistently, and un- 
 gracefully exhibited. It may fail to gain the heart, and 
 to win over the man. His passions, his pride, and his 
 self-will, may all arm him against it. But he knows in 
 his conscience and in his honest convictions, that it is 
 true and binding, and that the book which it reveals is 
 from God. 
 
 To those who, like ourselves, look upon the Romish 
 system as a system of dangerous and fatal error, as a 
 monstrous incubus, stifling and oppressing the gospel 
 of Christ, no place can be so dangerous to the young as 
 a Jesuit college, every exercise of which is made to as- 
 sume a religious aspect, and to exert a religious influ- 
 ence. With the most favorable judgment of this re- 
 ligious influence, it will be likely either to gain the pupil 
 to the Catholic faith as a deluded devotee, or to harden 
 him against all faith and feeling, as a hopeless un- 
 believer. 
 
 Were we to gather the combined result of the in- 
 fluence of a teacher, an institution or a scheme of edu- 
 cation for a single view, that view would respect the 
 influence of all these upon the character. If education 
 is to be tested, we have only to inquire, what kind of 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 71 
 
 men does it form ? Education itself is not an end. The 
 knowledge which it gives — the training which it imparts 
 — the graces with which it adorns — the splendor with 
 which it invests the man — are none of them the final 
 end at which it aims. The mighty influence for which 
 it prepares — the glorious triumphs of intellectual prow- 
 ess which it insures — the splendid results in words or 
 deeds which endure as the lasting memorials of its 
 power — none of these are its great objects. The end 
 and aim, is the manhood which it forms — the style of 
 character which it produces — and the combined product 
 of intellect and soul — of principles and habits which 
 " fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnani- 
 mously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace 
 and war." 
 
 If, then, from this point of view, we look at the con- 
 siderations which have been suggested; if we possess 
 ourselves strongly yet fairly of the difierences between 
 the systems represented by the words Jesuit and Puri- 
 tan ; if we see how these systems must be impersonated 
 in the character of every teacher, and be more or less per- 
 fectly stamped upon his obedient pupil ; if we remember 
 that they will pervade, as it were, the very atmosphere of 
 the institution, and be breathed by the pupil with his daily 
 breath, we shall justly estimate the difference between the 
 education which is received at the Puritan, and that which 
 is acquired at the Jesuit seminary. Every pupil who is 
 sent to a school or a college is met by the genius /oci, which 
 is quite as influential and decisive in forming the character 
 and in moulding the man, as the knowledge or discipline 
 
72 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OP THE 
 
 which he receives. The judgments which he forms of 
 books and men — the standard by which he tries his fel- 
 lows, and to which he shapes himself — these take the hue 
 and form which will never change, in that fermenting, joy- 
 ous, hoping, ardent period. Let, then, a man imagine a 
 Protestant teacher like Dr. Arnold — sympathizing yet 
 firm — the companion yet the master of his pupils — mod- 
 est yet confident — inquiring yet believing — liberal yet 
 earnest — reverential yet reforming — rational yet re- 
 ligious — and then picture another teacher, as nearly like 
 him, as a Jesuit could possibly be and yet remain true 
 to his principles. How great would be the difference 
 on points the most important, and how widely apart in 
 their character, their history, and their whole influence, 
 would the pupils become, which should be formed by 
 each ! 
 
 Tried by such a test, let these systems be judged. 
 
 We cannot but dwell on the truth, which has been 
 already more than implied, that the education of a man 
 has to do with something besides the intellect. The in- 
 tellect is the instrument, but it is not the force, which 
 wields and guides it to its uses. It is the strong bow of 
 Ulysses, but not the single eye and steady arm which 
 sends the arrow home to the rightly chosen mark. The 
 principles, the character, the living man, have quite as 
 much to do with the attainments made — and certainly 
 have they as much to do with the uses to which they are 
 applied — as the training of the intellect, however com- 
 plete and splendid that training may be. If the intel- 
 lect be not trained in harmony with a character rightly 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPAB 
 
 Duoulded, and which is formed in obedience to the meth- 
 ods and will of the Supreme, every attainment of the in- 
 tellect makes the deficiency of the man more striking. 
 Nay, its most splendid accomplishments are in one as- 
 pect but vicious deformities. The Jesuit denies to man 
 the right training of his character. Nay, he denies to him 
 a character at all ; for he denies him the freedom and 
 separate responsibility which are necessary to make a 
 character possible. It is easy to improve the touch, and 
 to strengthen the smell, by extinguishing the eyesight. 
 It is possible to give to the eyes a marvellous acute- 
 ness, in discerning objects on the floor of the dungeon ; 
 but who would count accomplishments of this sort, pur- 
 chased at such a cost, any better than the tokens of its 
 greater loss, and the badges of its lower degradation 7 
 
