ther and mother,
had deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of
confession, and holding up to the last, before the expiring penitent,
the image of the expiring Redeemer.

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion
which were characteristic of the Society, great vices were mingled. It
was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit
which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of
his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means
which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful,
and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest
of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots
recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that,
constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he
was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others
the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted
that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of
many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He
had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world
under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the
temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the
noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered
the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He
gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote
regions of the East: but it was reported that from some of those
converts the facts on which the whole theology of the Gospel depends
had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid
persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while
internally repeating Paters and Ayes. Nor was it only in heathen
countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange
that people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded
to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those confessionals
none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men.
He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his
spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had
to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the
primitive fathers, bu