M. de la Chalotais of the operations of the Jesuits upon the

Gallican Church. It shows an exact analogy with the less developed operations of the Ritualists upon the Church of England. The Jesuits first led the bishops to disregard the Canon and the Common Law, and then, by audacity and intrigue, reduced the bishops into subjection to themselves.
By the providence of God and by the sound Protestantism of English Sovereigns, Parliaments, and people, we have been
* " Moral Theology." P. A. Escobar. Vol. iv., p. 278. f I hi ft., p. ^NI.
Ixxxiv
Jesuitism supported by Papal Supremacy.
opposition.
Attempts to shake off Jesuitism.
long spared the outward manifestation, in this country, of the power and evil influence of this conspiracy against all that men value ; yet the perusal of this Report will, we trust, awaken our fellow-countrymen to be zealous in the guardianship of their rights and freedom, against the secret machinations of foes, who are "effective ' working in our midst. The Jesuits are too able, too earnest, to be ios^ sight of, or despised. The great means of opposition to their evil influence is publicity. " They love darkness rather than light." Many noble efforts have been made by the French people to shake off the grasp of the Jesuitism, which holds them so tena- ciously. Even now they bear this incubus uneasily. The question naturally arises, Why have they never succeeded in getting rid of what they have felt to be so galling and so disastrous ? Why have all their efforts been in vain ? Why have their partial successes against their baleful secret foe always been turned into defeats? The answer is, that they have never nationally attacked their enemy by the only means that can be fatal to his power. They have never shaken off the yoke of the See of Rome ; have never had in their own language a scriptural liturgy for their churches. They have aimed only at relieving violent symptoms of the disease, by which they are infected ; whereas they ought to have attacked the root of the disease; and had they been successful in this, the symptoms would have disappeared. Papal supremacy is the strength of Jesuitism. Because France has always acknowledged the one, she has been, and is, the prey of the other.
An evidence of the tyranny of the Papal system, and its Papal system, arrogant repression of the freedom of action of national Churches, is famished by the Pope's letter to the Archbishop of Paris in 1865. This document is given in full at the end of this work. The following extracts from it will exemplify the truth of what we have been stating.
" Thus, for example, by asserting that the power of the Roman Pontiff over each diocese in particular is not ordinary but extraordinary, you enunciate a proposition entirely contrary to the definition of the 4th Council of Lateran, in which we read these very clear and decisive words, ' The Church of Rome, by the will of God, has over all others the supremacy of ordinary
Remedies.
Tyranny of
Leterfrom Pius IX. to the Archbishop of Paris. Ixxxv
power, and that as the mother and mistress of all the faithful,' 1865. that is to say, over all who belong to the flock of Christ." "tochbish
****** of Paris.
" We are afflicted, Venerable Brother, that you should have fallen into any ambiguities concerning the affairs of the Regulars. But in the first place we would wish you to consider, with your usual sagacity, that we are now treating of the Episcopal visit, made, whether to the Society of Jesus, or to the Franciscans of the Order of Capuchins, who have resided in the City of Paris under several bishops, your predecessors, enjoying the peaceable possession of their exemption ; and, in consequence, the Holy Apostolic See itself was in the enjoyment of its peculiar and separate right of jurisdiction over these same Regulars. Thus it became a question of spoliation, accomplished by an act destructive of the privileges of the Holy See and the Regulars. Such is the real state of the question ; whence you will easily perceive that the Apostolic See would act with justice, even if it was pleased to convert into a judgment or a sentence, the terms in which we have thought proper to make it known to you."
There was hope of escape from the secret enemy, while Henry IY. remained in some measure a Protestant. Before M. de la Chalotais made his speech or report to the Parliament at Rennes, this turning point in the history of Frdnce had been reached and passed. Yet the French nation still had a form of government France, which was constitutional, according to the times in which it existed. It contained many of the elements of that freedom, which the British nation has since established. In this respect, France still had a great element of success in her struggle against Jesuitism, The records of this and similar national struggles, illustrate cardinal principles, which, as they are strongly or weakly upheld, decide the course and fortunes of nations. The critical period is often reached and passed, before men are alive to the importance of the epoch.
The turning point of English history occurred at about the same England, period as that of the French: but, in England, right principles pre- vailed, while in France there was hesitation and relapse into error. Henry IY. of France possessed the many high and noble qualities which M. de la Chalotais justly ascribes to him. As a Protestant
Ixxxvi
Death of Henry IV- of France.
Death of Charles I.
