and intention
of Ignatius. It is affirmed that Lainez and Salmeron, rather than
Loyola, gave that complexion to the Order which has rendered it a mark
for the hatred and disgust of Europe. Aquaviva, the fifth General, has
been credited with its policy of interference in affairs of states and
nations. Yet I think it can be shown that the Society, as it appeared in
the seventeenth century, was a logical and necessary development of the
Society as Ignatius framed it in the sixteenth.[160]

[Footnote 160: Sarpi, though he expressed an opinion that the Jesuits of
his day had departed from the spirit of their founders, spoke thus of
Loyola's worldly aims (_Lettere_, vol. i. p 224): 'Even Father Ignatius,
Founder of the Company, as his biography attests, based himself in such
wise upon human interest as though there were none divine to think
about.']

Lainez, who succeeded the founder as General, digested the constitutions
and supplied them with a commentary or Directorium. He defined,
formulated, and stereotyped the system; but the essential qualities of
Jesuitry, its concentration upon political objects, its unscrupulousness
in choice of means to ends, the worldliness which lurked beneath the
famous motto _Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam_, were implicit in Loyola's express
words, and in his actual administration. The framework of the Order, as
he fixed it, was so firmly traced, and so cunningly devised for
practical efficiency, that it admitted of no alteration except in the
direction of more rigid definition. Lainez may, indeed, have emphasized
its tendency to become a political machine, and may have weakened its
religious tone, by his rules for the interpretation of the
constitutions; but we have seen that the development of Loyola's own
ideas ran in this direction. The real strength, as well as the worst
vices of Jesuitry, were inherent in the system from the first; and in it
we have perhaps the most remarkable instance on record, of the evolution
of a cosmopolitan and world-important organism from the embryo of one
man's conception.

The Bull _Regimini militantis Ecclesiae_ restricted the number of the
Jesuits to sixty. If Ignatius did not himself propose this limit, the
restriction may perhaps have suggested his policy of reserving the full
privileges of the Society for a small band of selected members--the very
essence of the body, extracted by processes which will be afterwards
described. Anyhow, it is certain that though t