IT seems strange to mention the holy name of religion in connexion with such principles as those of probability and intention, and the first feeling of the heart is to rise up in holy indignation, and to declare it is utterly impossible that religion can have anything to do with such a system. But such a conclusion would be clearly incorrect; for not only do the facts prove that there is a certain religious principle in action, but I believe it may be shewn that such results could not be produced except through the power of a debased and perverted Christianity. The assertion may startle some, but I believe that upon investigation it will be found true, that there is less power in bare, barren, blank Infidelity, to break down the morality of a man, than there is in a Gospel, debased and defiled to suit his purposes. Infidelity gives no sop to the conscience, no chloroform to destroy the sense of sin, nor can it altogether root out the moral sense, however mournfully it may sear and deaden it. But the case is different with a debased religion. It overpowers conscience, by setting off against it the spurious principles of a pretended Christianity. It produces certain maxims, for which it claims pre-eminence, because it says they come from Christ; and, by the very authority which they derive from the misappropriation of that holy name, it tramples the moral sense under foot, and leaves the pervert ready for any enormity that it may require. I have no doubt, therefore, in my own mind, that a large proportion of the Company of Jesuits are, in one sense, religious men; nor can we look at the history of Jesuit missions, at their indefatigable zeal, untiring self-denial, patient endurance, and, in some instances, cheerful martyrdom, without the conviction that a deep religious feeling has been more or less their actuating power. But more than this,—you may see it even in their crimes; you may there obtain the most perfect illustration of the statement just made, that a perverted religion may be called in to give its sanction to those crimes which an Infidel without religion dare not commit. Look, for example, at the letter of Sir Everard Digby to his wife, written when he was under sentence of death for the Gunpowder Plot, in which he says,—“Now for my intention, let me tell you, that if I had thought there had been the least sin in the plot, I would not have been of it for all the world, and no other cause led me to hazard my fortune and life but zeal for God’s religion.” {59} Look again at the remarkable fact, that those conspirators received a solemn mass from a Jesuit father of the name of Gerard, when they solemnly swore to do their part in the conspiracy; and that the whole scheme was known to Garnett, the Provincial of the Society. {60} So that the solemn sanction of the Lord’s death and sufferings was thrown over all the enormous guilt of that long-premeditated and wholesale murder.