c. [55] On the other side was a body
of which the weight balanced even the weight of the Papacy, the mighty
Order of Jesus.

That at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once, as it
seemed, inseparably allied, should have been opposed to each other, is
a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little
less than a thousand years the regular clergy had been the chief support
of the Holy See. By that See they had been protected from episcopal
interference; and the protection which they had received had been amply
repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that the Bishop of Rome
would have been merely the honorary president of a vast aristocracy of
prelates. It was by the aid of the Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh
was enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars and
against the secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans and
Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the Albigensian sectaries.
In the sixteenth century the Pontificate exposed to new dangers more
formidable than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new
religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized
with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the Papacy,
they found it in extreme peril: but from that moment the tide of battle
turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all
before it, was stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from
the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the Order had
existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials
of great things done and suffered for the faith. No religious community
could produce a list of men so variously distinguished:--none had
extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever
been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of
the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits
were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered
Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites.
They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history,
treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals,
catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost
entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous
ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which
intellectual c