TWO ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF A JESUIT PRIEST.* UNDER
the somewhat ill-chosen title of "The Condition of Catholics under James I.," Mr. Morris has translated from the Latin an autobiography of John Gerard, the celebrated Jesuit father of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., and has published for the first time that father's "History of the Gunpowder Plot," composed by him after his recall from England consequent on the increased danger of his position in this country from his supposed complicity in the Plot. The " History " was consulted in MS. by Dr. Lingard in preparing his History of England, and consequently the new facts of importance contained in it have already been placed before the English public, and have been duly estimated in all recent considerations of the subject of the Plot. But both " Autobiography " and " history" possess a value of their own which is perfectly unaffected by any use which may have been made of them as autho- rities for facts. Nothing but the actual words of such a writer, and his narrative taken in extenso, could give any real idea of the strange and dangerous times in which he lived, or make us feel what was the nature of the man himself, and what was the true character of the principles by which his conduct was dictated. In the case before us such a delineation was especially needed, for the name of " Jesuit " has long been a term of reproach, not merely among Protestants, but also among decided Roman Catholics, and the question of the compatibility of the maxims of the Society with civil government and social morality has been one on which liberal-minded men have been much divided in opinion. And although we cannot unreservedly accept the account given of himself and the representation of public affairs by Father John Gerard, it is quite impossible for the most guarded of autobiographers and historians to enter into such details of every-day life without unintentionally employing expressions and displaying sentiments which tell something very like the truth about himself and his position. It is also a satisfaction to anyone who wishes to ascertain the truth, that such works have been edited in the present instance by a gentleman belonging to the Society, and who sympathizes so much with the sentiments and morale of Gerard that his occa- sional notes and comments are rather explanations and defences than extenuations of his author on most questionable points. We therefore run no risk in assuming that the sentiments implied in these statements of Father Gerard convey the true rationale of morality in the Society of Jesus. It may be differently formulated in different ages, and to meet differing phases of 4' The Condition of Catholics under James I. Father Gerards Narratire of the Gun- powder Plot. Edited, with his Life, by John Morris, Priest of the Society of Jesus. London: Longmana and Co. 1,571.
society, but substantially and in spirit Father Gerard's exposi- tion may be taken as authoritative.
The leading events of John Gerard's life may be compressed within a comparatively small compass. He was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard, of Bryn, in Lancashire, a gentleman of 'ancient family, and a determined Recusant Roman Catholic, who was twice imprisoned in the Tower for plots against the Government. He was born in 1564, and at the age of fifteen was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, but only stayed there a year, having refused to attend Protestant worship and partake of the Anglican Sacrament. On leaving he was placed under the tuition of his old college tutor, who had left also on similar religious grounds, and of a priest who resided on that pretext in the Gerard household, and who afterwards entered the Society of Jesus. At nineteen he went over to France, and resided for three years at Rheims. Here he began to devote himself especially to the study of theology, but he says that he was left too much to the guidance of his own taste in the choice of his reading. About this time he made the acquaintance of a young man who had just entered the Society, and it was under his influence, no doubt, that, to use his own words, " svhen about twenty years of age, I heard the call of God's infinite mercy and loving kindness, inviting me from the crooked ways of the world to the straight path, to the perfect following of Christ in his holy Society." After three years spent at Rheims, Gerard went to Clermont Col- lege at Paris, to finish his general education, and "to see more closely the manner of the Society's life." A year afterwards he had a dangerous illness, and on his re- covery "accompanied Father Thomas Darbyshire to Rouen, in order to see Father Persons, who had arrived thither from England, and was staying incognito in that city, superintending the publication of his Christian Directory." Him Gerard con- sulted on his vocation, and by his advice resolved to visit England first. During this visit he experienced his first imprisonment, but escaped with a fine, and got off to Paris, from which city he repaired to Rome. Here he studied at the English College before entering the Society, but the air of Rome not suit- ing his constitution, his studies were hurried, and at the time when the Spanish Armada was nearing the coasts of England, Cardinal Allen," he says, "thought fit to send me to England for various matters connected with Catholic interests, but as I still wanted several months of the lawful age for taking Priest's Orders, a Papal dispensation was obtained. I was most unwilling to depart unless I was first admitted into the Society, so Father Persons, out of his singular charity towards me, obtained my admission to the Noviciate, which I was to finish in England." So on the Feast of the Assumption, 1588, he and Father Edmund Ouldcorne, who afterwards suffered for alleged com- plicity in the Gunpowder Plot, were admitted into the Society, and commissioned for England. They, after some delays, embarked accordingly, and landed on the coast of Norfolk, from which county, after several adventures involving a suc- cessful initiation of Gerard into his missionary labours, they both found their way to London, and were welcomed by the acting head of the Society in England, the celebrated Father Garnet.
