THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
From 1542 onward the Jesuits had been active in
Belgium. They were expelled from the country
during the early years of the war with
4. In Bel- Spain, but were readmitted, under the gium, Hoi- patronage of Alexander Farnese, after
land, and Spanish authority had been reestab-
England. lished, and were protected by Philip II., who had formerly opposed them (1581- 15S4). Within a few years they had almost taken possession of the land and made it the base of successful propagandism in the Protestant Netherlands. By 1692 twenty-two Jesuits and 220 secular priests, most of whom had been educated in their colleges, were working in the United Netherlands, and the Catholic membership had increased from a few thousand scattered and discouraged souls to 345,000. The assassination of William of Orange (1584) was commonly attributed to Jesuit influence on the ground that, as was asserted, Balthasar Gerard claimed the blessing of the rector of the Jesuit college at Treves before committing the crime.
The Jesuits early addressed themselves to the task of reestablishing papal supremacy in England. In 1542 Paschasius Brouet and Alphonso Salmeron (q.v.) made a secret and rapid tour through Ireland, and in thirty-four days succeeded in inflaming the Catholics of Ireland against the government of Henry VIII. and against Protestantism. But the Jesuits met with little success in Scotland. In England they carried on for more than a century a secret but effective propaganda. In 1569 William Allen (q.v.), afterward a cardinal, established at Douai (q.v.) a training-school for Jesuit missionaries to England, where a large number of British Catholic youths were prepared for the extremely perilous work of restoring papal authority in Britain. Sacked by the Protestants of Flanders at the instigation of the English government, the college was reopened at Reims under the patronage of the archbishop, and continued to train men for English work and martyrdom. In 1579 an English college was opened in Rome for the same purpose. The most active leaders of the Jesuit work in England were Robert Parsons and Edmund Campian (qq.v.). In Scotland Jesuits attached themselves to the court of Mary Stuart (c. 1587), and by encouraging her aspirations after the English crown wrought her destruction. The " Gunpowder Plot " (1605) was commonly attributed to their machinations.
The missionary efforts of the Jesuits, under
French patronage, in North America among the
Indians (see Indians of North Amer-
5. Mission ica, Missions to; Missions to the Work in Heathen, A) and the French col- America, onists were from their own point of
view highly successful. In Florida, Mexico, South America and Central America, and California they established their great mission compounds where captured natives, sometimes guarded and forced by Spanish and Portuguese troops, were employed as laborers and compelled to conform to Roman Catholic observances. Their work among the North American Indians, as well as among the natives of India, China, and Japan, displayed heroic self-sacrifice of the highest order along with a will-
ingness to receive a very superficial knowledge of Christianity as evidence of its acceptance. Those whom they baptized, even clandestinely, they claimed as members of the Christian Church.
Attention has already been called to the obligation of absolute and unquestioning obedience inculcated by Ignatius that involved the 6. Uneth- suppression or destruction of the inical Teach- dividual conscience. The doctrine of ings and Probabilism (q.v.) was not originated Practises, by the Jesuits, but was wrought out by their writers during the seventeenth century with more minuteness than by earlier Roman Catholic writers. According to this teaching one is at liberty to follow a probable opinion, i.e., one that has two or three reputable Catholic writers in its favor, against a more probable or a highly probable opinion in whose favor a multitude of the highest authorities concur. To justify any practise, however immoral it might be commonly esteemed, a few sentences from Catholic writers sufficed, and these were often garbled. Some Jesuits and some popes repudiated this doctrine. In 1680 Gonzales, an opponent of the doctrine, was made general of the society through papal pressure; but he failed to purge the society of probabilism and came near being deposed by reason of his opposition. Another antiethical device widely approved and employed by members of the society is Mental Reservation or Restriction (see Reservation, Mental), in accordance with which, when important interests are at stake, a negative or a modifying clause may remain unuttered which would completely reverse the statement actually made. This principle justified unlimited lying when one's interests or convenience seemed to require. Where the same word or phrase has more than one sense, it may be employed in an unusual sense with the expectation that it will be understood in the usual (amphibology) . Such evasions may be used under oath in a civil court. Equally destructive of good morals was the teaching of many Jesuit casuists that moral obligation may be evaded by directing the intention when committing an immoral act to an end worthy in itself; as in murder, to the vindication of one's honor; in theft, to the supplying of one's needs or those of the poor; in fornication or adultery, to the maintenance of one's health or comfort. Nothing did more to bring upon the society the fear and distrust of the nations and of individuals than the justification and recommendation by several of their writers of the assassination of tyrants, the term " tyrant " being made to include all persons in authority who oppose the work of the papal church or the order. The question has been much discussed, Jesuits always taking the negative side, whether the Jesuits have taught that "the end sanctifies the means." It may not be possible to find this maxim in these precise words in Jesuit writings; but that they have always taught that for the " greater glory of God," identified by them with the extension of Roman Catholic (Jesuit) influence, the principles of ordinary morality may be set aside, seems certain. The doctrine of philosophical sin, in accordance with which actual attention to the sinfulness of an act when it is being committed