character cleared up, by a proper examination into the present state of the prince's health, as well as into the nature of the medicines which I had been administering to him. The emperor in reply said, that he had already ordered his Moorish physician to examine very particularly my medicines; who had declared that he could find nothing improper in them. It is very clear, however, that some suspicion must have taken place in the breast of the emperor, to have induced him to send privately for these medicines, for the purpose of having them so nicely examined; from which circumstances I could not help feeling it as a very fortunate event for myself, that the prince's health was in so favourable a state.

After a conversation of some length, the heads of which I have endeavoured briefly to state, the evening being far advanced, the emperor commanded one of his attendants to conduct me home to his Jew, and desire him to take great care of me: adding, that I was a good man, I was Muley Absulem's physician, and that he would send me home to my entire satisfaction. He then ordered his carriage to drive on.

a state affair, which agitated France more than half a century, and having begun with intrigue, was continued by fanaticism, and finished, as it should do, in contempt.

Although details of this nature be very wearisome, yet as they afford intelligence of facts, it is in some measure unavoidable to give them, as also to trace back the origin of this theological quarrel, the better to shew by what means the Jesuits obtained their extensive dominion; and in what manner, by abusing those means, theyat length provoked the destruction of their order, and, by a natural consequence, the annihilation of the French king's despotism.

Socrates, Plato, Seneca, and many stoics, treated morality in a philosophical way, establishing duties and inspiring the love of virtue, with a force of reason and sentiment wor thy the dignity of the subject. The apostles and their immediate successors treated it like true pastors of souls, unfolding the maxims of the Gospel, and teaching all that is necessary to the true Christian life. At the revival of learning, Theologists treated morality in a scholastic manner, subtilizing, sophisticating, and disputing concerning every thing; substituting words for things, entangling simple ideas; obscuring primitive truths by false applications. Then private confession became more frequent, and all sorts of trifling details were entered into. Swarms of casuists, without consulting the Gospel, or even universal conscience, formed to themselves arbitrary codes, wherein cases of conscience were decided according to caprice and ignorance. Sins were distinguished into venial and mortal; the latter which bring conR 2

demnation,

demnation, the former which do not; and the result of their doctrine was, that one might sin every day, provided one confessed every day. In short, all these pretended judges of consciences produced voluminous medleys, which all together are not worth Tully's Offices.

The Jesuits,as zealous theologists, as craftypoliticians, signalized themselves above all in this dangerous career. With them arose new troubles, which were to last as long as themselves.

In the sixteenth century, a theological war was kindled concerning grace. This, however, was not a new question; it may be traced back to the remotest antiquity. Free-will, and the distinction of the voluntary, occupied philosophers before the birth of Christianity; but divines, thinkingthemselves superior to philosophers, wished to treat it in their own way. What is the nature of grace? How does it affect the will of men? How does it produce good sentiments and actions of men? Divines pretended to discover it, although these secrets are known to God alone. The Thomists, or Dominicans, contrived a physical promotion; the Scotists, or Francis cans, a predefinition; and with these high sounding words, pretending to explain the mystery, but rendered it still more incomprehensible. Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, in order to explain how man preserves his freewill, imagined an intermediate know ledge, by which God knows the conditional future, and directs himself in the dispensation of his graces, in a manner that their efficacy supposes a foreseen consent of the human will. "If ever,” said one of Molina's brethren, "such a doctrine should be maintained by powerful

and cunning men, who belong to some religious order, it will put the church in a perilous state." And, in effect, how many tempests, how many cabals, has it occasioned ! How many virtuous persons have been sacrificed through false zeal! How many excesses represented as duties!

Without dwelling on all that is scandalous in this doctrine, it will suffice to observe, in general, that it has for its basis dissimulation, duplicity, bad faith, and perjury: since, according to the principles of its author, we are not bound to fulfil the engagements against which we have internally protested, when we contracted them!-which amounts to this, that the heart may contradict what the mouth pronounces; hence the word Jesuitical and deceitful are become synonymous. When such principles have been imbibed in youth, they leave in maturer age, notwithstanding the efforts made to overcome them, a leaven which influences the rest of life, and the effects of which are so much the more dangerous, when a man, who is infected by them, is besides endowed with great talents and eminent qualities.

The Jesuits, all-powerful at Rome, caused, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, this doctrine to be approved, of which they expected to avail themselves in a very advantageous manner. A Flemish bishop, named Jansenius, refuted it in a large book which he composed, in order to explain the sentiments of St. Augustin upon grace. His work was only known to a few doctors; the Jesuits, by their attacks, gave it great celebrity. The foundation of his doctrine

was

was, that the grace of God is necessary, even to the just, to fulfil his commandments, and that we can never resist grace.