From this time until the apprehension of Gerard in 1594, his life was a succession of zealous labours, under various assumed names, in what he considered to be the path of duty, and of hair-breadth escapes from the priest-searchers, and of similar adventures, which read like a romance, and form an interesting illustration of the priests' hiding-houses which still remain in this country. How far during this time he was engaged in other than missionary enterprises, in the strictly religious sense of the term, we cannot tell. He, indeed, always affirms that the principles of his Society prohibit any in- terference in State affairs, but the interests of their religion appear always to have been considered a fair object of concern, and this proviso we know was elastic enough to allow Father Persons to be the acknowledged head of the party in favour of the Spanish Succession during the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of that of James I. Besides, in fact, Jesuits, according to their own acknowledgment, were several times engaged in missions of a very mixed character, and it must remain very doubtful whether the favourite pupil of Persons, whom he despatched into England at such an era as the Spanish invasion, confined himself to what we should call religious labours. The English Government, knowing his antecedents and connections, was naturally of opinion that he had other objects in view, and meddled in other affairs, so after being transferred to one or two prisons, he was at last committed to the Tower, where he was put to the torture, to extract from him the whereabouts of Father Garnet. He, however, remained un- shaken, and the attempt to force him seems to have been abandoned by the Government, the Earl of Essex expressing great admiration at.
his constancy. The humane conduct of the officials of the Tower affords a pleasing contrast to the cruel system of which such men as Cecil, Bacon, and Coke made themselves the agents,—indeed, in the case of Gerard, his gaoler appears to have carried his leniency to the extent of great negligence of his duties as custodian ; and availing himself of this little by little, the clever Jesuit father held free communication with his friendawithout, and by their assist- ance and the co-operation of a fellow-prisoner, managed to effect a daring and adventurous escape from the Tower on the night of October 4, 1597. He resumed his missionary efforts, the Government making little effort to recapture him at first ; but when the Gun- powder Plot exploded, he became involved in the charges made against the Jesuit Fathers, and a more diligent search was made for him, until at last he was smuggled out of England in May, 1606. Three years later he was admitted into the body of the Society by the four solemn vows of a Professed Father, by
special grace, as his learning did not come up to the standard,
required by the Society. He survived his escape from England. thirty-one years, but his autobiography ends here, and we have scarcely any record of the rest of his life. He died as confessor to the English College at Rome, July 27, 1637, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
Such is an outline of the life which this volume discloses to us, in detail, and we must confess we have risen from its perusal with
a mixed feeling of admiration for the individual Jesuits,- and
of grave disapproval of the system under the guidance of which they acted. Under a different system, and in- another sphere of action, John Gerard might have achieved a- reputation which would entitle him to rank among our noblestt. English worthies. A member of one of the old landed families of this country, conversant with the ordinary accomplishments of such a station, courteous and affable, with an unusually stately and dignified presence, a fearless and even reckless courage, rare presence of mind and patient determination, a powerful and subtle intellect, a proud sense of the demands of what he considered to be honour, a quiet and unselfish enthusiasm, but a keen relish of success, which really involved unconscious self-satisfaction, though it was not inconsistent with a general self-depreciatory humility, what might he not have done for England, and for the advance of every right principle, had his lot been thrown among_ better associations than those of the school of Ignatius.
