, the teaching naturally followed, that the
opinion of "a grave doctor" may be looked upon "as possessing a fair
amount of probability, and may, therefore, be safely followed, even
though one's conscience insist upon the opposite course." It is easy to
see that this opens a convenient door to those who are seeking
justification for conduct which their consciences condemn. No doubt one
can find plausible excuses for the basest crimes, if he stills the voice
of conscience and trusts himself to confusing sophistry. The glory of
God, the gravity of circumstances, necessity, the good of the church or
of the order, and numerous other practical reasons can be urged to
remove scruples and make a bad act seem to be a good one. But crime,
even "for the glory of God," is crime still.

This disagreeable subject will not be pursued further. To say less than
has been said would be to ignore one of the most prominent causes of the
Jesuits' ruin. To say more than this, even though the facts might
warrant it, would incur the liability of being classed among those
malicious fomentors of religious strife, for whom the writer has mingled
feelings of pity and contempt. The Society of Jesus is not the Roman
Catholic Church, which has suffered much from the burden of
Jesuitism--wounds that are scarcely atoned for by the meritorious and
self-sacrificing services on her behalf in other directions. The
Protestant foes have never equaled the Catholic opponents of Jesuitism,
either in their fierce hatred of the system or in their ability to
expose its essential weakness. A writer in the "Quarterly Review,"
September, 1848, says: "Admiration and detestation of the Jesuits
divide, as far as feeling is concerned, the Roman Catholic world, with a
schism deeper and more implacable than any which arrays Protestant
against Protestant."

_The Mission of the Jesuits_

The Society of Jesus has been described as "a naked sword, whose hilt is
at Rome, and whose point is everywhere." It is an undisputed historical
fact that Loyola's consuming passion was to accomplish the ruin of
Protestantism, which had twenty years the start of him and was
threatening the very existence of the Roman hierarchy. It has already
been shown that the destruction of heresy was the chief aim of the
Dominicans. What the friars failed to attain, Loyola attempted. The
principal object of the Jesuits was the maintenance of papal authority.
Even to-day the Jesuit does not hesitate