Protestant Jesuitism

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Does anybody have a copy of Protestant Jesuitism (1836) by Calvin Colton? It's on my wish list but it's expensive and I would be glad for feedback.

 

[Puritan Sailor]

I graduated from a Jesuit college. Does that make me a Protestant Jesuit?

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Graduated or escaped?

 

[Puritan Sailor]

Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot
Graduated or escaped?

Perhaps a little of both

 

[PuritanCovenanter]

What is this you are talking about? Protestant Jesuitism!? Are they RC or some sect of Calvinistic RCs? Are they Predestined to work for their justification? Tell me. Please! I have to know.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

The book was written by a Presbyterian-turned-Episcopalian who nevertheless objected to a spirit which pervaded the American Protestant church in general in his day (1836) that he identified as Jesuitical this way:

`Wherever the priesthood of any religion, Christian or pagan, have taken advantage of their spiritual influence to serve themselves instead of the public--to gratify ambition, and to obtain power for unworthy ends--there has been developed the proper spirit of Jesuitism. It is not a spirit peculiar to those men who have use the priesthood of Christianity for bad ends. It has prevailed more, committed more shocking enormities, and on a scale infinitely more vast, under the forms of pagan religions than of Christianity.' (p. 24) -- `Hence, too, we see, that the Jesuitism of the Romish Church is only an accidental form, in which this spirit or genius has been developed. It was a refinement--the highest consummation of the system. There is no evidence that such results ever entered the mind of Ignatius Loyola. On the contrary, there appears to have been a sincerity, not to say uncorruptness, in his purposes, so far as such a character can belong to fanaticism.' (p. 25) -- Much of the book reacts to the 9th annual meeting of the American Temperance Society at Saratoga in 1836, on alcohol as a poison. `That a quart of gin, taken at a draught, should show itself in the secretions and circulating fluids, and be injurious, is surely no more to be disputed, that that a man--who ate the supper of four others, and a nine pound ham at the end of it; or another, who disposed of eight rabbits at a dinner; or the one who devoured a whole sheep at a meal; or the fourth, who is said to have eaten a hog at one sitting, as narrated by Dr. Mussey in his popular lectures--should be the worse for it.' (p. 253f.).

So the book covers several issues, one of which is the growing 19th century temperance movement - which paved the way for Dr. Welch to substitute grape juice for wine in the Lord's Supper.

More on the author here.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

It's available online here.