LONDON,January 6,O.S.1752.
MY DEAR FRIEND
I recommended to you,in my last,some inquiries into the constitution of that famous society the Sorbonne;but as I cannot wholly trust to the diligence of those inquiries,I will give you here the outlines of that establishment;which may possibly excite you to inform yourself of particulars,which you are more 'a portee'to know than I am.
It was founded by Robert de Sorbon,in the year 1256for sixteen poor scholars in divinity;four of each nation,of the university of which it made a part;since that it hath been much extended and enriched,especially by the liberality and pride of Cardinal Richelieu;who made it a magnificent building for six-and-thirty doctors of that society to live in;besides which,there are six professors and schools for divinity.
This society has long been famous for theological knowledge and exercitations.There unintelligible points are debated with passion,though they can never be determined by reason.Logical subtilties set common sense at defiance;and mystical refinements disfigure and disguise the native beauty and simplicity of true natural religion;wild imaginations form systems,which weak minds adopt implicitly,and which sense and reason oppose in vain;their voice is not strong enough to be heard in schools of divinity.Political views are by no means neglected in those sacred places;and questions are agitated and decided,according to the degree of regard,or rather submission,which the Sovereign is pleased to show the Church.Is the King a slave to the Church,though a tyrant to the laity?The least resistance to his will shall be declared damnable.But if he will not acknowledge the superiority of their spiritual over his temporal,nor even admit their 'imperium in imperio',which is the least they will compound for,it becomes meritorious not only to resist,but to depose him.And I suppose that the bold propositions in the thesis you mention,are a return for the valuation of 'les biens du Clerge'.
I would advise you,by all means,to attend to two or three of their public disputations,in order to be informed both of the manner and the substance of those scholastic exercises.Pray remember to go to all those kind of things.Do not put it off,as one is too apt to do those things which one knows can be done every day,or any day;for one afterward repents extremely,when too late,the not having done them.
But there is another (so-called)religious society,of which the minutest circumstance deserves attention,and furnishes great matter for useful reflections.You easily guess that I mean the society of 'les R.R.P.
P.Jesuites',established but in the year 1540,by a Bull of Pope Paul III.Its progress,and I may say its victories,were more rapid than those of the Romans ;for within the same century it governed all Europe;and,in the next,it extended its influence over the whole world.Its founder was an abandoned profligate Spanish officer,Ignatius Loyola;who,in the year 1521,being wounded in the leg at the 'siege of Pampeluna,went mad from the smart of his wound,the reproaches of his conscience,and his confinement,during which he read the lives of the Saints.Consciousness of guilt,a fiery temper,and a wild imagination,the common ingredients of enthusiasm,made this madman devote himself to the particular service of the Virgin Mary;whose knight-errant he declared himself,in the very same form in which the old knight-errants in romances used to declare themselves the knights and champions of certain beautiful and incomparable princesses,whom sometimes they had,but oftener had not,seen.For Dulcinea del Toboso was by no means the first princess whom her faithful and valorous knight had never seen in his life.The enthusiast went to the Holy Land,from whence he returned to Spain,where he began to learn Latin and philosophy at three-and-thirty years old,so that no doubt but he made great progress in both.
The better to carry on his mad and wicked designs,he chose four disciples,or rather apostles,all Spaniards,viz,Laynes,Salmeron,Bobadilla,and Rodriguez.He then composed the rules and constitutions of his order;which,in the year 1547,was called the order of Jesuits,from the church of Jesus in Rome,which was given them.Ignatius died in 1556,aged sixty-five,thirty-five years after his conversion,and sixteen years after the establishment of his society.He was canonized in the year 1609,and is doubtless now a saint in heaven.
