and monarchy that the Church and state combined to suppress the Jesuits. Twenty years after, to a day, the French republic solemnly renounced all religion and all monarchy, forced the people to renounce them on pain of death, slew their own king, a son of St. Louis, upon a scaffold, and erected the crime of regicide, which they had accused the Jesuits of tolerating, into a republican virtue. A little later, and all Europe presented a scene of battles and of blood; forty kingdoms were overthrown; kings were made and unmade at the will of one man. The Popes and the College of Cardinals were made prisoners in Rome, and afterwards transported to France and incarcerated.

The fatal error was discovered, and publicly as well as pri

for a moment held captive, is sure to burst its bands and lead captivity itself captive. The sublime example of perfect submission presented by the Jesuits throughout the world, on receiving the order dissolving them, was worth more to the Church than it cost. While we scout every suspicion against the Order, while we cheerfully acknowledge its invaluable services to religion and civilization, while we fully admit it to have been founded by the special interposition of Almighty God, and to be under the special protection of Him whose sacred name it bears, we think we need not blame the pontiff who suppressed it, but recognize the Lord's hand in the suppression, as well as in the resuscitation, and be as slow to accuse Clement the Fourteenth of error, as Pius the Seventh.

What we say here militates not in the least against the view taken in the text. All the text is intended to express is a firm conviction of the innocence and worth of the Order, and that its suppression, according to our human modes of judging, was attended by most deplorable consequences. This we admit; but we add this note for the purpose of showing, that, in saying all this, we do not necessarily accuse the sovereign pontiff of having done wrong in issuing his brief. We confess we are slow to bring an accusation against the sovereign pontiff, even in matters where faith permits us to canvass freely his acts. We would not willingly or consciously refuse to admit error or wickedness, wherever we find it; but we shrink, we own, from charging the Pope with erring, merely because we do not chance to see the wisdom and propriety of his acts, or because they seem to us unwise and improper. We would use our liberty as not abusing it. The sovereign pontiffs, when they act from their own judgment, may doubtless err; but they have reason and judgment as well as we, and perhaps are not more likely to err than we are. The reverential and obedient spirit that submits in all meekness and humility is dearer to God than the rash, captious, and insubordinate spirit that finds fault, and resists. It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. Under the circumstances, it may be the suppression of the Jesuits was wise and salutary. It is our duty always to presume the public measures of the sovereign pontiff are wise and just, unless we have positive evidence to the contrary.

vately avowed; and from every quarter of Europe, and louder than all from Spain, Portugal, and France, there arose a cry for the restoration of the Jesuits. That cry was heard, and in 1814, just forty-one years after the suppression of the Institute, Pius the Seventh published the bull for its restoration, amid the cries of joy, the acclamations, and the plaudits of the Christian world. The Roman people accompanied Pius the Seventh from the Quirinal Palace to the church of Gesu, where the bull was read, and the Pope's return to his palace was a triumphal march.

"It was in the church of Gesu, in presence of the whole Sacred College and of the patricians of Rome, that the bull was promulgated. Father Pannizoni, Provincial of Italy and General for the time being, received it from the Pope's hands. All the old Jesuits that could be assembled were present, saluting with tears of filial piety their mother risen from the dead. Eighty-six venerable men hasten to reassume the yoke of obedience. Albert of Montalto, aged one hundred and twenty-six years, during one hundred and eight of which he had been a Jesuit, stood at the head of these veterans of the Order. An immense void was to be filled, and the sons of the noblest families in Italy eagerly offered themselves to the work. By the side of the Angiolini, the Crassi, the Pannizoni, arose an Altieri, a Pallavicini, a Patrizi, an Azeglio, a Ricasoli, who in concert with the Fathers Piancini, Sinone, Manera, and Secchi, infused new vigor into that body, whose courage had never faltered in presence of danger."— Vol. V., pp. 523, 524.

From that day the Society has constantly and rapidly increased. It has revived its missionary stations, it has reopened its colleges, it presents each day new aspirants to sufferings and martyrdom, and, vigorous, active, and successful as in its palmiest days, it is now occupied in every quarter of the globe in the sublime work of civilizing and evangelizing the world.

Thus, as faithfully as the limits of a single article would permit, we have endeavoured to convey an idea of the immense benefits conferred upon the world by the humble fathers of the Company of Jesus. We have not aimed to give a history of the Society, but merely to sketch an imperfect outline of their labors in the cause of religion and humanity. In an entire volume it were impossible to narrate the half of what they have achieved for the human race; sufficient, however, has, we think, been said, to show how faithfully they accomplished the two primary objects of their mission, the advancement of true religion, and the promotion of useful knowledge.

In conclusion, we cannot too strongly urge it upon our readers never for one moment to lend an ear to the calumnies of the enemies of the Jesuits. Who are those enemies? The enemies of God and of his Church, the impious, the abandoned, the insane.