 It may be that the Protestant, in this new country, 
 does not secure to his pupil all that might be desired in 
 the highest perfection of erudition, or the most practised 
 acuteness in disputation ; but he does not weaken the very 
 principle of intellectual activity, and visit, as with the 
 poison of death, the life of the soul. He gives him a force 
 and vigor — a truth and freedom of character — ^which 
 make him always a learner, and then sends him forth 
 into a sphere of social existence which is fitted to stimu- 
 late him to effort, and to realize a noble manhood. He 
 does not fix a frame in the earth, symmetrical in form 
 and polished by art, to stand as the monument and tro- 
 phy of his skill ; but he plants a tree, and gives it room 
 to grow. 
 § The question has been seriously agitated, whether oi 
 4 
 
74 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 not there is any probability that the institutions of the 
 Jesuits will exert an important influence on the desti- 
 nies of this country. On the one hand it has been pas- 
 sionately contended that the danger from these institu- 
 tions is real and great. Some have gone so far as to be 
 seized with a panic, in view of their almost certain su- 
 premacy. The most awful forebodings have been indulged, 
 and the most passionate appeals have been made, in view 
 of the threatening evil. These fears have, on the other 
 hand, been derided. It has been argued, that it is 
 quite impossible for this order ever to exert an extensive 
 influence among such a people as ours — so intelligent, so 
 independent, and so averse to constraint, to formality, 
 and rigid rule. 
 
 It cannot be doubted, we think, that the Jesuits have 
 thoroughly surveyed this country, and that they have 
 projected an extended system of educational influences. 
 Their veteran in craft, who resides at the seat of govern- 
 ment, has visited large portions of the West ; has se- 
 lected his favorite points of influence, and, in many in- 
 stances, has purchased sites for literary institutions. 
 In many places colleges and seminaries have been 
 erected, and have been opened for pupils. The situ- 
 ation, the grounds, the massive and substantial structures, 
 all indicate that the plans are far-reaching, and that, full 
 of confidence in the triumphs of time, the Jesuits are 
 waiting and hoping to do a great work for the Church 
 of Rome. It is certain — as certain as that the order 
 exists — that its eyes are every where present ; that its 
 net-work of plans and projects is thickly spread over 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 75 
 
 tliis wide country. It is as certain that the energies of 
 this order are yet unexhausted, and its organization is 
 still incomplete. The moment that there are indications 
 that, in any part of this country, the population will re- 
 ceive the Jesuit schools and colleges with favor, that 
 moment will they start into being, will be completely 
 manned and provided for an efficient activity. The man 
 that doubts this, must be as ignorant of the past, as he 
 is incapable of forecasting the future. A society that is 
 older than three centunes — that has survived the frown 
 of the Pope, the wrath of all the courts of Europe save 
 one, and the rage of the multitude, and that, after nearly 
 half a century of banishment and suspended life, could 
 start at once into being, and fill all Europe with its 
 presence, and could make it vibrate with its power, is 
 not a night-dream, nor a spectre, nor a fancy. It is a 
 terrific reality ; and if it can find a place, and exert an 
 influence, among us, it will arise and shake itself like a 
 giant refreshed with sleep. 
 
 The only question worth considering is. Will it find 
 or make to itself a place among us? Will its pecu- 
 liarities attract, or will they repel, the American 
 people ? 
 
 First. Can the Jesuit system accomplish any thing 
 in our older settlements, which are already provided 
 with colleges and schools ? At present, the few institu- 
 tions which they have are chiefly sustained by Roman- 
 ists. But it is to be remembered, that there is increas- 
 ing among these settlements a large and still larger num- 
 ber of men of easy religious faith, and of a thoughtless 
 
76 * EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 and ignorant neglect of religious truth. They are men 
 of wealth and fashion, and, to some extent, of liberal 
 culture, who are admirers of intellectual accomplish- 
 ments, and ambitious of a European education for their 
 children. In respect to the religious bearings of this 
 education, they would despise the consideration of them, 
 as illiberal or sectarian, or think it very vulgar to give 
 themselves any concern about such a matter. Or, it 
 may be, they would be cozened into the belief, that gen- 
 tlemen so accomplished as this society can furnish, would 
 be quite above any interference with the religious opin- 
 ions of their pupils — or, which is quite likely to be the ca^e, 
 they would be interested in the earnestness, the propri- 
 ety of so religious a school, and would be so charmed with 
 this manifestation of the religious sentiment, as even to 
 prefer this religious training for their children. They 
 would think as little of fearing the Pope or the Jesuits, 
 as they would of fearing the devil ; for it would be 
 decidedly and equally unfashionable to do the one as 
 the other. Let, then, the accomplishments and high 
 education which can be secured at these schools, as they 
 may become, win over a portion of the fashionable circles 
 — let them be countenanced by a few of the travelled or 
 untravelled literati, and it may easily and swiftly come 
 to pass, that in our oldest and best instructed cities, the 
 Jesuits shall exert a powerful influence. What success 
 they would have with the susceptible children from 
 families with no high religious aims and no earnest re- 
 ligious culture, it is easy to predict. The faith of their 
 fathers would present no obstacle ; for the fathers have 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 77 
 