Loyola ! When we read his unaffected and evidently un- exaggerated account of his constancy and self-devotion under- the most trying anxieties of mind and bodily sufferings, of the strong faith in his cause, and heroic endurance with which he sustained tortures prolonged for hours, and renewed with pitiless cruelty, and of the unbroken spirit and adroit and daring manner in which he planned and carried out his escape from the Tower of London, we should lose every other feeling in one of admiration of the man, if this sentiment were not modified by little attendant circumstances in which the cloven foot of the System to which his moral nature was sacrificed, peeps through. But when we turn to what he would consider as equally glorious records—the account which he gives with so much satisfaction of his missionary labours. in the heart of English family life we may still admire the dex- terity of the plotter and diplomatist, but we can feel little but disap- probation of the methods employed, and displeasure in the results an triumphantly chronicled. Among the converts thus brought, into the Roman Catholic fold were young Sir Everard Digby and his wife, into whose household Gerard was introduced in lay dis- guise by a co-religionist, "Master Roger Lee," afterwards Father Lee. The wife was first separately brought over, and then the husband equally separately on the occasion of a severe illness. The history of his conversion is thus introduced :—" Now it so hap- pened that he had fallen sick in London, and his wife on hearing it determined to go and nurse him. We, however [himself and Lee] went up before her, and travelling more expeditiously, had, time to deal with him before she came." Then follows the account of his conversion." After his reconciliation, he began on his part to. be anxious about his wife, and wished to consult with us how best. to bring her to the Catholic religion. We both smiled at this, but said nothing at the time, determining to wait till his wife came up. to town, that we might witness how each loving soul would strive to win the other. Certainly, they were a favoured pair. Both gave themselves wholly to God's service, and the husband after- wards sacrificed all his property, his liberty, nay, even his life, for God's Church, as I shall relate hereafter. For that was this Sir Everard Digby, knight, of whom later on I should have had to say so many things, if so much had not been already written and published about him and his companions. But never in any
of these writings has justice been done to the sincerity of his in- I tentions, nor the circumstances properly set forth which would put I his conduct in its true light." Such is Father Gerard's allusion to the part played by Sir Everard as a Gunpowder conspirator, and such was the catastrophe, moral and material, to which the conversion of this "favoured pair" was the prelude. How far the great spiritual influence and guidance which from that time forward Gerard exercised over the weak mind of the young knight is compatible with a belief in his own entire ignorance of the Plot, is a question of probabilities which every one must decide for himself. It was asserted that the conspirators received the com- munion at his house, and at his hands ; but both Digby and Foulkes acquit him of any complicity with the Plot ; and he himself asserts that the communion was not administered by himself, but by a priest who was staying in the house, and without his cog- nizance. After his escape from England, a report gained general circulation and credence abroad among Roman Catholics, on the authority of a priest, that Gerard had boasted to him of his pre- vious knowledge and complicity in the Plot, and Gerard took great pains to deny the statement in repeated letters to high dignitaries of his Church. Gerard's own solemn denial of his know- ledge of the Plot would go for much from such a man, if unfor- tunately he did not avowedly act on a theory of the nature of truth and falsehood which is ingenious enough, as it appears to us, to render worthless any denial, however seemingly positive and explicit. Mr. Morris has given his own version of the real Jesuit doctrine of equivocation, and of the difference in the meaning of the word as employed then and now ; but Gerard him- self gives us its rationale more fully and clearly in his account of his examination by the Attorney-General in Elizabeth's reign, and we will give his own words :— " The Attorney-General inveighed much against this, and tried to make out that this was to foster lying, and so destroy all reliable com- munications between men, and, therefore, all bonds of society. I, on the other hand, maintained that this was not falsehood, nor supposed an in- tention of deceiving, which is necessary to constitute a lie, but merely a keeping back of the truth, and that where one is not bound to declare it; consequently there is no deception, because nothing is refused which the other has a right to claim. I showed, moreover, that our doctrine did no way involve a destruction of the bonds of society, because the use of equivocation is never allowed in making contracts, since all are bound to give their neighbour his due, and in making of contracts truth is due to the party contracting. It should be remembered also, I said, that it is not allowed to use equivocation in ordinary conversation, to the detriment of plain truth and Christian simplicity, much lees in matters properly falling under the cognizance of civil authority [the original MS. has "in subornata gubernatione Reipublicas." Mr. Morris conjectures this to be a mistake for subordinatil, and gives the above con- jectural rendering], since it is not lawful to deny even a capital crime, if