The Jesuits — Reading Companion

A Lecture Revised for Print

The preface reveals that The Jesuits originated as a lecture for the Islington Protestant Institute, then expanded for a second edition. Hoare notes he added 'a considerable quantity of additional information' after 'a more careful study of the subject.' He also responds to a critic who challenged his translation of a constitutional passage, expressing regret that the critic offered only 'a general and unsupported insinuation' rather than pointing out specific inaccuracies. Hoare promises that in this edition 'every important extract' carries a clear reference, inviting readers to 'disprove my statements.' This defensive posture suggests the pamphlet entered a live polemical arena, where Hoare expected his claims to be tested against original sources.

The Novice's Gradual Entanglement

Hoare devotes sustained attention to the Society's recruitment and training methods. He quotes the Examen directing that 'all the Constitutions be not read by those who come as novices, but only a compendium.' The novice, he argues, is 'gradually drawn on, step by step' and 'never allowed to see the whole system, lest he should recoil from it.' Hoare's language grows heated: he describes the process as 'an outrage on every law of nature' and 'the absolute crushing of all individual principle and conviction.' He specifies that a young man of eighteen is 'stripped of his property, isolated from his home, deadened his conscience,' and sent forth as 'the thinking tool, the acting instrument' of his superior. The passage relies on the reader's sympathy for youthful autonomy.

Morality Defined by Absence of Scandal

In the chapter on morality, Hoare engages with a claim made by a Jesuit to the traveller Mr. Seymour: 'No man has ever charged us with personal immorality.' Hoare concedes that among Roman Jesuits this boast holds true—other orders are denounced as 'idle, debauched, licentious,' but the Jesuits escape such whispers. However, he narrows the definition of morality: if it means only freedom from profligacy, he accepts the claim; but if it means 'purity, truth, honesty, justice,' he argues the Order has 'sanctioned principles which are sufficient to dissolve every moral tie.' He notes that such principles do not appear in public constitutions but are 'maintained and defended by their most celebrated writers,' and because no Jesuit may publish without a superior's approval, the Society bears responsibility for those writings.

The Rhetoric of Contrast and Appeal

Hoare repeatedly juxtaposes the Society's external polish with its internal mechanisms. He acknowledges that readers may 'admire Jesuitism as a beautiful and well-adjusted machinery' and may 'entertain a great respect for their talents, their acquirements, their mild and gentle manners.' Yet he urges them to 'look at the great broad facts of the system'—the 'cruel and oppressive apparatus' brought to bear on conscience. His closing appeal to 'any Roman Catholic' asks whether the Gospel's 'glorious liberty' can coexist with a system that 'seizes a young man at the age of eighteen' and enslaves him. The rhetorical structure thus moves from concession to indictment, using the Society's own reputed virtues as a foil for its alleged vices.

Readers should note that Hoare writes as a Protestant controversialist, not a historian. His evidence comes from published constitutions, Jesuit writers, and travel narratives like Seymour's. The excerpts do not include his full argument on moral theology or his handling of political interference; those sections may extend or complicate the picture given here. Approaching the text as a specimen of mid-nineteenth-century anti-Jesuit polemic, rather than as neutral reportage, will clarify its strategies and limitations.

Reading about Jesuit secrecy, I remembered my grandfather’s study, the way he’d close the door to read quietly. This lecture’s careful, wary dissection of hidden influence reminded me of another afternoon, years later, with The Protocols and world revolution — Reading Companion. Both felt like looking through a keyhole into a room I wasn’t meant to see, that unsettling stillness before a thought takes hold.