These seminaries were all of them under the direction of the Jesuits, a new order of regular priests erected in Europe, when the court of Rome perceived that the lazy monks and beggarly friars, who sufficed in times of ignorance, were no longer able to defend the ramparts of the church, assailed on every side, and that the inquisitive spirit of the age required a society more active and more learned to oppose its dangerous progress. These men as they stood foremost in the contest against the Protestants, drew on them the extreme animosity of that whole sect; and, by assuming a superiority over the other more numerous and more ancient orders of their own communion, were even exposed to the envy of their brethren: so that it is no wonder, if the blame to which their principles and conduct might be exposed, has, in many instances, been much exaggerated. This reproach, however, they must bear from posterity, that, by the very nature of their institution, they were engaged to pervert learning, the only effectual remedy against superstition, into a nourishment of that infirmity: and as their erudition was chiefly of the ecclesiastical and scholastic kind, (though a few members have cultivated polite literature,) they were only the more enabled by that acquisition to refine away the plainest dictates of morality, and to erect a regular system of casuistry, by which prevarication, perjury, and every crime, when it served their ghostly purposes, might be justified and defended. The Jesuits, as devoted servants to the court of Rome, exalted the prerogative of the sovereign pontiff above all earthly power; and by maintaining his authority of deposing kings, set no bounds either to his spiritual or temporal jurisdiction. This doctrine became so prevalent among the zealous Catholics in England, that the excommunication fulminated against Elizabeth excited many scruples of a singular kind, to which it behoved the holy father to provide a remedy. The bull of Pius, in absolving the subjects from their oaths of allegiance, commanded them to resist the queen’s usurpation; and many Romanists were apprehensive, that by this clause they were obliged in conscience, even though no favorable opportunity offered, to rebel against her, and that no dangers or difficulties could free them from this indispensable duty. But Parsons and Campion, two Jesuits, were sent over with a mitigation and explanation of the doctrine; and they taught their disciples, that though the bull was forever binding on Elizabeth and her partisans, it did not oblige the Catholics to obedience except when the sovereign pontiff should think proper, by a new summons, to require it. Campion was afterwards detected in treasonable practices; and being put to the rack, and confessing his guilt, he was publicly executed. His execution was ordered at the very time when the duke of Anjou was in England, and prosecuted, with the greatest appearance of success, his marriage