Indeed, no encomium can speak more eloquently the praises of the Society of Jesus, or more effectually commend it to our respect, than a retrospective comparison of the character and avowed sentiments of its opponents on the one hand, and its partisans and defenders on the other. For, if such men as Marion and Servin, Pombal and D'Aranda, Choiseul and Florida Bianca, Calvin and Beza, Arnauld and St. Cyr, Voltaire and D'Alembert, and, in this our day, Guizot, Michelet, and Eugene Sue, accompanied by a dense cloud of infidels and blasphemers, have been associated in desperate league to oppose, vilify, and persecute the Society of Jesus, it has not been, we may be certain, with an eye to the advancement of the glory of the Most High, and the dissemination of Christianity, and the amelioration of society, and the preservation of law and order; but rather to compass an end dark and sinister, to overturn established governments, to blast virtue, to sap the foundations of Christianity, to break in pieces the chair of St. Peter, to exterminate the Catholic faith. The confusion of ideas, the infidelity, the crimes and unutterable abominations which immediately followed the suppression of the Order, and the fiendish exultations of those by whose efforts and writings it was effected, constitute an imperishable evidence of the truth and justice of our assertion.

If, on the other hand, we consider that among the friends and warm defenders of the Jesuits are to be numbered thirty illustrious popes, a St. Charles, a St. Philip Neri, a St. Theresa, a St. Francis of Sales, a St. Vincent of Paul, a St. Liguori, and a host of saints and martyrs who have been at once the pride of Christianity and the glory of their age, not one of whom ever breathed a word against the Jesuits, but all of whom have coöperated with them and combated for them; the most illustrious emperors of the German confederation, from Rodolph to Maria Theresa, Henry the Fourth of France, and Louis the Fourteenth, Sobieski, John the Third and Fifth of Portugal, Frederick of Prussia, and Catherine of Russia, the kings and princes of the north and of the south; all the members, with the exception of some three or four who had scandalized the faithful by their disorders or heresies, - all the

members of the Sacred College of Cardinals, the most venerable and learned body in the world; archbishops and bishops occupying the most distinguished sees, such as Hovius, Bossuet, Fénélon, and the illustrious De Beaumont ; generals and fathers of the different religious orders, the Benedictines, the Dominicans, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Augustinians, the Carmelites, the Trinitarians, the Theatins, and the Barnabites, who, magnanimously forgetting every sentiment of rivalry, warmly and eloquently espoused the cause of the persecuted Jesuits; magistrates and scholars, patriots and poets, historians and philosophers, Montesquieu and Le Jay, Tasso and Corneille, Leibnitz and Bacon, Descartes and Buffon, De Maistre and Bonald, Chateaubriand and O'Connell ; - if, we say, such men be the friends and defenders of the Jesuits, may we not, ought we not to, be justified in honoring and revering them as the most fearless and potent champions of truth, as the most unsparing enemies of vice and irreligion, and as the most enlightened heralds of civilization?

Happy art thou, my country, refuge of the exile and home of the pilgrim, to have received within thy borders some choice bands of these honored fathers, who, from their peaceful solitudes and the laborious fields of their missionary toils, invoke and obtain the benedictions of Heaven on thy sons! Happy art thou to have thy loveliest mountains crowned with colleges of the Institute of Jesus, which, like blazing beacons, illumine the path of thy pilgrims, and shed abroad upon the hearts of thy children the light of truth and the fervor of virtue !

In our next Review we propose to take up and consider the more serious of the charges which are commonly urged against the Society of Jesus, in reply to the infamous work, The Jesuits, by Messrs. Michelet and Quinet, recently translated and published among us by that literary charlatan, Charles Edwards Lester, a man who will, no doubt, ere long, sink to his native level.*

Since the above was written, we have read with considerable interest and pleasure an article entitled The Jesuits, in the Southern Quarterly Review for January last. The article is written with ability, and, considering it is by a Protestant, with a good deal of fairness. The writer, however, falls into some errors of fact and speculation, which we may notice when we come to consider the charges preferred against the Jesuits. The same number of the Review also speaks at some length of the Jesuits, in a scorching criticism of the Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue. We thank this able periodical for its earnest denunciation of the work of the French

ART. IV. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, containing the Confession of Faith, the Catechisms, and the Directory for the Worship of God; together with the Plan of Government and Discipline, as ratified by the General Assembly at their Sessions in May, 1821, and amended in 1833. Philadelphia. Haswell & Co. 1838.

A REVIEW of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church, confined chiefly to its confession of faith, may not present that degree of interest or attraction which might be found in that of some of the new works which are daily poured upon our book-devouring community; but it has seemed to us that it might, nevertheless, be highly useful, inasmuch as it will give us an opportunity of showing the venom of error at its fountain-head, and of exposing in a strong light the frail fabric of Protestantism, by laying bare the weakness and instability of its foundations. Even on the score of novelty, the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church may, after all, not be devoid of interest. It is true, its substance is old, we might add antiquated, made up, as it is, from shreds taken from Calvin, Knox, and others; but Presbyterians, as Protestants in general, can always affix a character of novelty to their church constitutions and doctrinal opinions, for they hold it to be the inalienable privilege of freemen to change their articles of faith and methods of church government so as to suit the times and follow the onward march of mind. Hence, the editors of the work before us are very particular in stating all the improvements, modifications, amendments, corrections, additions, and subtractions, which the said Constitution underwent at the period of its publication; and we find on the titlepage a solemn declaration of a committee of Presbyterian divines, that the present edition "is a correct and authentic copy of said Constitution, as amended, ratified, and in force at the present date" (1834). As the Constitution of the

novelist, a work which no person should touch for any other purpose than to commit it to the flames. We are glad to see that the American press is beginning to wake up to its infamy, and to denounce it in terms not wholly inappropriate; for it is a work that aims at the destruction of every domestic and social virtue. We have been silent, because we presumed no Catholic would read it, and because our denunciation of it would not have been regarded by our Protestant countrymen.