and Mother Church, and at
the same time showy Latinists, furnished with a cyclopaedia of current
knowledge, glib at speechifying, ingenious in the construction of an
epigram or compliment? If some of the more sensible sort grumbled that
Jesuit learning was shallow, and Jesuit morality of base alloy, the
reply, like that of an Italian draper selling palpable shoddy for
broadcloth, came easily and cynically to the surface: _Imita bene_! The
stuff is a good match enough! What more do you want? To produce
plausible imitations, to save appearances, to amuse the mind with
tricks, was the last resort of Catholicism in its warfare against
rationalism. And such is the banality of human nature as a whole, that
the Jesuits, those monopolists of Brummagem manufactures, achieved
eminent success. Their hideous churches, daubed with plaster painted to
resemble costly marbles, encrusted with stucco polished to deceive the
eye, loaded with gewgaws and tinsel and superfluous ornament and
frescoes, turning flat surfaces into cupolas and arcades, passed for
masterpieces of architectonic beauty. The conceits of their pulpit
oratory, its artificial cadences and flowery verbiage, its theatrical
appeals to gross sensations, wrought miracles and converted thousands.
Their sickly Ciceronian style, their sentimental books of piety, 'the
worse for being warm,' the execrable taste of their poetry, their flimsy
philosophy and disingenuous history, infected the taste of Catholic
Europe like a slow seductive poison, flattering and accelerating the
diseases of mental decadence. Sound learning died down beneath the
tyranny of the Inquisition, the Index, the Council of Trent, Spain and
the Papacy. A rank growth of unwholesome culture arose and flourished on
its tomb under the forcing-frames of Jesuitry. But if we peruse the
records of literature and science during the last three centuries, few
indeed are the eminences even of a second order which can be claimed by
the Company of Jesus.

The same critique applies to Jesuit morality. It was the Company's aim
to control the conscience by direction and confession, and especially
the conscience of princes, women, youths in high position. To do so by
plain speaking and honest dealing was clearly dangerous. The world had
had enough of Dominican austerity and dogmatism. To do so by open
toleration and avowed cynicism did not suit the temper of the time. A
reform of the monastic orders and the regular clergy had