d.
He learned by rote a few sentences, generally the creed and some phrases
on the horrors of hell, and repeated them to the crowds attracted to him
by the sound of a bell. He addressed himself to masses rather than to
individuals and he regarded the culmination of his work as being merely
the administration of baptism and not the conversion of heart or
understanding. Thus, he spent hours in baptizing, with all possible
speed, sick and dying children, believing that he was thus rescuing their
souls from limbo. Probably many of his adult converts never understood
the meaning of the application of water and oil, salt and spittle, that
make up the ritual of Catholic baptism.

[Sidenote: Use of force]

In the second place, what permanent success he achieved was due largely
to the invocation of the aid of the civil power. One of the most
illuminating of Xavier's letters is that written to King John of Portugal
on January 20, 1548, in which he not only makes the reasonable request
that native Christians be protected from persecution by their countrymen,
but adds that every governor should take such measures to convert them as
would insure success to his preaching, for without such support, he says,
the cause of the gospel in the Indies would be desperate, few would come
to baptism and those who did come would not profit much in religion.
Therefore he urges that every governor, under whose rule many natives
were not converted, should be mulcted of all his goods and imprisoned on
his return to Portugal. What the measures applied by the Portugese
officers must have been, under such pressure, can easily be inferred from
a slight knowledge of their savage rule.

It has been said that every organism carries in {410} itself the seeds of
its own decay. The premature corruption [Sidenote: Decay of Jesuits] of
the order was noticed by its more earnest members quite early in its
career. The future general Francis Borgia wrote: [Sidenote: 1560] "The
time will come when the Company will be completely absorbed in human
sciences without any application to virtue; ambition, pride and arrogance
will rule." The General Aquaviva said explicitly, [Sidenote: 1587] "Love
of the things of this world and the spirit of the courtier are dangerous
diseases in our Company. Almost in spite of us the evil creeps in little
by little under the fair pretext of gaining princes, prelates, and the
great ones of the world."

A principal cause of the