eir ranks.'[171]
Probably the mistake which Sarpi and the world made, was in supposing
that the Jesuits needed a written code for their most vital action.
Being a potent and life-penetrated organism, the secret of their policy
was not such as could be reduced to rule. It was not such as, if reduced
to rule, could have been plastic in the affairs of public importance
which the Company sought to control. Better than rule or statute, it was
biological function. The supreme deliberative bodies of the order
created, transmitted, and continuously modified its tradition of policy.
This tradition some member, partially initiated into their counsels, may
have reduced to precepts in the published _Monita Secreta_ of 1612. But
the quintessential flame which breathed a breath of life into the fabric
of the Jesuits through two centuries of organic activity, was far too
vivid and too spiritual to be condensed in any charter. A friar and a
jurist, like Sarpi, expected to discover some controlling code. The
public, grossly ignorant of evolutionary laws in the formation of social
organisms, could not comprehend the non-existence of this code.
Adventurers supplied the demand from their knowledge of the ruling
policy. But like the _Liber Trium Impostorum_ we may regard the _Monita
Secreta_ of the Jesuits as an _ex post facto_ fabrication.

[Footnote 171: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 174.]

There is no need to trace the further history of the Jesuits. Their part
in the Counter-Reformation has rather been exaggerated than
insufficiently recognized. Though it was incontestably considerable, we
cannot now concede, as Macaulay in his random way conceded to this
Company, the _spolia opima_ of down-beaten Protestantism. Without the
ecclesiastical reform which originated in the Tridentine Council;
without the gold and sword of Spain; without the stakes and prisons of
the Inquisition; without the warfare against thought conducted by the
Congregation of the Index; the Jesuits alone could not have masterfully
governed the Catholic revival. That revival was a movement of
world-historical importance, in which they participated. It was their
fortune to find forces in the world which they partially understood; it
was their merit to know how to manipulate those forces; it was their
misfortune and their demerit that they proved themselves incapable of
diverting those forces to any wholesome end. In Italy a succession of
worldly Popes, Paul III., Julius III., P