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144 00

By cash for 12 months dividend on 10 shares in the Mutual Insur ance Company By cash for six months dividend on 32 shares in the Eagle fire Company

By cash for one quarter dividend on $180 state 7 per cent. stock By balance carried to new account

3 15

27 42

$501 47

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598 60

170.00

73 65

Total amount, $4,509 85

The receipts of account of the disp sable fund, during the same period, amount to $474 5; and the sum expended for 350 Bibles, 565 Prayer Books, and sundry incidental charges, to $456 74, reducing the balance due the Treasurer, as per his account current, to $27 42.

The sum at the disposal of the Board of Managers, for the present year, will be about $412 00, arising from Dividends of stock Annual subscriptions, about

Deduct

-$344 90 120 00

$ 464 90

Balance due the Treasurer 27 42 Contingent expenses, about 25 00

Errors excepted.

52 42

$412 48

GULIAN LUDLOW, Treasurer.

BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. CLERGYMEN of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Managers of Bible and Common Prayer Book Societies, and all other persons who associate for the pur pose of distributing, gratuitously, "the BooK OF COMMON PRAYER, are respectfully informed, that large quantities of this manual are now on hand, and will always be kept for their accommodation, at the BIBLE AND COMMON PRAYER BOOK DEPOSITORY, No. 160 Pearl-street, New-York. The book is printed uniformly with those heretofore issued from the same place, and will be afforded to Societies, Associ ations, Clergymen, and other benevolent individuals who purchase for gratuitous distribution, at THIRTY CENTS EACH.

The public can be supplied with Prayer Books at thirty-seven and a half cents per copy; and booksellers and others purchasing quantities, will be furnished, either bound or in sheets, at a remarkably reduced price.

March 17.

T. & J. SWORDS

No. 6.]

THE

AND

LITERARY REGISTER.

No. II. FOR MARCH, 1818.

ACCOUNT of the JESUITS.

(From late English Publications.) THE missions of the Jesuits furnish abundant proofs of the corrupt and worldly spirit by which they have been actuated at all periods, and prove, that in traversing the seas, they have been occupied in amassing wealth and acquiring power, rather than in obtain ing sincere worshippers of God. The author of the work, entitled, Jesuites Marchands, establishes this fact beyond all doubt or contradiction, on the authorities of the writings of the Foreign Missionaries, Villiers's Account of the Affairs of China; especially the documents transmitted by M. de Montigny, contained in that account; the Memoirs of Norbert, the Letters of M. Favre, &c. From these, and a variety of other sources, it will be seen, that in Japan they only excited disturbances, meddled with affairs of state, brought down persecution upon all the Christians there, and at length irreparably ruined the cause of Christianity itself, in that vast empire; that in China, notwithstanding the decrees of the Court of Rome, they allied Christianity with the idolatrous worship of Confucius; that on the coasts of Malabar they authorized, and observed, the most superstitious and indecent practices; that they pertinaciously resisted the numerous decisions of the Popes against idolatry; that in all their missions, in order that they might have neither witnesses nor judges of their disorders, they waged open war with other Missionaries, with Vicars Apostolic, with Bishops and Papal Legates; that, when they considered their interest to require it, they put in practice the horrid maxims taught by their own casuists, that it is lawful to kill those who do any inVOL. II.

[VOL. II.

jury to a religious order; and, finally that whenever it became necessary to rid themselves of those who incormoded them, they exercised cruelties altogether unheard of, and unknown, among ordinary persecutors.

It is to the Institute of the Jesuits, in common with their religion, that the radical vice and corruption of the Society are to be referred: it will appear, on inspecting this Institute, that it is, in fact, opposed to all the rules of authority and civilized life; that its tendency is to erect the Society into a monarchy, or rather an universal despotism; to concentrate every thing within itself; to overthrow every obstacle, and to become the sovereign and absolute arbiter of all the dignity and wealth of the Christian world; in fine, to produce the whole of those evils which the History of Jesuitism records.

The Jesuits, from the first, aspired to universal empire. They saw, indeed, the difficulty of their enterprize, and were aware how many had failed in the attempt: they observed that when any particular monarch had, made the experiment, every other potentate was raised against him, and opposed his designs. They therefore contrived a more skilful method; which was, to leave the sovereigns masters of their dominions, so long as they could domineer over those sove reigns, and create their own vicekings, vice-princes, vice-dukes, in short, their ministers; and thus become, in effect, the sovereigns of the world, by securing to themselves, insensibly, a species of moral government, which should not offend the eye, but produce the same result.

