experience, it now quietly pursues a policy deep,
powerful, and difficult to be met on account of its mysticism. After
Loyola's death the society was farther developed by Lainez, {94} and after
him, by Aquaviva, men of deep knowledge of mankind, and steadfast purpose,
who became the real authors of the present society. The seat of the society
was, in so far, in Rome, as the general of the order resided there, with
the committee of the society, and the monitor, who, totally independent of
him, controlled the general as if he were his conscience. The order was
divided into provinces, each of which was superintended by a provincial.
Under the care of these officers were the professed-houses, with each a
praepositus at its head, and the colleges, with each a rector. In the latter
there were also novices. The mutual dependence of all parts of the system
resemble the structure of a well-built fabric. The relations of
subordination are so well ordered that the society is _simplex duntaxat
unum_, without interrupting the free will of the individual, as is said,
who only had to obey in permitted things.

The popes Paul III. and Julius III., seeing what a support they would have
in the Jesuits against what is usually called "the Reformation," which was
rapidly gaining ground, granted to them privileges such as no body of men,
in church, or state, had ever before obtained. They were permitted not only
to enjoy all the rights of the mendicant and secular orders, and to be
_exempt from all episcopal and civil jurisdiction_ and taxes, so that they
acknowledged no authority but that of the pope and the superiors of their
order, and were permitted to exercise every {95} priestly function,
parochial rights notwithstanding, among all classes of men, even during an
interdict; but, also (what is not even permitted to archbishops
unconditionally), they could absolve from all sins and ecclesiastical
penalties, change the objects of the vows of the laity, acquire churches
and estates without further papal sanction, erect houses for the order, and
might, according to circumstances, dispense themselves from the canonical
observance of hours of fasts and prohibition of meats, and even from the
use of the breviary. Besides this, their general was invested with
unlimited power over the members; could send them on missions of every
kind, even among excommunicated heretics; could appoint them professors of
theology at his discretion, wherever he chose