to declare that his mission is
to overthrow Protestantism. The Reformation was inspired by a new
conception of individual freedom. The authority of tradition and of the
church was set at naught. Loyola planted his system upon the doctrine of
absolute submission to authority. The partial success of the Jesuits,
for they did beat back the Reformation, is no doubt attributable to
their fidelity, virtue and learning. Their devotion to the cause they
loved, their willingness to sacrifice life itself, their marvelous and
instantaneous obedience to the slightest command of their leaders, made
them a compact and powerful papal army. Their methods, in many
particulars, were not beyond question, and, whatever their character,
the order certainly incurred the fiercest hostility of every nation in
Europe, and even of the church itself.

Professor Anton Gindely, in his "History of the Thirty Years' War,"
shows that Maximilian, of Bavaria, and Ferdinand, of Austria, the
leaders on the Catholic side, were educated by Jesuits. He also fixes
the responsibility for that war partly upon them in the plainest terms:
"In a word, they had the consciences of Roman Catholic sovereigns and
their ministers in their hands as educators, and in their keeping as
confessors. They led them in the direction of war, so that it was at the
time, and has since been called the Jesuits' War."

The strictures of Carlyle, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Lytton have been
repeatedly denounced by the Jesuits, but even their shrewd, sophistical
defences of their order afford ample justification for the attitude of
their foes. For example, in a masterful oration, previously quoted from,
in which the virtues of the Jesuits are extolled and defended, Father
Sherman says: "We are expelled and driven from pillar to post because we
teach men to love God." He describes Loyola as "the knightly, the loyal,
the true, the father of heroes, and the maker of saints, the lover of
the all-good and the all-beautiful, crowned with the honor of sainthood,
the best-loved and the best-hated man in all the world, save only his
Master and ours." "'Twas he that conceived the daring plan of forging
the weapon to beat back the Reformation." No one but a Jesuit could
reconcile the aim of "preaching the love of God" with "beating back the
Reformation," especially in view of the methods employed.

Numerous gross calumnies have been circulated against the Society of
Jesus. The dread of a return to