Danger in the Dark - ZseZse

122 DANGER IN THE DARK
and abetting the despotic aims of an intriguing hierarchy."
"That now is the unkindest cut of all; come
Squire, I 'Ib. persuaded you do not mean as much as
you say."
" But little patience have I, Mr. Twist, with a man
who professes to be a Protestant, and at the same time
honors, befriends, and seeks to uphold and extend the
influence of the order of J esuits-a class of papists,
who are the minions of the Pope and the most servile
wretches on the face of the globe I"
"Strong language, Squire-but pray tell me what
harm there is in Jesuitism, since you seem so heartily
to detest that particular order of Catholics."
" Jesuitism is the adversary of thought, of reason,
of the affections-the adversary of all that's noble and
praiseworthy in man! Moral sterility, literary and
social decrepitude attend it in every land; it contests
the independence of the human mind, and seeks to
fetter the immortal faculties of the soul: full of
treachery and deceit, it moves slily and stealthily
through the earth, gaining in the darkness what it
loses in the light. Jesuitism is also a machine of
war-it must always have an enemy to combat-without
which, its prodigious combinations would be useless,
In this country it has Protestantism for an
opponent; the latter, though not weak, wants the
vigilance and activity of the former, hence, my serious
apprehension. Unwaveringly attached to the past,
Jesuitism is opposed to progress, alike in science,