t; established and promoted the
catechetical instruction of youth; and, in a word, restored to Romanism
much of its vitality.

The author and mover of so much healthful change did not escape the
persecutions that are the lot of reformers. Such trials Loyola
encountered, and passed through triumphantly--so we are assured; but in
listening to the Jesuit writers, when telling their own story, where the
credit of the order and the reputation of its founder are deeply
implicated, it is with reservation that we follow them.

So fearful a storm--yet a storm long before descried, it is said, by
Loyola--fell suddenly upon him and his colleagues that it seemed as if
the infant society could by no means resist the impetuous torrent that
assailed it. The populace, as well as persons in authority, suddenly
gave heed to rumors most startling which came in at once from Spain,
from France, and from the North of Italy, and the purport of which was
to throw upon the fathers the most grievous imputations affecting their
personal character as well as their doctrine. These men were reported to
be heretics, Lutherans in disguise, seducers of youth, and men of
flagitious life.

The author or secret mover of this assault is said to have been a
Piedmontese monk of the Augustinian order, himself a secret favorer of
the Lutheran heresy and "a tool of Satan," and who at last, throwing off
the mask, avowed himself a Lutheran. This man, for the purpose of
diverting from himself the suspicions of which his mode of preaching had
made him the object at Rome, raised this outcry against Loyola and his
companions, affirming of them slanderously and falsely what was quite
true as to himself.

The Pope and the court having been absent for some time from Rome, this
disguised heresiarch had seized the opportunity for gaining the ear of
the populace by inveighing against the vices of ecclesiastics, and
insinuating opinions to which he gave a color of truth by citations from
Scripture and the early fathers. Two of Loyola's colleagues, Salmeron
and Lainez, who in their passage through Germany had become skilled in
detecting Lutheran pravity, were deputed to listen to this noisy
preacher; they did so, and reported that the audacious man was, under
some disguise of terms, broaching rank Lutheranism in the very heart of
Rome. Loyola, however, determined to treat the heresiarch courteously,
and therefore sent him privately an admonition to abstain from a course