bottom but doubt, and the absence of all principle. They could not help discovering that they, the most Christian of all societies, and the champions of the faith, were only sceptics.

Of faith? - what faith? It was not, at any rate, Christian faith: all their theology had no other tendency than to ruin the base on which Christianity is founded-grace and salvation by the blood of Jesus Christ. (See page 18.)

Champions of a principle? No; but agents of a plot, occupied with one project, and this an impossible one the restoration of popery.

Some few Jesuits resolved to seek a remedy in themselves for their fallen condition. They avowed frankly the urgent need that the Society had of reform. Their chief, a German, dared to attempt this reform; but it went hard with him: the great majority of the Jesuits wished to maintain the abuses, and they deprived him of all power.

These good workmen, who had been so successful in justifying the enjoyments of others, wanted to enjoy themselves in their turn. They chose for their general a man after their own heart, amiable, gentle,

of high reputation, though it were contrary to his sentiment who followed it, and even to his who recommended it. Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. 16th century, sect. 3. part 1. ch. 1. note 132.— TRANSL.

*This episode in the history of the Jesuits, though much obscured by them, has been cleared up by Ranke from manuscript documents.

and kind, the epicure Oliva. Rome, recently governed by Madame Olympia, was in a season of indulgence; Oliva retiring to his delightful villa, said, " Business to-morrow," and left the Society to govern itself after its own fashion.

Some became merchants, bankers, and clothmakers for the profit of their establishments. Others following more closely the example of the pope, worked for their nephews, and transacted the business of their families. The idle wits frequented the public walks, coquetted, and made madrigals. Others again found amusement in chatting to the nuns, in the little secrets of women, and their sensual inquisitiveness. Their rulers, lastly, who found themselves excluded from the society of women, became too often the Thyrsis and Corydons of the colleges; the consequence was in Germany a formidable investigation*; when a great number of the proud and austere German houses were found to be criminal.

The Jesuits, who had fallen so low both in theory and practice, increased their party at the risk of the strangest auxiliaries. Whoever declared himself an enemy of the Jansenists became their friend. Hence arose the immoral inconsistency of the Society-its perfect indifference as to the systems. These people, who for more than half a century had been fighting for free will, formed a sudden alliance, without any

* A few copies were reprinted in 1843. Mr. Nodier gave me this very curious rarity; but I have mislaid it.

intervening period of transition, with the mystics who confounded all their liberty in God. Just before they had been reproached with following the principles of pagan philosophers and jurisconsults, who attribute every thing to justice and nothing to grace or love; now they receive quietism at its birth with open arms, and the preacher of love, the visionary Desmarets de St. Sorlin.

Desmarets had, it is true, done them some essential service. He had succeeded in dismembering PortRoyal, by gaining over some of the nuns. He assisted them powerfully in destroying poor Morin, another visionary more original and more innocent, who fancied himself to be the Holy Ghost.* He tells us himself how, being encouraged by Father Canard (Annat) the king's confessor, he gained the confidence of this unfortunate man, made him believe he was his disciple, and drew from him written documents, by means of which he caused him to be burnt (1663).

The protection of this all-powerful confessor gained

* A belief common to the middle ages. Morin is a man of the middle ages who had wandered into the 17th century. His Pensées (1647) contain much originality and eloquence. Among other things there is this fine verse (p. 164.), "You know that love changes into himself what he loves." Morin's life was innocent; his cruel sentence reproaches him with nothing on the score of morality. Desmarets destroyed him through jealousy he wanted to turn prophet on his own account, and was not contented with being the St. John the Baptist of the new Messiah.

for the most extravagant books of Desmarets the approbation of the Archbishop of Paris. He declared in them that he was a prophet, and undertook to raise for the king and the pope an army of a hundred and forty-four thousand devots, as knights of papal infal libility, to exterminate, in concert with Spain, the Turks and the Jansenists.

These devots, or victims of love, were self-sacrificed people, who affected a sort of inward annihilation, and who lived henceforth only in God. Hence they could do no harm. The soul, said this prophet, having become a nonentity, cannot consent; so that whatever it may do, inasmuch as it has not consented, it has not sinned. It no longer thinks at all, either of what it has done, or of what it has not done; for it has done nothing at all. God being all in us, does all, and suffers all; the devil can no longer find the creature, either in itself or in its acts, for it acts no longer. By an entire dissolution of ourselves, the virtue of the Holy Ghost flows into us, and we become wholly God, by a miraculous deiformity. If there be still any thing jarring in the grosser part, the purer part knows nothing of it; but both these parts, being subtilised and rarefied, change at last into God; "God then abides with the emotions of sensuality, all of which are sanctified." *

Desmarets did not confine himself to printing this

* Desmarets de St. Sorlin's Delight of the Spirit, 29th journée, p. 170. See also his spiritual letters, &c.

doctrine with the privilege of the king and the approbation of the archbishop. Strongly supported by the Jesuits, he ran from convent to convent preaching to the nuns. Layman as he was, he had made himself a director of female youth. He related to them his dreams of devout gallantry, and inquired about their carnal temptations. It seemed that a man so perfectly self-annihilated might write fearlessly the strangest things the following letter for instance: "I embrace you, my very dear dove, in your nonentity, being a perfect nullity myself, each of us being all in our All, by our amiable Jesus," &c.

What progress is here made in a few years, since the "Provincial letters!" What has become of the casuists? Those simple people who took and effaced transgressions one by one, giving themselves immense trouble. They are all scattered to the winds.

Casuistry was an art that had its masters, doctors, and cunning men. But now, what need of doctors? Every spiritual man, every devout person, every Jesuit in a short robe can speak, as well as he in the long one, the soft language of pious tenderness. The Jesuits have fallen, but jesuitism has gained ground. It is no longer requisite to direct the attention every day for every distinct case by special equivocations. Love, that mingles and confounds every thing, is the sovereign, most gentle and powerful equivocation. Lull the will to sleep, and there is no longer any intention, "the soul, losing its nonentity in its infinity," will be gently annihilated in the bosom of love.