Part 2 — Ignatius Loyola to the Archbishop of Toledo.

YOUR eminency’s remissness in the late affairs of the Spanish territories, has made my scorpion’s stink deeper than heretofore, and superadded a new blackness to the horrors of my rage and despair. Those painful machinations, who took their birth from hell itself, and by my industry and application had so glorious a prospect of bridling all mankind, wherever the Romish doctrine triumph’d at least, are now by that long continued series of an unhappy supineness in your predecessors, or the powerful influences of French gold, reduc’d to almost nothing. The thunderbolts of the inquisition rattled more dreadfully than those of the Vatican; and after emperors had subjected themselves to the successors of St. Peter, we found out means to subject him to our censures, and by this made our selves superior to supreme. The mildness of your executions, and the rarity of ’em have substracted wonderfully from their reputation, and from my designs. Your excellency can’t say but I lay down very sufficient groundworks for the rendering my orders as lasting as religion, if not as lasting as time. More than Europe has felt the efficacy of my instructions; and where-ever my disciples have been sent they have brought us home souls and bodies, credit and estates.

What society can vie with us for extent of temporal concerns? what provinces are not in a great measure ours? we have the guardianship of the consciences of most of the considerable crown’d heads, and few affairs of importance are transacted any where but with our privity. I have not met with any one person in these kingdoms that has been of note and quality, that came here with a pass-port from the holy inquisition; now and then a rascally Jew or so, comes here blaspheming your power and prudence; and is so angry that he will not show it at hell-gates; as if he apprehended a double damnation from our character.

Your excellency can’t but be sensible how great sufferers we have been by the substracting of the Gallican church from the lash of our authority; and it was no small amputation we suffered in the Spanish Netherlands, by the improvident proceeding of that rash commander the duke of Alva: If now you submit thus quietly to the administration of France, I cannot but apprehend an universal extention of that powerful and profitable institution. Next to my own society, I look upon it to be the basis of the Romish monarchy, and undoubtedly of your own, and of the Austrian greatness. How are your liberties trampled upon by a child, and all your dons led captives to Versailles? Where is the antient valour and obstinacy of the Moorish blood? Where are the poisons and the poniards so frequent in Madrid? Is Spain brought so low that she has not resolution enough for one feeble effort, to save herself from infamy and ruin? Your arms were always unsuccessful against the English nation; the greatness of your misery points out still the memorable, the very deplorable overthrow in eighty eight: There is a queen again upon that crown, willing and able to protect you as well as others, and it may be in rubricks of fate, that as one queen brought down the pride of the haughty Spaniards, so the other shall humble France as much, even when it is in its most tow’ring glory. But whatever be the destiny of France, you ought to look after yourselves, and not by an untimely accession of your powers to that of so formidable a monarch, intangle yourselves in an inextricable ruin, by so much the more unpardonable as you might easily have prevented it. Shew the world then that a French lion can’t thrive in a Spanish soil, and dart forth the lightning of the inquisition against all that adhere to the Gallic interest and connive at the ruin of the Spanish grandeur. Exert yourself and swim hither in a sea of blood, and may your cruelties succeed.