The Ursulines, a more useful body, devoted themselves to education. In the three hundred and fifty convents which belonged to them in this century, they educated, at the smallest computation, thirtyfive thousand young girls. This vast establishment for education, directed by skilful hands, might, indeed, become a political engine of enormous power.

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The Ursulines and the Visitandines were governed by bishops, who appointed their confessors. St. François de Sales, so excellent a friend to the Jesuits and friars in general, had showed himself distrustful of them in the subject that was dearest to his heart, that of the Visitation: My opinion is, (says he, in some part of his works,) that these good girls do not know what they want, if they wish to submit themselves to the superiority of the friars, who, indeed, are excellent servants of God; but it always goes hard for girls to be governed by the orders, who are accustomed to take from them the holy liberty of the mind." *

It is but too easy to perceive how the orders of women servilely reproduced the minds of the men who directed them. Thus, the devotion of those who were governed by monks was characterised by every species of caprice, eccentricity, and violence; whilst they who were under the direction of secular priests, such as the Oratorians and the Doctrinaires, show

Euvres, vol. xi. p. 120. (ed. 1833).

some faint traces of reason, together with a sort of narrow-minded, common-place, and unproductive wisdom.

The nuns, who received from the bishops their ordinary confessors, chose for themselves an extraordinary one besides, who, as being extraordinary, did not fail to supplant and annul the former; the latter was, in most cases, a Jesuit. Thus the new orders of the Ursulines and Visitandines, created by priests, who had endeavoured to keep friars out of them, fell, nevertheless, under the influence of the latter: the priests sowed, but the Jesuits reaped the harvest.

Nothing did greater service to the cause of the Jesuits, than their constantly repeating that their austere founder had expressly forbidden them ever to govern the convents of women. This was true, as applied to convents generally, but false as regarded nuns in particular, and their special direction; they did not, indeed, govern them collectively, but they directed them individually.

The Jesuit was not pestered with the daily detail of spiritual management, or the small fry of trifling faults. He did not fatigue; he only interfered at the right time; he was particularly useful in dispensing the nuns from telling the confessor what they wished to conceal. The latter became, by degrees, a sort of husband, whom they might disregard.

If he happened, indeed, to have any firmness in his composition, or to be able to exercise any influence, the others worked hard to get rid of him by force of calumny. We may form an opinion of the audacity of the Jesuits in this particular, since they did not fear to attack the Cardinal de Bérulle himself, notwithstanding his power.* One of his relatives, living with the Carmelites, having become pregnant, they boldly accused him of the crime, though he had never set his foot within the convent. Finding no one to believe them, and seeing they would gain nothing by attacking him on the score of morality, they joined in a general outcry against his books. "They contained the hidden poison of a dangerous mysticism: the cardinal was too tender, too indulgent, and too weak, both as a theologian and a director." Astounding impudence! when every body knew and saw what sort of directors they were themselves!

This, however, had, in time, the desired effect, if not against Bérulle, at least against the Oratory, who became disgusted with, and afraid of, the direction of the nuns, and at last abandoned it. This is a remarkable example of the all-powerful effects of calumny, when organised on a grand scale by a numerous body, vented by them, and continually sung in chorus. A band of thirty thousand men

* Tabaraud, Life of Bérulle, vol. i. passim.

repeating the same thing every day throughout the Christian world! Who could resist that? This is the very essence of jesuitical art, in which they are unrivalled. At the very creation of their order, a sentence was applied to them, similar to those wellknown verses in which Virgil speaks of the Romans:

"Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra," &c. &c.

Others shall animate brass, or give life to marble; they (the Romans) shall excel in other arts. “Remember, Jesuit, thy art is calumny."

REACTION 1657.

CHAPTER V.

OF MORALITY. ARNAUD, 1643.

PASCAL,

BASENESS OF THE JESUITS. HOW THEY GET HOLD OF THE KING AND THE POPE, AND IMPOSE SILENCE UPON THEIR ENEMIES. DISCOURAGEMENT OF THE JESUITS.

THEIR CORRUPTION.

THEY PROTECT

THE FIRST QUIETISTS. -IMMORALITY OF QUIETISM.
MORIN BURNT, 1663.

DESMARETS DE SAINT-SORLIN.

MORALITY was weakened, but not quite extinct. Though undermined by the casuists, jesuitism, and by the intrigues of the clergy, it was saved by the laity. The age presents us this contrast. The priests, even the best of them, the Cardinal de Bérulle for instance, rush into the world, and into politics; while illustrious persons among the laity, such as Descartes and Poussin, retire to seek solitude. The philosophers turn monks, and the saints become men of business.

Each set of people will acquire what it desires in this century. One party will have power; they will succeed in obtaining the banishment of the Protestants, the proscription of the Jansenists, and the submission of the Gallicans to the Pope. Others will have science; Descartes and Galileo give the movements; Leibnitz and Newton furnish the harmony. That is to say,