The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

his cities; but his skill and power survive the shock,
and when the destroyer has passed, the architect
sets up again the fallen palace, and rebuilds the
ruined city, and the catastrophe is effaced and
forgotten in the greater splendor and the more solid
strength of the restored structures. Revolution may
overturn thrones, abolish laws, and break in pieces
the framework of society; but when the fury of
faction has spent its rage, order emerges from the
chaos, law resumes its supremacy, and the
institutions which had been destroyed in the hour
of madness, are restored in the hour of calm
wisdom that succeeds. But the havoc the Jesuit
inflicts is irremediable. It has nothing in it
counteractive or restorative; it is only evil. It is not
upon the works of man or the institutions of man
merely that, it puts forth its fearfully destructive
power; it is upon man himself. It is not the body of
man that it strikes, like the pestilence; it is the soul.
It is not a part, but the whole of man that it
consigns to corruption and ruin. Conscience it
destroys, knowledge it extinguishes, the very
power of discerning between right and wrong it
takes away, and shuts up the man in a prison
94