Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/48

 outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War—under two general statements:

I. The rise and development of a new power in the Catholic Church, and

II. ''The defectiveness of the peace provisions in connection with the divisions of the Protestant powers. ''

I. The Society of Jesus, so-called, has, beyond all doubt, wielded, by the mere force of a perfect organization and discipline, and from the peculiar state of Christendom at the epoch of its rise, a greater power than has ever been wielded by any similar force. The Reformation had about twenty years the start of them, and was fast winning the upper hand in Europe, when seven men obtained the Papal recognition and sanction for a work not yet determined, but which came to be nothing less than to restore to the Papal See what it had lost by the Reformation and convert the rest of the world. Its vows were poverty, chastity, and obedience, with a fourth, added later, to obey without a moment’s questioning the call of the Chief Pontiff for whatever service he should require. Their field was literally the world, for in the lifetime of the original members the wilds of America and the crowded populations of Asia were penetrated by them. Their influence was to be exerted through preaching, teaching, and the confessional. Such was their discipline, monastic and scholastic, that they had really no peers, at least in the Catholic Church, and though the other orders of the Church opposed, and the Sovereign Pontiff often hesitated in approving them, they became the inspiration of the whole body and a necessity to it.

There was romance in the institution. Young men of talents and enterprise entered it. Nobles and even princes