The Jesuits did not find this doctrine orthodox, because it opposed theirs, which was more accommodating, and they had it condemned by Innocent X. in 1653. On the other side, against these relaxed doctors, who flattered the passions, arose rigorists, who, in some respects, destroyed nature. Their sour misanthropy, by over-stretching Christian perfection, changed the most innocent things into crimes. They condemned lawful and innocent amusements; they combated sentiments and customs, without which the commerce of civil life would soon fall; in fine, they were as ready to condemn as the others to absolve. This severe morality was called Jansenism, and those who professed it Jansenists ; for the same reason the Jesuits and their partisans were called Molinists, and their doctrine Molinism.

The most celebrated advocates for Jansenism dwelt in the abbey of the Port Royal des Champs,-the nursery of sound philosophy and true literature. Learned logicians, eloquent, bitter, or pleasant, according to the occasion, they possessed a severity of manners very common to a persecuted party, and which gains, if not imitators, at least admirers, disciples, and adherents. The Jesuits, supple, cunning, insinuating, indulgent in morality, as regular in their conduct as their opponents, might appear less so, from their being more distributed in the world, and at court, when they directed consciences. They fixed upon this house of Port Royal for the field of battle, and made no

scruple to change primitive notions, in order to overthrow their adversaries. They described them at court not only as heretics, but also as republicans, enemies to royal authority. It was under this double appearance that Tellier caused Lewis XIV. to regard them. The chief religion of this prince was to believe in royal authority. Besides, being ignorant in matters of doctrine, superstitious in his devotion, he prosecuted a real or imaginary heresy as an act of disobedience, and thought to expiate his faults by persecution. However, he still hesitated; the great number of celebrated men formed at Port Royal, combated in his mind for that house. He at length yielded to the pressing solicitations of his confessor; and this retreat, the asylum for morals, virtue, and knowledge, was utterly destroyed, and razed to the ground.

One of the principal supporters of Jansenism was an Oratorian named Quesnel, author of a book entitled: Moral Reflections on the New Testament. This work was the edification of the church for a number of years, and even of the pope himself, Clement XI. whom the Jesuits, nevertheless, forced to condemn it. This step was a decisive stroke for them;-Tellier intrigued so as to gain his point. He sought in Quesnel's book for the propositions which he could make the subject of the constitution; and as he had advanced to the king that there were more than a hundred condemnable propositions, he stopped when he had found a hundred and one. took care to choose those that were contrary to the Molinistical doctrine; but as they were conformable to that of St. Paul, St. Augustin, and St. Thomas, one of his work

He

men

men represented to him what danger there was in so attacking the pillars of Christianity. "St. Paul and St. Augustin" said the fiery Jesuit, "were warm heads that we should now send to the Bastile; with regard to St. Thomas, you may guess what value I set upon a Dominican, when I care so little for an apostle."

In order to render his work agreeable to the pope, he did not fail, in his project of a bull, to favour the Italian maxims; and the whole was sent to Rome, to people of whom he was secure. The bull being thus dressed, his emissaries communicated it to the pope. How ever rapidly it was read, the holy father thought he heard a manifesto against the Scriptures and the fathers. He shuddered; but the Jesuits, in the end, decided him. He yielded with remorse upon the

and in every one's hand, each society became a school of theology; all conversations were infected with the fury of dogmatizing, and as the national character loses not its rights, a dogmatical dissertation was mingled with a ballad. Nevertheless this affair was for a long time a subject of discord. Ecclesiastical dignities, and even subaltern stations were not conferred but on those who previously had accepted this bull, which thereby nearly became in France what the Test-Act is in England. Calm was not perfectly re-established, till the end of the following reign, after the Jesuits had been expelled.

Account of the Theosophists and Rosacrusians; from Enfield's History of Philosophy.

ESIDES the Scripturalists,

consequences,

At Rome it excited a general discontent; the cardinals loudly exclaimed, that the doctrine of the church was overthrown. The holy father shed tears; but for things once done in this court there is no remedy. However, the Jesuits at last succeeded in converting the sacred college; in a few days the ignorant believed the bull, and the politicians supported it.

In France it at first met with the same reception as at Rome. The king supported it, that was his own work; but the acceptation and registering of it, became a state affair. In the end, partly by fair and partly by rough means, the court party, that is, the Jesuits, got the better.

As soon as the constitution Unigenitus was translated into French,

sophers who profess to derive their knowledge of nature from divine revelation, namely, the Theosophists. These men neither contented with the natural light of human reason, nor with the simple doctrines of Scripture, understood in their literal sense, have recourse to an internal supernatural light, superior to all other illuminations, from which they profess to derive a mysterious and divine philosophy, manifested only to the chosen favourites of heaven. They boast that, by means of this celestial light, they are not only admitted to the intimate knowledge of God, and of all divine truth, but have access to the most sublime secrets of nature. They ascribe it to the singular manifestation of divine benevolence, that they are able to make such an use of the element of