The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• To the Earl of S———-, &c. &c.
• Preface.
• The Independent Whig.
• Number I.: A View of the Romish Church, In Her Heads, Theology, Canons, Miracles, and Saints; Taken Chiefly From Her Own Writers and Champions.
• Number II.: An Idea of the French Government. the Spirit of Popery, How Terrible to Protestants.
• Number III.: Further Observations Upon the French Government. the Excellence of Our Own, Confess’d By French Writers.
• Number IV.: Persecution and Cruelty, Marks of Apostasy From Christianity. the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, How Impious and Impossible. the Inconsistency, Impotence, and Absurdity of All Popish Miracles.
• Number V.: The Natural and Dreadful Consequences Attending the Success of the Rebellion.
• Number VI.: The Views of the Pretender Not to Be Disguised. His Defence an Insult.
• Number VII.: The Norman Invasion, How Sanguinary and Fatal to England. the Invader How Faithless and Barbarous to Englishmen.
• Number VIII.: The Curious Speech of a Fugitive Protestant - Popish - Jacobite Priest to Lewis the Well-beloved.
• Number IX.: The Loyalty of Papists Never to Be Trusted By Protestants. Religion and Liberty Inevitable Sacrifices to a Popish Revolution.
• Number X.: Remarks Upon the Appeal of the Pretender (young Or Old) to the People.
• Number XI.: Popery Tried By Christianity and Reason, and Proved an Enemy to Both.
• Number XII.: Warning to Britons, Upon the Present Rebellion Supported By France.
• Number XIII.: The Shocking Antipathy of Popery to Common Sense and Christian Charity.
• Number XIV.: Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XV.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVI.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVII.: Remainder of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVIII.: King James II. His Disgraceful Reign. His Impotence and Cruelty. He Exposes and Deposes Himself.
• Number XIX.: How Boldly the Popish Clergy Abuse Their Followers, By Teaching Them to Deny With a Curse, the Most Obvious Impieties of Their Church.
• Number XX.: The Same Subject Continued.
• Number XXI.: The Following Quotation Is Taken From One of the Political Discourses Upon Sallust the Roman Historian: It Is the Fourth Section of the Discourse, of the Mutability of Government. the Passage Is Extremely Curious, And, I Think, Seasona
• Number XXII.: The Quaker’ S Advice to the Young Pretender.
• Number XXIII.: The Intimate Resemblance Between the Popish Clergy, and Those of Modern Paganism In the East.
• Number XXIV.: Of the Many Good Sermons Preached and Published Against the Rebellion. a Sermon of Singular Tendency, By an Eminent Hand: the Strange Doctrines Advanced, and the Observable Omissions, In It.
• Number XXV.: Our National Sins No Wise Analogous to Those of the Jews, Nor Meriting Equal Punishment. the Rashness and Danger of Ascertaining and Applying Divine Judgments.
• Number XXVI.: The Free Use of Reason the Best Cure For Bigotry, and the Violence of Enthusiasm.
• Number XXVII.: To What I Have Said Above Upon the Excesses and Unchristian Spirit of the Clergy In the Reign of King Charles I. I Shall Add the Following Observations Upon Their Incredible Canon, Injoining an Oath to an Et Cætera.
• Number XXVIII.: Considerations Upon the Mischievous Tendency of Libels; Chiefly Public Libels.
• Number XXIX.: The Subject of Libels Continued.
• Number XXX.: The Subject of Libels Continued and Concluded.
• Number XXXI.: The Absurdity of Jacobitism, the Impiety of Popery, and the Enthusiasm of Party.
• Number XXXII.: The Letter of Monsieur D’argenson to Mynheer Van Hoey, and That of the Mynheer to the Duke of Newcastle, Paraphrased.

Number XXI.

The following Quotation is taken from one of the Political Discourses upon Sallust the Roman Historian: It is the Fourth Section of the Discourse, Of the Mutability of Government. The Passage is extremely curious, and, I think, seasonable.