As they could not prevail over other monarchs by force, in opposing them 11

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by sea and land,like other adventurers; they availed themselves of religion, as

the most effectual instrument for restraining the minds and inclinations of mankind, and of governing them by a power apparently divine; which they employed in directing the consciences of kings, with a view to their own ends and interests. In order to their success, however, it became necessary to proceed in the least alarming, and most attractive way; especially to conceal the artifices of their Institute; to give it an adaptation to places and circumstances; to extend it to Members of other orders, conditions, and even religions, to laymen as well as ecclesiastics, to the married and single, to bishops, popes, emperors, and kings. It became essential that the constitutions of the society should be monarchial and despotic; and that the whole exercise of the authority, and the direction of the revenues, should be united in the hands of a single chief; and that all the members should be blindly dependant, in every thing, upon his absolute will, for their destiny, for the disposal of their persons, their conduct, and their property: for their doctrine and mode of thinking on all points, in order that all might be one in their Society, and that the spirit of the head might be universally that of every member of the body; that no authority, temporal or spiritual, neither councils, bishops, popes, nor kings, should effect any thing against the Society, and that it should be exempt from all their laws, and from all dependance upon them; that the Society should unite in itself the privileges and prerogatives of all other societies, and appropriate to itself such rights as should give it superiority over all other bodies; that it should be able to bind to itself all individuals, and all bodies, without ever being itself bound in respect of them; and that it should always sport with obligations and engagements, according to the interests of the Society, and as circumstances should require; that money being the sinew of government, it should amass in the Hands of its Director, such possessions

and wealth as were necessary to its extensive views; for which purpose the Institute should offer all proper facilities: finally, that, in order to attract the world within its own sphere, and to arrive at general influence, it should, on the one hand, sooth the great and luxurious, by palatable doctrines, by a convenient morality, and by principles friendly to the indulgence of every passion; while, on the other, it should render itself terrible to every opponent, and even formidable to all who should refuse to join it; formed as it was upon maxims which enabled it to silence or destroy its opponents, and caused even crowned heads to tremble.

The Society of the Jesuits is composed of four classes.

Taken in its more extensive sense, the Society comprises all those who yield obedience to the General; even the Novices, who do not wear the habit; and generally all those who, having resolved to live and die in the Society, are in probation, in order that it may be decided to which of the following degrees they shall be admitted. This is the first class. The Society, in a more limited sense, comprises, besides, those who have taken the vows, and the coadjutors, approved scholars; which approved scholars are the second class. In a third, and more strict sense, the Society only includes those who have taken the vows, and the coadjutors; and it is in this sense that the promise of the approved scholars to enter into the Society, that is, to enter into one of those two classes, must be understood. Thus, the third class is that of coadjutors. Lastly, the Society, understood in an entirely confined and appropriate sense, comprises only those who have taken the vows; not that the body of the Society has no other Members, but because those who have taken the vows are the principle members, and because it is from the midst of them that the small number of those persons is selected who have a voice in the election of the General. Those, then, who have taken the vows, form the fourth class.

These four classes admit of seve

ral subdivisions, for each of which a number of regulations is provided. There is, for the first class, a first and a second probation: the former of these continues for twelve, fifteen, or twenty days; the latter, or the novitiate, lasts at least two years; but the General has the power of extending this period as long as the interest of the Society may require. On his reception into the second probation, or novitiate, the aspirant receives the title of Brother; and at the conclu sion of it, when he takes the vows, and passes into the second division of the first class, he is invested with the title of Father. The second class consists of the Jesuit scholars or students-Sholastici; that is, those Jesuits who are permitted to apply them selves to their studies, and in whose hands are the colleges of the Society and the benefices united to them. The coadjutors, who form the third class, are divided into Spiritual and Temporal. The Spiritual must be priests, and sufficiently instructed to assist the Society in its spiritual functions, such as confession, preaching, the instruction of youth, and the teaching of the Belles Lettres. The tem poral coadjutors, (who are properly only Lay Brothers,) are not to be in Holy Orders, but must still have sufficient ability for the service of the Society in all those external things in which it may be necessary to employ them. The Professors of the four vows are the finished members of the Society; they have the supreme government of the colleges, and it is from them alone that the small number is chosen who have a voice in the election of the General.

The accommodating laws of this most iniquitous and dangerous Society, have lodged the double power of dismissing and recalling members in the hands of the General, who is thus enabled, for the benefit of the Order, in both its political and pecuniary interests, to dismiss a Jesuit from the Society, that he may appear as though he had no connexion with it, and to recall him when his return shall be desirable and profitable. A

striking example of this crafty and wicked policy, occurs in the instance of Count Zani.

