of the
ecclesiastical state, but always in vain; and although the Chamber of
Castille, which was the supreme tribunal, lent its support to those just
pretensions, that support was always disregarded by the pontifical court.
The friars never would submit themselves to the bishops, except to
receive holy orders from them; and whenever these were refused, although
it might be on strong and just grounds, the friar had recourse at once to
Rome, and returned from thence ordained.

We have not entered, in our list of religious orders, that of the
Jesuits, because these formed an entirely separate class, and the
greatest insult that could be committed against a Jesuit was to call him
a friar. The Spanish Jesuits, like those throughout all Europe, were, in
their exterior conduct, modest and decorous. They mixed but little with
the lower classes of society, and their chief occupation was to direct
the consciences of eminent persons, and particularly those of kings,
bishops, and ministers. In Spain, as in all other places, they took a
large share in politics, they patronised good studies, and accumulated
great wealth. If jesuitical casuistry had not its birth in Spain, at
least the greater part of its ecclesiastical writers, who propagated and
defended that absurd and immoral conceit, were Spaniards, as may be seen
on reference to the catalogue of them published by Pascal, in his
_Lettres d'un Provincial_. The names of Escobar and of Sanchez have left
a deplorable reputation for them in this branch of ecclesiastic
literature. The treatise _De Matrimonio_ of the latter contains such
profound immorality, and such dangerous and obscene queries and
doctrines, that the Inquisition included the publication in its index of
prohibited books. But far greater scandal was produced throughout Europe
by the book entitled _De Rege et Regis Institutione_, written by the
celebrated Jesuit, Juan de Mariana. This man, truly great, and whom
Gibbon places in the number of the most distinguished historians of
ancient and modern times, wrote that work, apparently with the view of
assisting in the education of Philip IV., but in reality to justify the
assassination committed in France on the person of Henry III., and
probably to prepare for that of his successor. Mariana sustains, with
warmth, with eloquence, and with erudition, the dogma of regicide;
determines the cases in which the commission of that crime is not only
lawful but necessary an