“THE Settlement made by the Jesuits, upon the River Paraguay in America, is extremely remarkable. These good Fathers, every-where indefatigable in improving their Apostolic Talents, and turning Souls into Ecclesiastical Traffic and Power, began there, by drawing together, into one fixed Habitation, about Fifty Families of wandering Indians, whom they had persuaded to take their Word implicitly for whatever they told them: For this is what they call Conversion; and is, indeed, the true Art of making Catholics, who have no other Ground for their Faith, but the Assertions of their Priests.

“From this Beginning, and such Encouragement, the assiduous Fathers, ranging the Country, and dazling the stupid Savages with their shining Beads, charming them with their pious Tales and Grimaces, their tuneful Devotions and high Professions, made such a Harvest of Converts as to form a Commonwealth, or rather an Empire of Souls: For every Convert is a Subject most blindly obedient.

“The holy Fathers, not Fifty in Number, are thus Sovereigns of a noble Country, larger than some Kingdoms, and better peopled. It is divided into several large Districts, each of them governed by a single Jesuit, who is, as it were, a provincial Prince; but more powerful and revered, and better obeyed, than any European, or even any Eastern Monarch. His Word is not only a Law, but an Oracle; his Nod infers supreme Command: He is absolute Lord of Life and Death, and Property; may inflict capital Punishment for the lightest Offence; and is more dreaded, therefore more obeyed, than the Deity. His first Ministers and Officers, Civil and Military, are doomed by him to the meanest Punishments, and whipped not only like common Slaves, but like common Felons: Nor is this all their Punishment at least all their Abasement, which to a Man of Spirit is the worst Punishment. Whilst they are yet marked and mangled with the Lash, they run (Colonels and Captains run) and kneel before their holy Sovereign, condemn themselves for having incurred his pious Displeasure, and humbly kissing his reverend Sleeve, thank him for the fatherly Honour he has done them, in correcting them like Dogs.

“So much Tameness and Vassalage is part, and an important Article, of their Conversion. They are even pleased with their Servitude, and care not what they do and suffer here, for the mighty Treasures of Joy and Liberty which are insured to them hereafter by the good Father, who gives them all that he has to give in the next World, and, by way of Barter and Amends, takes all that they have in the present.

“The poor Indians cultivate the Ground, dig and plough, and reap and sow; they make Stuffs, and other Manufactures; they rear Fowls, they breed Cattle, they carry Burdens, and labour hard above Ground, as well as under it, where, in Sweat and Darkness, and in Peril of perishing, they drudge in the Mines: Yet, with all this Industry, they earn nothing, nothing for themselves: All their Earnings, all the Profit and Advantages, appertain not to them, but solely to the good Father, their spiritual Sovereign, who rewards them to the full with what costs him nothing; Blessings, and Masses, and distant Prospects. Their Grain and Manufactures are all carried into his Warehouses, their Cattle and Fowls into his Yards, their Gold and Silver into his Treasury: They dare not wear a Rag of their own spinning, nor taste a Grain of their own sowing, nor a Bit of Meat of their own feeding, nor touch the Metal of their own producing; nor so much as an Egg from the Hens they rear: They themselves are fed and subsisted, from Day to Day, by a limited Allowance, furnished them by the Appointment, and at the Mercy, of their great Lord, a small Priest.

“Yet, under all these Discouragements (which are none to them, who seem to have sacrificed their Feeling, as well as their Reason, to the Sorcery of Superstition) they are diligent and laborious to the last Degree, and vie with one another for the high Price and Distinction bestowed by the Father upon such as excel most in their Work and Industry, even the bewitching Honour of kissing his Sleeve. The second Commandment in their Table of Duties is, To fear the Jesuit, and obey him; as the two next are much akin to it, and of the like Tendency, even, To study Humility, and to contemn all worldly Goods. The Precept, of fearing God, seems to be prefixed for Form, and in Policy only, since it is impossible there should be any Knowlege of God where the Exercise of Reason is not known, nor permitted; nor can God be said to be regarded by those who use the Images of God like Beasts.