Henry iv. he was a great national leader, and contended successfully against the Ultramontane spirit of despotism, and against the anarchi- cal aggressions of the Jesuits. Yet, the life of this great Sovereign was marked by that laxity of morals, which evil counsellors palliate in Princes ; and in his day and country, such self-indulgence was considered almost an attribute of royalty. But this laxity of morals undermines the real greatness, invali- dates the sterling power of the man, corrupts those about him, and weakens the respect of the nation for their Sovereign. Henry IV., great and beloved as he was, hesitated in renewing the contest, in which his early success had raised him in the estimation of the nation which he governed ; he, ostensibly at all events, changed his religion, and was reconciled to Home. This compliance did not save him ; he died by the hand of a Jesuit assassin, so soon as his plans again interfered with the schemes of the Society. The hesitation of Henry IV., and his death, have a parallel in the hesitation and death of Charles I. of England, whose fall and whose death were compassed by the same conspiracy. This is shown by the late Dean Goode in his able work entitled " Rome's Tactics."*
In comparing the conduct of Henry IV. of France with that of his contemporary, Elizabeth, it must be admitted, that the difficulties of Henry IV. were in some respects greater than those of the Queen of England ; for the religion and Church of France, though Gallican, and therefore national in their organisation, as M. de la Chalotais describes them, were only Augustinian in their spirit and doctrine (Jan- senist, as they were called at the time), not Protestant in the sense of the reformed religion and Church of England. They always acknowledged the spiritual primacy of the Pope. Neither the religion of the majority of the French people, nor their Church, ever possessed the fundamental element of national independence which an uninterrupted dependence upon God and His revealed will, as written, can alone establish.
The religion and Church of England had been gradually but effectually reformed by the nation during the reigns of the father,
Elizabeth.
* " Kome's Tactics." By the Dean of Eipon. Hatchards, London, 1867.
Attempts on the Life of the Queen. Ixxxvii
of the brother, and even of the sister, who preceded Elizabeth on Elizabeth. the throne of England. This circumstance, in addition to her own matured and abiding conviction of religious truth, gave Elizabeth an enormous advantage as compared with Henry IV. of France ; and fundamentally affected the respective positions of the two nations. It is, however, difficult to over-estimate the value to the English nation of the firmness of Elizabeth, aided by her enlightened Protestant counsellors. In other nations, Poland, for instance,* the reformation of religion and of the National Church has been hopefully inaugurated, and patronised by sovereigns ; but its fruits have been lost or destroyed by the same agency, to whose attacks, Henry IV. and Elizabeth were exposed. Elizabeth was the firm friend and ally of Henry IV. so long as he was a Protestant by profession. Her letter to him, on his change of religion, breathes a spirit of kindly, though of hopeless friendship, and of compassionate regret.
The life of Elizabeth was repeatedly attempted by the Jesuits ; Her life she was beset by the same agency as was Henry IV. up to the attemPted- last and too successful attack of Ravaillac. The murder of both these sovereigns was continually and craftily planned. Such was the treatment, that sovereigns, who in those days not only reigned but ruled, always received at the hands of the Jesuits, when opposed to their ambition. Nor is their spirit and purpose changed — as the attempt upon the lives of the Emperors of France and Russia in Paris, by a miscreant, who had been studying the works of the Jesuit Mariana, has recently proved.
The Protestant spirit of the majority of the English nation, of men of all grades in society, contributed largely to the safety of Safety. Elizabeth. They not only guarded her life, but they would have avenged her death effectually, had she been murdered : and this was known. Such was the result of an unbroken religious confi- dence between the nation and their sovereign.
The memory of Elizabeth has, of course, many detractors Detractors, among the Ultramontanes and their allies — as the late Mr. Turnbull, whom Lord Palmerston turned out of the State Paper
* " Historical Sketch of the Reformation in Poland." By Count Valerian Krasinski. Murray and Ridgway, London. 1838.
Ixxxviii The Reformation in France and England.
Office ; but her life was incomparably more pure than that of Henry IV.
England's There can be no doubt, that the rising greatness of England
dates from the turning point of her history in the reign of Elizabeth. England has suffered in her subsequent contests with the great conspiracy ; she has needed and has had to submit to the inter- vention of Cromwell, and was compelled to effect for herself the Revolution of 1688, owing to the weakness, the hesitation, the vices, the bigotry, and the tyranny of the half-hearted Stuarts. But the English nation has not suffered in vain ; by the power of the Reformation they have hitherto been victorious in their pro- tracted and still continuing contest. While the French nation, among whom the Reformation never was complete or successful, have suffered much more from persecution, through revolutions and by war, than the English ; and without attaining the pros- perity, either moral or material, which Providence has allotted to England.
Perilous posi- The national character, the objects, the tastes of the French 6 people may be, and are, different from those of the English. But, when we remember the convulsive history of modern France — when we see her now, notwithstanding a certain degree of com- mercial activity, made the willing tool of ambitious and design- ing men, weighed down by heavy taxation, with a dwindling population, and her Church ruled by an Ultramontane and therefore anti-national Hierarchy — we turn to the able summary of the incidents, in her previous history, which, as condensed by