Transcribed from the 1852 Burns and Lambert edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE JESUITS: A CORRESPONDENCE RELATIVE TO A LECTURE SO ENTITLED, RECENTLY DELIVERED BEFORE THE ISLINGTON PROTESTANT INSTITUTE, BY THE REV. EDWARD HOARE, M.A., _Incumbent of Christ Church_, _Ramsgate_. * * * * * “Thus men go wrong with an ingenious skill, Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will, And with a clear and shining lamp supplied, First put it out, then take it for their guide.” _Cowper’s Progress of Error_. * * * * * LONDON: BURNS AND LAMBERT, 17 PORTMAN STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE. 1852. * * * * * W. Davy and Son, Printers, 8, Gilbert-street, Oxford-street. * * * * * INTRODUCTION. IN a Lecture on the Jesuits, recently delivered before the Islington Protestant Institute by the Rev. EDWARD HOARE, M.A., Incumbent of Christ Church, Ramsgate, and since published, there occurs the following passage with the note subjoined:—“It would not be fair to attach to the Order the opinions of the individual, unless these can be proved to be fully borne out and sanctioned by the fixed and authoritative documents of the Society. Nothing, however, can be clearer, than that the sentiments then expressed, [_i.e._, alleged to have been expressed on an occasion before referred to], were those not of the man, but of the Order; for although there is an exceptive clause inserted in one of the Constitutions, as if for the relief of unseared consciences, so that the Statute runs thus, ‘Conforming their will to what the Superior wills and thinks in all things, where it cannot be defined that any kind of sin interferes;’ {3} yet a little further on there is another section wherein that clause is wholly nullified, and the original principle boldly asserted. ‘Although the Society desires that all its Constitutions, &c., should be undeviatingly observed, according to the Institute, it desires, nevertheless, that all its members should be secured or at least assisted against falling into the snare of any sin which may originate from the force of any such Constitutions or injunctions; therefore, it hath seemed good to us in the Lord, with the express exception of the vow of obedience to the Pope for the time being, and the other three fundamental vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to declare that no Constitutions, declarations, or rule of life, can lead to an obligation