“All these Stores and Warehouses, so much Grain, so many Manufactures, so much Gold and Silver, so many Commodities, from so fine, so large, and so plentiful a Country, abounding in Mines, in Rivers, and Meadows full of Horses and Sheep and Black Cattle, of Timber and Fruit-Trees, of Flax and Indigo, Hemp and Cotton, Sugar, Drugs, and Medicinal Herbs, must enable these good Fathers, who have renounced all Wealth, and the World itself, to carry on an infinite and most lucrative Trade, in which, though they have vowed Poverty, they are extremely active, and consequently must make that Jesuitical Government a most powerful one. It hath Advantages which no other Government ever had; an absolute Independency upon its People, or their Purses; the whole Wealth of the Country in its present Rossession; the People absolutely submissive, and resigned to its good Pleasure, and all its Calls; no Factions; not a Malecontent; an Army of Sixty thousand Men, all tame and tractable, devoted to blind Obedience, commanded in Chief by a Jesuit, and obstinately averse to be commanded by any other General; a vast Revenue of many Millions; no Trouble in Taxing, no Time lost in collecting Taxes.

“Such a Government, whilst it proceeds upon the same Principles, is unchangeable. No wonder these Jesuits are extremely jealous and tender, not only in keeping the poor Indians Slaves to Ignorance and Bigotry, in order to keep them Slaves to themselves; but in concealing so much Empire and Wealth from all the World, especially from Spain, from whence they were sent, at the Expence of that Crown, to convert the Indians, and make them Subjects to the Spanish Monarchy. The good Fathers are so far from meaning any such Thing, that they not only carefully avoid teaching them the Spanish Tongue, but press it upon them as a Point of Conscience, not to converse with the Spaniards. It any Spaniard happens to come amongst them (a Thing which the Jesuits are so far from encouraging, that they care not to see it) he is indeed civilly used, but carefully confined within the Walls of their holy Citadel, the Presbytery; or if, by earnest Intreaty, he obtain Leave to walk through the Town, he is closely guarded by the Jesuit at his Side, and sees not an Indian in the Streets; for the Indians are ordered to shut themselves up, and fasten their Doors, upon any such Occasion.

“Besides, these vigilant Fathers keep Five or Six thousand Men, employed in several Detachments (Apostolic Troops!) to watch and scour the Frontiers, in order to cut off all Intercourse with the neighbouring Countries, not yet subjected to the good Fathers. Towards one of their Frontiers particularly, left the rich Mines in it might invite a Settlement from abroad, they have destroyed all the Horses, in order to discourage any such Settlement. For these self-denying Friars, who are sworn to Poverty, have an ardent Zeal to secure all these wealthy Mines to themselves for Religious Uses.

“These poor, rich, humble, sovereign Missionaries, as they are Masters of such immense Wealth, all consecrated to their own Use, that is, to the Use of Religion, make a proper Display of it. The Churches are spacious, magnificent in their Structure, and set off with all Pomp and Decorations, grand Porticoes and Colormades, rich Altars, adorned with Bas Reliefs, Pictures in Frames of massy Gold, and Saints of solid Silver, the Foot and Sides covered with Cloth of Gold, and the Pedestals with Plates of Gold; the Tabernacle made of Gold; the Pyx or Box for the Sacrament, of Gold, set round with Emeralds and other Jewels; the Vessels and Candlesticks made of Gold; the Whole, when illuminated, making a Shew almost beyond Belief. A proper Bait for the Eyes of deluded Indians, who, by such fine Sights, and the pious Mountebankry attending them, are retained in due Awe and Wonder!

“The princely Person of the poor Jesuit is suitably lodged in a spacious Palace, containing grand Apartments, furnished with many Pictures and Images, with proper Lodgings for his Train of Officers and Domestics; the Quadrangles and Gardens all in Proportion; the whole Court making a Square of some Miles. Observe, That all the many opulent Warehouses belonging to the holy disinterested Man are contained in it.

“Such is the Situation, such the State and inimitable Authority, of every Jesuit in Paraguay. There are but Forty odd of these Monks in all that great Tract of Country, and in it they have above a Million of Souls, not only to obey them, but to worship them; nor do these, their sightless and abject Slaves, know any other God: For where the true God is ever so little known no Man will worship Friars, who always paint him as like themselves, as they themselves are, in reality, unlike him.”