Note 778 — Chapter VIII

See “The Principles of the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own Authors,” London: J. G. and F. Rivington, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and Waterloo Place, Pall Mall; H. Wix, 41 New Bridge Street, Blackfriars; J. Leslie, Queen Street, etc., 1839. Section xvii., “High Treason and Regicide,” containing thirty-four extracts from the same number of authorities (of the Society of Jesus) upon the question, among others the opinion thereof of the famous Robert Bellarmine. So Emmanuel Sa says: “The rebellion of an ecclesiastic against a king, is not a crime of high treason, because he is not subject to the king” (“Confessarium Aphorismi Verbo Clericus,” Ed. Coloniæ, 1615, Ed. Coll. Sion). “The people,” says John Bridgewater, “are not only permitted, but they are required and their duty demands, that at the mandate of the Vicar of Christ, who is the sovereign pastor over all nations of the earth, the faith which they had previously made with such princes should not be kept” (“Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ in Angliâ adversus Calvino Papistas,” Resp. fol. 348).

In “De Rege et Regis Institutione, Libri Tres,” 1640 (Edit. Mus. Brit.), John Mariana goes even farther: “If the circumstances will permit,” he says, “it will be lawful to destroy with the sword the prince who is declared a public enemy.... I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, should attempt to kill him,” and “to put them to death is not only lawful, but a laudble and glorious action.” Est tamen salutaris cogitatio, ut sit principibus persuasum si rempublicam oppresserint, si vitiis et fæditate intolerandi erunt, eâ conditione vivere, ut non jure tantum, sed cum laude et gloriâ perimi possint” (Lib. i., c. 6, p. 61).

But the most delicate piece of Christian teaching is found in the precept of this Jesuit when he argues upon the best and surest way of killing kings and statesmen. “In my own opinion,” he says, “deleterious drugs should not be given to an enemy, neither should a deadly poison be mixed with his food or in his cup.... Yet it will indeed be lawful to use this method in the case in question (that he who should kill the tyrant would be highly esteemed, both in favor and in praise,” for “it is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent and mischievous race from the community of men), not to constrain the person who is to be killed to take of himself the poison which, inwardly received, would deprive him of life, but to cause it to be outwardly applied by another without his intervention; as, when there is so much strength in the poison, that if spread upon a seat or on the clothes it would be sufficiently powerful to cause death” (Ibid., lib. i., c. f., p. 67). “It was thus that Squire attempted the life of Queen Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Jesuit Walpole.”—Pasquier: “Catéchisme des Jésuites” (1677, p. 350, etc.), and “Rapin” (fol., Lond., 1733, vol. ii., book xvii., p. 148).