His tenderest mercies

Charles Plowden, SJ

Ages succeed ages; empires subvert empires. But the empire of Jesus Christ perseveres ever one and the same, ever persecuted and ever conquering. Because all human revolutions are entirely subservient to it, and the formation of the kingdom of Christ is the ultimate object of the whole dispensation of providence in the government of the world. Never, perhaps, was this truth more sensibly evinced than in the late violent convulsions, by which the hand of the Almighty has dismembered the great British empire and has called forth into existence a new empire in the Western world, the destinies of which, we trust, are founded in his tenderest mercies.

– from “Sermon at the Consecration of John Carroll of Baltimore, America’s First Catholic Bishop” by Charles Plowden, SJ.

Charles Plowden, SJ, was an English Jesuit priest, teacher and writer. He was a descendant of Edmund Plowden, a jurist and loyal Catholic during the Protestant Revolt. Following his ancestor’s lead, Charles Plowden was known for his polemical works against the anti-Catholic laws proposed by the English Protestants of his own day. After the suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773, Father Plowden served as a tutor and chaplain at Lulworth Castle, where he delivered his sermon on the consecration of Bishop John Carroll in 1790.