 no faith. All those obstacles, which in other Protestant 
 countries present a barrier so formidable in historical 
 associations, the influence of a court or an aristocracy 
 pledged to a national religion, and in the prevailing sen- 
 timent of the people, here have a feeble influence. Do 
 we talk of free principles, and the republican spirit of 
 our countrymen ? and do we forget, that with many of 
 the circles whom we describe, republicanism is a jest, 
 and all that smacks of the court and the church, is afi'ected 
 as something peculiar and distingue ? Do we also forget 
 that to the sensitive and worn-out victims of fashionable 
 life, who have sensibility without afl'ection, and religi- 
 osity without religion, institutions like these present 
 strong attractions — that to men of high cultivation, and 
 extensive knowledge of books and society, who have 
 bewildered themselves with a glance at the various reli- 
 gious sects, and have been distracted with the conflicting 
 opinions of others, without earnestly settling their own 
 principles, the oracular dicta of Rome and its imposing 
 and emphatic dogmatism, present a relief from doubt 
 and an end of controversy ? Do we not know, that in 
 consequence of these and other attractions which might 
 be named, there are not unfrequent instances of conver- 
 sions to the church of Kome from among what are 
 called the higher circles of this country, including not a 
 few persons of accomplished education ? Do we also 
 forget that such converts to Rome are quite likely to be 
 ardent admirers of the Jesuit — so ardent that they can 
 adopt the language of certain Oxford divines concern- 
 ing the "illustrious and glorious society of Ignatius, 
 
78 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 which, next to the visible church, may be considered as 
 the greatest miracle existing in the world.'"* 
 
 The only remedy against these tendencies, is to pre- 
 occupy the ground with colleges and schools of the 
 highest order, in which all the advantages of a thorough 
 and accomplished education may be secured, and which, 
 at the same time, shall teach a positive, earnest, yet 
 catholic Christianity, and shall be pervaded by its free 
 and elevated spirit. 
 
 We next inquire : What are the prospects of the Jesuit 
 institutions in the newer settlements ? In these settle- 
 ments there is a large proportion of Catholics, who will, 
 by and by, attain to wealth and influence. These will 
 send their children to the Jesuit seminaries, who will 
 constitute an educated and accomplished class, exhibit- 
 ing in its members the superiority of the Jesuit educa- 
 tion. There is a large and still larger class of people at 
 the West, who are of Protestant descent, but who have 
 no religious faith from personal conviction. Many of 
 them have suddenly risen to wealth, and bring with 
 them all that vulgar arrogance and independent spirit 
 which are the usual consequences. To such men, and 
 to a state of society formed under their influence, the 
 Jesuit teacher, and the Jesuit school is likely to be an 
 object of profound admiration. The external accom- 
 plishments to which he forms his pupils, the dexterous 
 logic, the learned air, and the serene self-confidence with 
 which he claims the superiority, are certain to be attrac- 
 
 * Lives of thf English Saints, vol. vi. p. 120. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 79 
 
 tive to those who have no training of their own, little 
 culture, and little knowledge of arts like these. We 
 can hardly conceive to ourselves a finer field for the 
 successful exhibition of a splendid system of Jesuit 
 tactics, than is presented in the unformed society of the 
 West. The agency and the material to work upon, are 
 admirably fitted to each other, and promise the most 
 magnificent results. Is it suggested, that the republican 
 spirit and prejudices of western society will be offended 
 by institutions of so rigid and severe a character ? No 
 impression can be more unfounded than this. Men 
 admire that to which they are most unaccustomed. The 
 order and strict regime of a seminary for youth presents 
 no objection, from its anti-republican character, to those 
 who have full confidence in its teachers and guardians. 
 As to the influence of the principles that may be silently 
 inculcated, and of the spirit which may be imparted, 
 these will neither be suspected, nor feared. The patrons 
 will be too ignorant to be instructed by history, or too 
 self-confident to regard its suggestions, or too indifferent 
 to care for the consequences. Besides, nothing is easier 
 for the Jesuit, than to be an ardent republican. The 
 Romish church and its religious orders will delight to 
 assume the patronage of the people ; they will be in- 
 tensely solicitous for the largest political liberty, pro- 
 vided they can control the conscience and thus regulate 
 the elections. A republic is a field far more inviting 
 than a monarchy for the agency of an organization so vast, 
 so secret, so able, and so adaptive as that of the Jesuits. 
 A monarchy has its own organization, its own police, its 
 
