Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 4: With a Memoir and IndexMacaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 4: With a Memoir and Index
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
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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