eaven. Lainez, in the name
of the whole fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of
the creatures of Pius the Fourth, and the murmurs of French and Spanish
prelates, that the government of the faithful had been committed
by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope alone all sacerdotal
authority was concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and
bishops derived whatever divine authority they possessed. [56] During
many years the union between the Supreme Pontiffs and the Order had
continued unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken when James the
Second ascended the English throne, had the influence of the Jesuits as
well as the influence of the Pope been exerted in favour of a moderate
and constitutional policy, it is probable that the great revolution
which in a short time changed the whole state of European affairs would
never have taken place. But, even before the middle of the seventeenth
century, the Society, proud of its services and confident in its
strength, had become impatient of the yoke. A generation of Jesuits
sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of
France than to the court of Rome; and this disposition was not a little
strengthened when Innocent the Eleventh was raised to the papal throne.

The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an
enemy whom they had at first disdained, but whom they had at length been
forced to regard with respect and fear. Just when their prosperity
was at the height, they were braved by a handful of opponents, who had
indeed no influence with the rulers of this world, but who were strong
in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed a long, a
strange, a glorious conflict of genius against power. The Jesuit called
cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid; and they responded to
the call. Port Royal appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to
the understandings of millions. The dictators of Christendom found
themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were
arraigned on the charge of having systematically debased the standard of
evangelical morality, for the purpose of increasing their own influence;
and the charge was enforced in a manner which at once arrested the
attention of the whole world: for the chief accuser was Blaise Pascal.
His intellectual powers were such as have rarely been bestowed on any
of the children of men; and the vehemence of the zeal which animat