sinning' (_ibid._ p. 353). 'The Roman Court will never condemn
Jesuit doctrine; for this is the secret of its empire--a secret of the
highest and most capital importance, whereby those who openly refuse to
worship it are excommunicated, and those who would do so if they dared,
are held in check' (_ibid._ p. 105). The object of this lengthy note is
to vindicate for Sarpi a prominent and early place among those candid
analysts of Jesuitry who now are lost in the great light of Pascal's
genius. Sarpi's _Familiar Letters_ have for my mind even more weight
than the famous _Lettres Provinciales_ of Pascal. They were written with
no polemical or literary bias, at a period when Jesuitry was in its
prime; and their force as evidence is strengthened by their obvious
spontaneity. A book of some utility was published in 1703 at Salzburg
(?), under the title of _Artes Jesuiticae_ Christianus Aletophilus. This
contains a compendium of those passages in casuistical writings on which
Pascal based his brilliant satires. Paul Bert's modern work, _La Morale
des Jesuites_ (Paris: Charpentier, 1881), is intended to prove that
recent casuistical treatises of the school repeat those ancient
perversions of sound morals.]

The working of the Company, as we have seen, depended upon a skillful
manipulation of apparently hard-and-fast principles. The Declarations
explained away the Constitutions; and an infinite number of minute
exceptions and distinctions volatilized vows and obligations into ether.
Transferring the same method to the sphere of ethics, they so wrought
upon the precepts of the moral law, whether expressed in holy writ, in
the ecclesiastical decrees, or in civil jurisprudence, as to deprive
them of their binding force. The subtlest elasticity had been gained for
the machinery of the order by casuistical interpretation. A like
elasticity was secured for the control and government of souls by an
identical process. It was no wonder that the Jesuits became rapidly
fashionable as confessors. The plainest prohibitions were as wax in
their hands. The Decalogue laid down as rules for conduct: 'Thou shalt
not steal;' 'Thou shalt not kill;' 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.'
Christ spiritualized these rules into their essence: 'Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself;' 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after
her, hath committed adultery already with her in his heart.' It is
manifest that both the old and the new covenant upon which modern