Jesuits,
without reference to the page or chapter. I have found nothing but what
reflects {213} honour on the code. The objects of it are the glory of God,
the general good of man, and the preservation of the society. In pursuance
of the first of these, the members make vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience; they mortify their senses, renounce worldly honours, and preach
the Gospel. The means they use for the second consist of example, prayer,
works of charity, pious publications, preaching, educating youth, and
sending forth missions. For the third object, their preservation, they have
appropriate rules of union, discipline, reputation, freedom from party, and
moderation[73].

Such is the code which has been so misrepresented. It is impossible, within
the bounds of a pamphlet, and, indeed, I have already stretched into the
latitude of a book, to give an adequate notion of it, and to combat the
opinions which have gone abroad against it. These opinions {214} are so
many adopted prejudices, the refutation of which is completely given in the
_Apologie de l'Institut_, to which I must refer the reader, who will find
in it many extracts from the institute itself; and I shall here briefly
notice the vow of obedience, and the imputed despotism of the general,
about which so much has been said.

"Their blind obedience! To be as unresisting as _a dead body_, or as
tractable as _a stick_ in the hands of an old man![74]." This language,
taken disjointedly, is among the bugbears held up by the new conspirators
against the Jesuits. It must surely be allowed, that obedience is necessary
in every institution, where training the mind is an object, and the
institute is not reprehensible for excluding wilful argumentation, while it
allows every one the use of his reason. _Blind obedience_ is not required
for the commission of a crime, but in duties known to be pious {215} and
moral, in actions evidently laudable. Nor is the expression of the text
_caeca obedientia_, but _caeca quadam obedientia_[75]. The rule is for the
better training of the young and the inexperienced; and what school does
not proceed upon it to the extent required by the institute, which excepts
whatever is criminal, or morally wrong? It literally prescribes, that this
_kind_ of _blind obedience_ shall, nevertheless, be conformable to justice
and to charity; _omnibus in rebus ad quas potest cum charitate se
obedientia extendere_[76]. Nay, the order of the superior