80 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 own secret agents, acting upon matured and far-reaching 
 plans, who will suspect and trace out their secret ene- 
 mies. But a republic often changes its parties. Their 
 organizations are as shifting as the sands, and their 
 agencies are formed and broken like exhalations of a 
 night. Then there are the interests and unscrupulous- 
 ness of partisans, who in critical periods will gladly lay 
 hold of such an organization to accomplish their ends. 
 These parties will shelter themselves under the name of 
 toleration and the largest religious liberty, and will re- 
 proach their adversaries with sectarian zeal and bigoted 
 prejudice. Against the powerful influence of such an 
 educational system, republican principles and the repub- 
 lican spirit are an unequal defence. The great ques- 
 tions then to be considered for the West, as well as for 
 the East, are : Will these institutions root themselves in 
 American soil : Will they obtain so strong a hold of 
 American society at the West, as to be able to act with 
 energy, and to attract crowds of scholars? Will the 
 attractions which they shall be able hereafter to unfold, 
 gain leave and room to allure, to corrupt, and destroy ? 
 The answer to these questions, in respect to the West, is 
 the same as for the East, only it is given with a more 
 startling earnestness, and should be pondered with a 
 graver consideration. If Western society is left desti- 
 tute of seminaries of a decidedly Protestant character, 
 the Jesuits will occupy the field. There is no escape 
 from this alternative. If the West is provided with 
 those of an inferior character, which shall be slowly 
 furnished with the means and the men required, and 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 81 
 
 these shall be inferior in kind, the Jesuit will rejoice at 
 the competition, perhaps even more than if the field 
 were left entirely vacant. 
 
 § Should it be objected against the tenor and conclu- 
 sion of our argument, that the views which we have 
 taken of Jesuit in comparison with Protestant scholars 
 is altogether too unfavorable to the latter, we reply, we 
 draw no comparison between these scholars as they are 
 contrasted in Europe. Our argument has to do with 
 the few superior teachers which the Jesuits have fur- 
 nished to this country. The superiority which we con- 
 cede to these last is limited to a narrow range, and is 
 confined to but few branches. Within this range, and 
 in these branches, they show the fruits of a labor to 
 which we are slow to submit, and of a training such as 
 only older institutions and older countries can appre- 
 ciate or enforce. Out of these limits, and for most of 
 the purposes for which an education is sought, these 
 teachers are inferior, and perhaps contemptible. No man 
 who understands the entire bearing of the culture that 
 is givon by such men, apart from its religious influences 
 even, would think of sending a son to a Jesuit college, 
 if he wished to fit him to take an honorable position as 
 an American and a free citizen. He might well desire 
 a Jesuit instructor to teach his boy to write or to speak 
 Latin, to argue with logical dexterity, to become an acute 
 and accomplished mathematician, but if he desired to 
 send him where he would be trained to think and feel 
 like a man, he would not expose him to the influence of 
 4# 
 
82 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 those whose ideal of manhood is realized in the sophist, 
 the diplomatist, the driveller, and the devotee. 
 
 It may be insisted, again, that the Jesuit schools in 
 this country, and the Jesuit teachers, are too contemp- 
 tible, for ignorance and squalor, to be feared ; that it 
 offends one's gravity to hear encomiums bestowed on an 
 education so shallow and superficial as that which these 
 teachers generally bestow. Our reply is, it is true, very 
 true, that the majority of these institutions are, and 
 always will be, inferior and superficial, because the ob- 
 ject of the Jesuits is not to educate, but to use the mass 
 of its scholars ; it is not to enlighten, but to proselyte 
 those brought within its reach. Not many years since 
 the emperor of Austria was heard to say to the students 
 of the University of Vienna, " Austria does not seek 
 to train accomplished scholars, but obedient subjects." 
 Such a sentiment the Jesuit would utter with a fullness 
 of meaning and a fervor of feeling to which even the 
 emperor was a stranger. Yet still it is true, on the 
 other hand, that as the system requires some accom- 
 plished students, so it knows how to train them ; and 
 that to argue from the inferiority of many or most of 
 the schools and teachers in this country, that they have 
 no schools and teachers of the highest rank, is to dis- 
 play a scantiness of information and of logic, at which 
 even the Jesuit might wonder. 
 
