or excite the wrath of enlightened nations. But the
principles they are supposed to defend,--expediency, casuistry, and
hostility to free inquiry and the circulation of the Scriptures in
vernacular languages,--these are just causes of complaint and of
unrelenting opposition among all those who accept the great ideas of the
Protestant Reformation, since they are antagonistic to what we deem most
precious in our institutions. So long as the contest shall last between
good and evil in this world, we have a right to declaim against all
encroachments on liberty and sound morality and an evangelical piety
from any quarter whatever, and we are recreant to our duties unless we
speak our minds. Hence, from the light I have, I pronounce judgment
against the Society of Jesus as a dangerous institution, unfortunately
planted among us, but which we cannot help, and can attack only with the
weapons of reason and truth.

And yet I am free to say that for my part I prefer even the Jesuit
discipline and doctrines, much as I dislike them, to the unblushing
infidelity which has lately been propagated by those who call
themselves _savans_,--and which seems to have reached and even permeated
many of the schools of science, the newspapers, periodicals, clubs, and
even pulpits of this materialistic though progressive country. I make
war on the slavery of the will and a religion of formal technicalities;
but I prefer these evils to a godless rationalism and the extinction of
the light of faith.

AUTHORITIES.

Secreta Monita; Steinmetz's History of the Jesuits; Ranke's History of
the Popes; Spiritual Exercises; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Biographie
Universelle; Fall of the Jesuits, by St. Priest; Lives of Ignatius
Loyola, Aquiviva, Lainez, Salmeron, Borgia, Xavier, Bobadilla; Pascal's
Provincial Letters; Bonhours' Cretineau; Lingard's History of England;
Tierney; Lettres Aedificantes; Jesuit Missions; Memoires Secretes du
Cardinal Dubois; Tanner's Societas Jesu; Dodd's Church History.

JOHN CALVIN.

* * * * *

A. D. 1509-1364.

PROTESTANT THEOLOGY.

John Calvin was pre-eminently the theologian of the Reformation, and
stamped his genius on the thinking of his age,--equally an authority
with the Swiss, the Dutch, the Huguenots, and the Puritans. His vast
influence extends to our own times. His fame as a benefactor of mind is
immortal, although it cannot be said that he is as much admired and
extolled n