Charles Zani was the son of the Count John Zani, of Bologna, and entered into the Society of Jesuits in the year 1627, having before his admission made a complete renunciation of all the property to which he might ever be entitled, expressly declaring that neither himself nor the Society should ever lay any claim to it. After he had been eleven years in the Society, his father, and the Count Angelo, his brother, died; upon which the Fathers of the Society persuaded him to quit it, for the purpose of succeeding to their property, and of afterwards returning to the Society; for this end, the necessary letters of dismission were sought from the General Vitelleschi, which were accordingly sent to the Provincial Menochius. Before they were delivered to Charles Zani, he was obliged to make a vow of returning to the Society with all the property which might be reco-. vered by him, and the following is a copy of the obligation which he signed:

"I, Charles Zani, being about to receive my Letters of dismission from the society of Jesus, do, before they shall be delivered to me by the very Reverend Father Stephen Menochius, the Provincial, voluntarily promise and vow in the presence of God, and do in conscience bind myself in the strongest manner in my power, that after I shall have received my said letters of dismission, I will demand of those who may then be the superiors of the Society, permission to re-enter the said Society, so soon as I shall have accomplished the object for which I have required and received the said Letters; hereby declaring, and binding myself to make the said applica tion to be restored to the said Society, at such time as the Reverend Father Vincent Bargellin shall judge the most fit, and according as he shall consider my affairs to be properly arranged; holding myself obliged, in that particular, to follow his pious judgment and will, in order to avoid

all doubts on my part, and to know more certainly the time and season for accomplishing my present vow to the honour of God." He quitted the religious habit on the 27th of November, 1639, as he has himself testified by a writing under his hand. Having afterwards come into the possession of his estate, he altered his mind, and went to Rome for the purpose of obtaining a dispensation from his vow, but he could not succeed in procuring it from Pope Innocent X. Being afterwards seized with a fever, he made his will in favour of the College of Jesuits, at Bologna, through the Influence of those Fathers who besieged hin day and night for that object; and after this, he died. The Jesuits immediately seized upon his property; but the family opposing their pretensions, the affair became the subject of litigation. The Jesuits being afraid that either in the proceedings which had commenced, or in the subsequent judgment, their extraordinary conduct with reference to the deceased party, their insatiable thirst of money, and their new method of invading inheritances, might be exposed to the world, obtained from the Sovereign Pontiff, Alexander VII. an Act of Grace, by which he commanded the judges of the court to terminate the proceedings, by way of compromise; which was done by dividing the whole property in question into twelve parts, five of which were allotted to the Jesuits, and the other seven to the family, who obtained them only after infinite trou ble, and innumerable impediments on the part of those fathers, and after their having almost entirely dissipated the property in question.

The Jesuits are under the government of Rectors or Prefects, Provincials, and a General. The General is at the head of the whole body, the Provincials are at the head of the Provinces, and the Rectors or Pre fects at the head of each of the Houses, Colleges, Missions, and Novitiates. The Inferiors correspond with the Rectors, the Rectors with the Provincials, and the Provincials with the General. Among these officers are

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four Assistants, appointed after the election of the General, by the same congregation which has elected him four others appointed by the General himself; Legal Agents, one of whom is destined to be with the Pope, and the others with the Catholic Potentates in Europe: Visitors, one for each province; a Secretary-general, resident in Rome; an officer of the General, &c. In the Colleges, as well as in the Houses, Missions, and Novitiates, there are various subordinate agents, entitled Associates, Advisers, Proxies, Ministers, &c. &c. Over this whole body in all its ramifications of persons, interests, and duties, the General exercises supreme and unlimited power, and is the absolute monarch over the whole Society: implicit obedience to his will is included in the vows of every Jesuit.

In order that the General may attain the important end of increasing the influence of the Society in all its parts, it is necessary, not only that his office should be perpetual, but that the whole authority should centre in the General alone, and that he should possess unlimited power in the Society; and the constitutions provide accordingly. Of course, no other person in the Society has any other power than what he may communicate, for such time, and in such measure, as he shall approve; while his own power is indefinite, and extends to Missions, to Colleges, to Houses of Profession, to things, to possessions, and to persons. The entire direction and administration of every thing is virtually vested in him; emanates only from him; and reverts to him alone nothing is done without his orders, or by virtue of his power; and every thing passes under a condition of an account being rendered to him, while he is accountable to no

one..

With such absolute authority over the property, the consciences, and the persons of the whole Society of Jesuits, the General, who resides at Rome, must be a dangerous personage; and it deserves the most serious consideration, whether the implicit

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