 Besides, it is to be remembered, that the call for a 
 superior education at their schools is at present most 
 limited ; that an inferior and superficial culture is the 
 most grateful to that portion of our countrymen whom 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 83 
 
 they can bring within their reach ; that in Europe there 
 are great interests at stake, which call for the ablest 
 intriguers, the most dexterous diplomatists, and the pro- 
 foundest statesmen which the society can furnish ; and 
 that we may be well assured, that if able men and ac- 
 complished scholars can here find work to do, they will 
 be found or trained. That system, which has men at its 
 command who can make themselves felt in the courts of 
 Europe, which has the diplomatic experience and wisdom 
 of centuries at its service ; that society, that within 
 twenty years, has almost revolutionized some of the 
 oldest universities of Europe, is not to be dismissed 
 with a sneer at its deficiency in able men. 
 
 It may yet be urged that the present age is too enlight- 
 ened to be imposed on by the artifices of the Jesuits, and 
 that the circumstances of the present century are very 
 difi'erent from those which at the period of the Eefor- 
 mation, presented so fine a field for their efforts and 
 their triumph. We own that the present age is enlight- 
 ened. "We believe that the Jesuit now contends with a foe 
 that is mightier than those with which he has grappled 
 in other days. But we would not be so simple as to forget 
 that when man has to do with religion, he puts out the light 
 that is given of God, sooner than in respect to any other 
 subject whatever, and that however shrewd or far-seeing 
 a generation of men may prove themselves in respect 
 to all things else, they may at the same time in religion 
 be bigots or fools. On this subject men either think so 
 little as to allow the thinking to be done for them on the 
 easiest terms by the priests of unbelief, or the priests of 
 
84 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 a hierarchy ; or on the other hand, the subject is so seri- 
 ous, and conscience can awaken such terrors, that they 
 freely bend their necks to a papal asceticism, or bow their 
 souls before a pompous and self-enthroned authority. 
 Who does not see in these passing years, that an in- 
 creased fondness for " church principles^'' has been gath- 
 ering strength in almost all Protestant denominations, 
 till it has become the fashion of the times : that as one 
 result Rome has gained considerable recruits from 
 more than one denomination, and made of accomplished 
 and ingenuous youth, trained by Protestant firesides, 
 her devoted and credulous sons % Who does not know 
 that influences are diffused through the channels of an 
 imaginative literature, which are fitted to abuse the reli- 
 gious aspirations of the young, and their trusting confi- 
 dence, till they shall be ready to give themselves up to 
 any thing that bears on its front the charmed word au- 
 thority, that appeals to the spirit of reverence, or that 
 displays a rigid adherence to the forms of worship ? It 
 is a fact not to be disguised, that from circles in our 
 country " the nearest to unbelief," sensitive and be- 
 wildered minds have rushed in an agony of doubt to 
 find rest in that creed which is most positive in its asser- 
 tions, and with a convulsive grasp after authority of some 
 sort, have submitted to the authority of Rome. We 
 have seen the stoutest skeptics transformed in an in- 
 stant to the most dogmatic believers, the extremest un- 
 believers receive without scruple the most absurd dogmas, 
 and even delight in childish legends, which a few months 
 previous they would have rejected with loathing and 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 85 
 
 disgust. Against influences like these, it is idle to ex- 
 pect that education will guard her most favored sons. 
 They are influences which education itself creates, and 
 which the educated only feel. They are confined to the 
 circles of refinement and culture, but there they are all- 
 powerful and all-pervading. They are created by the 
 enlightenment of the age, and yet have a potency 
 which makes their victims the veriest bond-slaves of 
 their peculiar prejudices. 
 
 The argument, that the illumination of the age is a 
 security against the influence of the Jesuits, is refuted 
 by facts that can neither be denied nor disputed. In 
 Germany, among the highest literary circles, there is a 
 strong tendency in the direction already indicated, both 
 among the Catholics and Lutherans. In England, these 
 influences have gathered strength in the most ancient 
 and renowned university in the kingdom ; have induced 
 a state of things in the church, and throughout the 
 country, which if a prophet had foretold thirty years 
 ago, he would have been counted mad. In this country 
 the same current flows strongly and deeply, and in 
 quarters where it is not generally suspected. Nay, in 
 Germany, in England, and America, out of the very 
 infidelity which has resulted from the illumination of 
 the age, has sprung up, by a natural reaction, a disposi- 
 tion to favor a factitious order and authority. 
 