the accused is questioned juridically. He asked me, therefore, what I considered a juridical questioning. I answered that the questioners must be really superiors or judges in the matter under examination ; then the matter itself must be some crime hurtful to the commonweal, in order that it may come under their jurisdiction ; for sins merely internal were reserved for God's judgment. Again, there must be some trustworthy testimony brought against the accused ; thus it is the custom in England that all who are put on their trial, when first asked by the judge if they are guilty or not, answer, 'Not Guilty,' before any witness is brought against them, and any verdict found by the jury, and though they answer the same way, whether really guilty or not, yet no one accuses them of lying. Therefore I laid down this general principle, that no one is allowed to use equivocation except in the case when something is asked him, either actually or virtually, which the questioner has no right to ask, and the declaration of which will turn to his own hurt, if he answers according to the intention of the ques- tioner. I showed that this had been our Lord's practice; I showed him that it was the practice of all prudent men, and would certainly be followed by my interrogators themselves, in case they were asked about some secret sin, for example, or were asked by robbers where their money was hid. They asked me, therefore, when our Lord ever made use of equivocation, to which I replied, 'When he told his Apostles that no one knew the Day of Judgment, not even the Son of Man; and again, when he said that he was not going up to the festival at Jerusalem, and yet he went ; yea, and he knew that he should go, when ho said he would not. Wade here interrupted me, saying, 'Christ really did not know the Day of Judgment as Son of Man.'—'It cannot be,' said that the Word of God Incarnate, and with a human nature hypo- statically united to God, should be subject to ignorance ; nor that he who was appointed Judge by God the Father should be ignorant of those facts which belonged necessarily to his office; nor that he should be of infinite wisdom, and yet not know what intimately concerned him- self.' In fact, these heretics do not practically admit what the Apostle teaches (though they boast of following his doctrines), namely, that all the Fullness of the Divinity resided corporeally in Christ, and that in him were all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God."
This illustration from Scripture appears to us to cover a much more serious system of deceit than that which Mr. Morris is in- clined to admit, and the latitude given to individual judgment in the more ignorant, and to non-natural constructions in more subtle and informed minds by the canon itself, as set forth by Gerard, especially in his extraordinary interpretation of the word "juridical," seems to us to prove sufficiently how dangerous a doctrine this was, even if not pushed beyond its theoretical limits. Mr. Morris lays considerable stress on the warning which Gerard and others (according to their own account) added to their denials of real facts, that they should say the same even if the alleged facts were true, and appeals to Sir Walter Scott's practice in concealing the authorship of the Waverley Novels. But, waiving the question of Scott's practice, and preferring that writer's theory of Truth as expressed in his Jeanie Deanes and elsewhere, it seems clear from Gerard's own account that he did not always give this warning,—in the case of his denial in the Tower of all knowledge of Francis Page (pp. cix.-xi) there is nothing but the simple lie repeated again and again and in Page's presence, in order, as he says, to put him on his guard against being deluded into admitting their acquaintance by the assertion that Gerard himself had confessed it. And if this " equivocation" was only a strictly defensive evasion of an admission, without any intention to deceive, it is not easy to see what was its practical advantage over a simple refusal to answee at all. No one in either case would be deluded into the belief that the man under question was making an unnecessary martyr of himself, by not speaking out decidedly when he had nothing to conceal. But the whole atmosphere which we seem to breathe when we plunge into all this subtle casuistry about the limits of truth and falsehood is a tainted one, and we cannot escape the conviction that the moral character of the men who were con- tinually reconciling their minds to such practices, and finding plausible grounds for departing from the simplicity of Truth, must have been insensibly and unconsciously lowered and perverted_ At any rate, no one can be surprised that such a practice should. expose their conduct to the worst construction, and that they should bring down on their Society suspicions of complicity in many acts from which a more straightforward course would have saved them. As to the complicity of the Jesuit Fathers in the Gunpowder Plot, we quite agree with the modified judgment passed by our last and best historian of the period, Mr. Gardiner, that a modern jury would at once acquit them legally, but that there are strong moral presumptions against some of them.
We have been able to give within our necessary limits but a very imperfect and faint idea of the interest and value of the volume before us, though we have perhaps said enough to send our readers to the work itself for a more particular knowledge of its contents; but we cannot conclude without thanking Mr. Morris for his intelligent and unobtrusive editorship, or without speaking highly of the moderate and candid tone of his remarks.
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