Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
liberty, the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every
one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were
inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed himself to the
subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these
divines as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual
directors; and both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened
with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay
cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frail beauty who
had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred
man of the world, who knew how to make allowance for the little
irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax,
according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to drive
no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it
was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a
person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler,
that was no reason for making him a heretic too.
The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits
invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the
preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. They were to be
found in the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African
slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories
of China. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor
curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and
disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a
word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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