Society of Jesus assured them that they might with a safe
conscience do.

So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of
these celebrated brethren; and the intermixture was the secret of
their gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to
mere hypocrites. It could never have belonged to rigid moralists.
It was to be attained only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the
pursuit of a great end, and at the same time unscrupulous as to
the choice of means.

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar
allegiance to the Pope. Their mission had been not less to quell
all mutiny within the Church than to repel the hostility of her
avowed enemies. Their doctrine was in the highest degree what has
been called on our side of the Alps Ultramontane, and differed
almost as much from the doctrine of Bossuet as from that of
Luther. They condemned the Gallican liberties, the claim of
oecumenical councils to control the Holy See, and the claim of
Bishops to an independent commission from heaven. 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