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"May it please thee, Albert, to be more explicit?" "Know, then," said the stranger, "that it was in consequence of representations from Sister Celestina thou wast recalled." "How knowest thou this to be true?" "Ask me not, for that I dare not reveal; but I swear, by the bones of Loyola, and by our mutual friendship, that it is the sincere truth.
It has already been shown that the destruction of heresy was the chief aim of the Dominicans. What the friars failed to attain, Loyola attempted. The principal object of the Jesuits was the maintenance of papal authority. Even to-day the Jesuit does not hesitate to declare that his mission is to overthrow Protestantism. The Reformation was inspired by a new conception of individual freedom.
"A Capuchin missionary had a serious dispute with the Jesuits residing at Pondicherry, which was referred for decision to the judicial courts. The disciples of Loyola, who can be toleration itself when toleration furthers their crafty and ambitious views, had declined all interference with the above custom.
The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was not invested with any such power.
Hence his soul burned to tell his countrymen his earnest belief in a supreme and personal God, to whom alone prayers should be made, and who alone could rescue by His almighty power. He pondered day and night on this single and simple truth. His perpetual meditations and ascetic habits induced dreams and ecstasies, such as marked primitive monks, and Loyola in his Manresan cave.
The same sleepless energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great prelate whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities he was nearly allied.
From their interpretation of the constitutions of Loyola and Lainez and Aquaviva, a member of the Society had no will of his own; he did not belong to himself, he belonged to his General, as in the time of Abraham a child belonged to his father and a wife to her husband; nay, even still more completely. He could not write or receive a letter that was not read by his Superior.
It was a delicate and an onerous task, fraught with temptations from without and from within. Ignatius of Loyola, being a man of the world as well as a saint, was well aware of the perils to which he exposed his sons, in sending them forth into the midst of vanities, while at the same time, having had some experience of courts, he knew that princes love not contradiction.
Our estimate of human nature is exalted; but there are no happy communities to-day which owe their existence to the Jesuit pioneers. The priests themselves were wifeless and childless, and the family hearthstone could not be planted on the sites of their immolations and triumphs. Nor were the disciples of Loyola aided, as were the Calvinists, by persecution at home. All alike were good Catholics.
The next morning, feeling curious to see the way in which my landlord was lodged, I paid him a visit. I went into the little room sacred to Donna Ignazia. A bed, a chest, and a chair made up the whole furniture; but beside the bed was a desk before a picture, four feet high, representing St. Ignatius de Loyola as a fine young man, more calculated to irritate the sense than to arouse devotion.
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