 It may be contended, indeed, that these movements 
 aff'ect the educated alone, while the middling and lower 
 classes are moving with a strong and swelling current 
 towards freedom in the church and in the state. This 
 
86 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 is true, and we argue from it the final triumph of free- 
 dom and of truth. But the triumph will not come 
 without a struggle, and in that struggle Jesuit teachers 
 may yet exert a powerful influence. What if the in- 
 fluences to which we have alluded prevail only in the 
 higher circles of society. These circles give the fashion 
 to those which are lower, and fashion, especially when 
 she assumes the downcast look and the modest robe of 
 the religious devotee, is all-powerful, not less in a free 
 republic than in a stable monarchy. It is pre-eminently 
 the law of modern society that intellect and wealth 
 govern the world. Let the educated and rich in our 
 own country be infected with any prejudices, however 
 absurd, and fall into any fashions, however ridiculous, 
 and the masses will be sure to follow. Our freedom in 
 the church and in the' state furnishes no security against 
 the result ; it only presents fewer hindrances to the ra- 
 pidity and certainty of the consequences. 
 
 It is again contended that a free press and free dis- 
 cussion are omnipotent against all these dangers. In- 
 deed, how was it in Belgium ? After the revolution of 
 1 830, four daily journals made their appearance. Within a 
 year they dwindled away, and very soon were abandoned or 
 sold to the opposite party. The pulpit thundered against 
 them — absolution was refused to their patrons. Even 
 the persons employed at their offices were put under the 
 ban. ' But Catholic Belgium is not Protestant America.* 
 True, but let Jesuit teachers train Protestant editors, 
 and what would be the result? Let them mould in 
 whole or in part, the intelligent youth of a city, a county, 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 87 
 
 or a state, and what would be the consequences ? Or if 
 so complete an influence is not to be anticipated, let 
 there exist in any city, or county, or state among us, an 
 influential body of Catholic laity, educated and filling 
 high positions in social, commercial, and professional life, 
 and what will be the courage or independence of the 
 journals which they patronize ? Even now, when ques- 
 tions merely political arise, in which Catholic votes are to 
 be humored or bought, how courteous and flattering 
 does every editor become towards the Church of Rome ; 
 how reverential to its priesthood, how incredulous in re- 
 spect to its enormities, and how ready to surrender the 
 best established principles of republican freedom to its 
 dictation. In New-York city, strenuous efi'orts were 
 made to introduce separate Catholic schools, and to sup- 
 port them from the public treasury ; and the Protestant 
 press was extensively committed in favor of the pro- 
 ject, plainly inconsistent as it is with every principle 
 on which any public school system can be based. In 
 Massachusetts a charter was sought for a Jesuit college 
 at Worcester,* to which Catholics only should be ad- 
 
 * See speeches of Mr. Hopkins, of Northampton, on the bill 
 to incorporate the College of the Holy Cross in the city of Wor- 
 cester, delivered in the House of Representatives, April 24th 
 and 25th, 1849. 
 
 See also a review of the reports and discussions on the sub- 
 ject in Brownson's Quarterly Review, 1849. It is worthy of 
 especial notice, that the point on which the petitioners most 
 insisted, and which was the ground of the rejection of their re- 
 quest, was the provision asked for, that none but Catholics should 
 
88 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 mitted, and though this provision was opposed to the 
 principles and practice of the State in chartering public 
 seminaries, yet it was sustained by a large minority, and 
 urged by influential journals of all political parties. 
 Nothing can be more clear from the history of the past, 
 
 be admitted to the 'privileges of the institution. The superficial 
 observer would argue from this, that the institution was not in- 
 tended for proselyting purposes, and that the design of this pro- 
 vision was to preclude such an objection. It should be remem- 
 bered, however, that in this country the Catholics for the present 
 are most earnest to guard their children and youth against the 
 liberalizing influences which are sure to follow from contact with 
 Protestant minds. It is the first object with them to prevent 
 such an intercourse. Hence their zeal to institute separate schools 
 under the direction and control of the priesthood. Hence their 
 determined purpose in some quarters to reject even a gratuitous 
 education at the public school, and to educate the children of 
 each parish in a separate establishment. 
 
 Another reason for this arrangement, may be the fear to ex- 
 pose to Protestant inspection the kind of instruction which is 
 received from the lips of their teachers, the arguments by which 
 the church is defended and Protestantism is assailed, as well as to 
 expose to the light the services and discipline of their devotions. 
 
 Are we not required to suspect still more than this, that these 
 institutions may be designed for the special service of " THE " 
 Society, rather than for the general objects of the Romish 
 church 1 If so, there is a double reason for secrecy and seclu- 
 sion. 
 
