11.03.2019 Views

The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

  • No tags were found...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

arrier, and commit the most horrible crimes, on<br />

the mightiest possible scale, and neither feel<br />

remorse of conscience nor fear of punishment? But<br />

this unbounded liberty of wickedness did not<br />

content the sons of Loyola. <strong>The</strong>y panted for a<br />

liberty, if possible, yet more boundless; they<br />

wished to be released from the easy condition of<br />

imagining some good end for the wickedness they<br />

wished to perpetrate, and to be free to sin without<br />

the trouble of assigning even to themselves any end<br />

at all. This they have accomplished by the method<br />

of directing the intention.<br />

This is a new ethical science, unknown to those<br />

ages which were not privileged to bask in the<br />

illuminating rays of the Society of Jesus, and it is<br />

as simple as convenient. It is the soul, they argue,<br />

that does the act, so far as it is moral or immoral.<br />

As regards the body's share in it, neither virtue nor<br />

vice can be predicated of it. If, therefore, while the<br />

hand is shedding blood, or the tongue is<br />

calumniating character, or uttering a falsehood, the<br />

soul can so abstract itself from what the body is<br />

doing as to occupy itself the while with some holy<br />

71

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!