ed him
was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his
macerated frame sank into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of
Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the
simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great
masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and
wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were
received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true,
no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by elaborate
discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of
ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop,
original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary
contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits
nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute.
Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had,
from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to
abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very
much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other
hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that the
Society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder.
The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme Pontiff; and they were
closely allied with a prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the
Gallican liberties and the enemy of Ultramontane pretensions. Thus
the Order became in England an instrument of the designs of Lewis, and
laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long
and bitterly deplored, to widen the breach between the King and the
Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the Lord
Treasurer, and to support the most desperate schemes of Tyrconnel.

Thus on one side were the Hydes and the whole body of Tory churchmen,
Powis and all the most respectable noblemen and gentlemen of the King's
own faith, the States General, the House of Austria, and the Pope. On
the other side were a few Roman Catholic adventurers, of broken fortune
and tainted reputation, backed by France and by the Jesuits.

The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an
English brother of the Order, who had, during some time, acted as
Viceprovincial, who had been long regarded by James with peculiar
favour, and who had lately be