 Since the above was written, the avowed hostility of Ro- 
 mish journals and of Romish ecclesiastics, to our public school 
 system, as furnishing a place suitable for the education of the 
 children of "the church," and the active and. simultaneous efforts 
 to withdraw their children from free into parochial schools, have 
 become more significant. 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 89 
 
 than that whenever a question has arisen in our country 
 which has affected the Romish Church, the powerful in- 
 fluence of the Romish priesthood has been felt on the 
 public press, hushing it into silence, or bribing it to base 
 compliances and hollow flatteries. Nothing is more cer- 
 tain, than that in the future, as the number, the wealth, 
 and the intellectual culture of the Catholics shall in- 
 crease, the secular press will be less reliable as a defence 
 against the evils of the Romish system, if it does not 
 become its ally. Nay, even in our own time, it has 
 happened more than once that the consecration of a 
 Romish cathedral, or the founding of a Jesuit college, 
 have been hailed by Protestant editors in language the 
 most ridiculously fulsome, disgusting, and extravagant. 
 It is notorious that in certain sections of our land, the 
 liberal party in religion has, through the fear of the im- 
 putation of bigotry, been willing to believe all that is 
 good of Rome, and been foremost to disbelieve all that 
 is bad ; has, through the " bigotry of its liberality," been 
 almost ready to send its daughters to a convent and its 
 sons to a Jesuit seminary. 
 
 We are well aware that our arguments and appeals 
 will be denounced as the offspring of Protestant preju- 
 dice and bigotry. Such is the fashion of Romish writers 
 in this country, especially of the Romish neophytes, 
 whose chief weapon against every attack is either affected 
 contempt for Puritan ignorance and rusticity, or pre- 
 tended pity for Protestant heretics who are reserved for 
 the wrath of God, or a ferocious blackguardism against 
 the impertinent audacity that ventures to meddle with 
 
90 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 the church. Such is the habit of Romish writers, and 
 it shows that they know the temper of their followers, 
 and understand well what will best suit their tastes and 
 influence their understandings. It would be well, how- 
 ever, for such men to reflect that Protestants are not 
 ignorant that the Society of Jesus has been the object 
 of suspicion and attack from influential men in the 
 Church of Rome itself; that no worse things have been 
 said of it by Protestants than have been said by Roman- 
 ists themselves ; that Romish ecclesiastics have, in all 
 the generations of its history, directed against it their 
 open attacks and their secret machinations ; that Romish 
 teachers have dreaded it as a rival, and detested it as 
 an intriguer ; that Romish authors, and Romish nobles 
 and princes have combined together to crush it as dan- 
 gerous, desperate, unprincipled, and treacherous — now a 
 demagogue and then a regicide. The vicar of Christ 
 himself has more than once placed upon it his foot, 
 to be stung by its fangs when writhing in the death 
 struggle. 
 
 We are Protestants indeed ; we glory in the name. 
 Surely as we stand upon this American soil, we have no 
 reason to be ashamed of it. We do not repel the Ro- 
 manist from our shores. We allow him to erect his 
 churches, his schools, his colleges. We give him leave 
 to circulate his Bible, his ponderous arguments, his 
 annals for the learned, and his lighter tracts for the 
 people. We ourselves go to Rome, to Spain, to Italy, 
 to Austria, and claim there the same liberty. Our books 
 are seized, and we ourselves are courteously led to the 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 91 
 
 frontier, or shut up in a prison-house. Is there nothing 
 in Protestantism of which to boast 1 
 
 Doubtless we look at this subject with Protestant 
 partialities and Protestant prejudices.- It is natural 
 that we should. But we desire to do full justice to all 
 that is good in Romish piety and in Romish education. 
 We would give to the scholars and the Christians of 
 that church the highest praise that they deserve. Nay, 
 if we must err at all, we would extol their excellencies, 
 and be charitable to their defects. But we cannot be 
 ignorant of the first principles of the Romish system, 
 nor can we be blind to the legitimate consequences to 
 which these principles lead. Still less can we fail to 
 see that the Jesuit society, in respect to the princi- 
 ples on which it is based, the character which it would 
 form, and the services for which it would fit the man, 
 nay, even in respect to its notions of what Christianity 
 and education are, is altogether opposed to the views 
 which we hold of education, of manhood, of freedom, of 
 the authority of reason, and of the first principles of 
 the religion of Christ. Holding these views, and know- 
 ing too well the power of an organization so old, so ex- 
 perienced, so practised in all the arts by which men are 
 moved, working the mightiest agency in society — the re- 
 ligious hopes and fears of other men — and yet absolved 
 itself from those hopes and fears, committed also with 
 an untiring energy and perseverance to the interest of 
 the Romish faith, we do but justice to our convictions, 
 as we express our fears of its power, our abhorrence 
 
92 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 of its principles, and raise our voice of warning against 
 its institutions. 
 
