in 1751; the good Bishop Wilson died in his ninety-third year, in 1755."[1]
While thus in Germany and England the doctrines of the Protestant Church were engaged in a death struggle with its own offspring, Deism, in France Jesuitism, in behalf of Papal supremacy, was engaged in a similar struggle with Jansenism, a new Calvinistic offshoot still clinging to the mother Church. The immediate bone of contention was the Bull Unigenitus, which was specially aimed at the Jansenist Testament of Father Quesnel. For forty years the contention had gone on. It was perceived by both sides to involve the question of existence. From 1753 to 1755, Parliament espoused the cause of the Jansenists, running the risk of excommunication. In 1756 Louis XV. interposed to save the Jesuits, and by an act of supreme sovereignty compelled Parliament to register an edict in favor of the Bull. Great excitement ensued, and a severe conflict for three years longer, when of a sudden the Jesuits found their power with the King mysteriously gone. The same year, 1759, they were expelled from Portugal, in 1764 from France, and in 1773 the order was abolished by Papal decree. Not less plainly than of Protestant dogma and Protestant Deism, is the breaking point of Romish domination seen to have been in the seventh hour of yester-century.
The fever had left the man as dead. There was now no longer any Church power existing. Romanism had failed. Lutheranism and Calvinism had failed. Deism, or scientific religion, had failed. Hume had proved with incontestable logic that natural reason was powerless to substantiate a religion. The fountain of living waters was forsaken; cisterns were hewn out, broken cisterns; they could hold no water.[2] The desolation was complete.[3] And yet in honest hearts there remained good soil in which the seed of the Gospel was even then springing up to bear fruit a hundredfold. Had not their Lord said of John, the apostle of love
- ↑ Op. cit. i. 381, 388.
- ↑ Jeremiah, ii. 13.
- ↑ Appendix V.
