that deplorable intellectual and moral
slavery of the pre-Reformation days is so intense, that a calm,
dispassionate consideration of Jesuit history is almost impossible. But
after all just concessions have been made, two indisputable facts
confront the student: first, the universal antagonism to the order, of
the church that gave birth to it, as well as of the states that have
suffered from its meddling in political affairs; and second, the
complete failure of the order's most cherished schemes. France, Germany,
Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain and other nations, have been compelled
in sheer self-defence to expel it from their territories. Such a
significant fact needs some other explanation than that the Jesuit has
incurred the enmity of the world merely for preaching the love of God.

Clement XIV., when solemnly pronouncing the dissolution of the order, at
the time his celebrated bull, entitled "_Dominus ac Redemptor Noster_"
which was signed July 21, 1773, was made public, justified his action in
the following terms: "Recognizing that the members of this society have
not a little troubled the Christian commonwealth, and that for the
welfare of Christendom it were better that the order should disappear,"
etc. When Rome thus delivers her _ex cathedra_ opinion concerning her
own order, an institution which she knows better than any one else, one
cannot fairly be charged with prejudice and sectarianism in speaking
evil of it.

But while there is much to be detested in the methods of the order,
history does not furnish another example of such self-abnegation and
intense zeal as the Jesuits have shown in the prosecution of their aims.
They planted missions in Japan, China, Africa, Ceylon, Madagascar, North
and South America.

In Europe the Mendicant friars by their coarseness had disgusted the
upper classes; the affable and cultured Jesuit won their hearts. The
Jesuits became chaplains in noble families, learned the secrets of every
government in Europe, and became the best schoolmasters in the age. They
were to be found in various disguises in every castle of note and in
every palace. "There was no region of the globe," says Macaulay, "no
walk of speculative or active life in which Jesuits were not to be
found." That they were devoted to their cause no one can deny. They were
careless of life and, as one facetiously adds, of truth also. They
educated, heard confessions, plotted crimes and revolutions, and
published