 To say that these fears and this dislike are only 
 what is common from one religious sect towards another, 
 and that all this earnestness is to be ascribed to the 
 narrow influence of religious bigotry, is to say that one 
 faith is as good as another, that there is no difference 
 between the worship of Jehovah and of Juggernaut ; no 
 choice between a faith that justifies itself to the judg- 
 ment and binds the moral nature, and one that offends 
 the reason and shocks the conscience. To say that there 
 is no danger in committing the training of a child to a 
 Romish or Jesuit school, which is bound by all that is 
 sacred in its convictions and consistent in its principles, 
 to do what it can to proselyte that child to the faith 
 of Rome, is to be ignorant, and foolish, and guilty. 
 
 § But if our argument should fail altogether to excite 
 any apprehension of the danger to be feared from Jesuit 
 seminaries and Jesuit intrigues, it cannot fail to illus- 
 trate the immense power over society that is exerted by 
 the higher institutions of learning, and to establish the 
 fact beyond all question, that to endow and foster such 
 institutions is one of the first duties of Christians to 
 their generation. We have seen how at a critical period 
 in the history of the past, the glorious work of free 
 thought and Protestant reform was arrested by a delib- 
 erate plan to take possession of the youth of Europe, 
 and turn their minds in a wrong direction. We have 
 seen how the plan was carried into execution by a splen- 
 did scheme of educational influences, such as the world 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 93 
 
 has never seen besides. We have seen the same system 
 survive for centuries, and ready to act with efficiency 
 wherever its presence was required, and ever ready to 
 make its presence necessary — rising from defeat with 
 new energy, husbanding its resources, and preparing for 
 a new life when in banishment and disgrace — and still 
 alive, ready to furnish teachers wherever they are de- 
 sired, and to found institutions in anticipation of future 
 need. We have seen also what it has accomplished. It 
 has in fact educated generations of youth to do its bid- 
 ding, and made them, willing or unwilling, the instru- 
 ments of its own purposes. It has made the laws, con- 
 trolled the politics and decided the religion of Europe 
 for centuries. It has decided the principles, formed the 
 dispositions, and even regulated the manners and fashions 
 of whole generations of the rich, the noble, and the 
 powerful. It has accomplished all this, simply because 
 it has controlled the higher education of these gene- 
 rations. 
 
 In view of these lessons concerning what may be 
 done by the higher institutions of learning, we are sum- 
 moned to contemplate the condition of society among 
 ourselves. At the East it is most flexible, ready to be 
 moulded in each of its generations by the influences 
 that are centred in our colleges and higher schools, and 
 ready also to feel in all its separate portions any change 
 in the men, who, by their knowledge, their modes of 
 instruction, their principles^ and their piety, give char- 
 acter to these colleges and schools. At the East the wants 
 of these colleges are loud and pressing. These wants 
 
94 EDUCATlOxNAL SYSTEMS OF THE 
 
 are the last to be appreciated by the Christian public. 
 The claims which they urge rest with equal weight on 
 thousands of the benevolent, each of whom has some 
 immediate objects on which to bestow his benefactions, 
 which seem to him to have a more direct relation to the 
 improvement and evangelization of man. 
 
 At the "V^st, society is yet to be formed. There, in 
 the process ;&f being united into a great empire, are 
 minds of astonishing energy, and hearts of fire, that 
 need to be ?feiught, and guided, and restrained. The 
 rapidity with which this empire is rushing up into an or- 
 ganized structure can find no likeness in the history of 
 man. Old habits, old institutions, old laws, and old 
 manners present but few hindrances to new impressions 
 and new influences. Never was the need of education so 
 pressing, never was its power for good so full of promise. 
 Never was there an opportunity so easily, so quickly, 
 and at so slight an expense, to give to millions of men a 
 free Protestant and Christian education, and in so doing 
 to decide their destiny. 
 
 Were there no danger from the Jesuits, there is 
 danger from barbarism, fanaticism and infidelity ; dan- 
 ger that is imminent and appalling. It is not enough 
 to send tracts, Sunday schools, and even preachers to 
 meet this exigency and avert these dangers. There 
 must be the expenditure of tens of thousands, and it 
 may be millions of money, in founding religious colleges 
 and seminaries, which shall be strong enough in intellect 
 and other resources, to do for Western society what the 
 Jesuits did for Europe in the sixteenth century. If 
 
PURITANS AND JESUITS COMPARED. 
 
 95 
 
 the review of their history should only excite our readers 
 more fully to appreciate the value and the power of the 
 Protestant institutions of this country, it will not have 
 been written in vain. 
 
 ilP^ 
 
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