Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/730

 624 Outlines of European History Their mis- sions and explorations Their fight against the Protestants Accusations brought against the Jesuits one of Loyola's original little band, went to Hindustan, the Moluccas, and Japan. Brazil, Florida, Mexico, and Peru were soon fields of active missionary work at a time when Protestants as yet scarcely dreamed of carrdng Christianity to the heathen. We owe to the Jesuits' reports much of our knowledge of the con- dition of America when white men first began to explore Canada and the Mississippi valley, for the followers of Loyola boldly pene- trated into regions unknown to Europeans, and settled among the natives with the purpose of bringing the Gospel to them. Dedicated as they were to the service of the Pope, the Jesuits early directed their energies against Protestantism. They sent their members into Germany and the Netherlands, and even made strenuous efforts to reclaim England. Their success was most apparent in southern Germany and Austria, where they became the confessors and confidential advisers of the rulers. They not only succeeded in checking the progress of Protestant- ism, but were able to reconquer for the Catholic Church some districts in which the old faith had been abandoned. Protestants soon realized that the new order was their most powerful and dangerous enemy. Their apprehensions produced a bitter hatred which blinded them to the high purposes of the founders of the order and led them to attribute an evil purpose to every act of the Jesuits. The Jesuits' air of humility the Protestants declared to be mere hypocrisy under which they carried on their intrigues. They were popularly supposed to justify the most deceitful and immoral measures on the ground that the result would be " for the greater glory of God." The very obedience on which the Jesuits laid such stress was viewed by the hostile Protestant as one of their worst offenses, for he believed that the members of the order were the blind tools of their superiors and that they would not- hesitate even to commit a crime if so ordered.^ 1 As time went on the Jesuit order degenerated just as the earlier ones had dpne. In the eighteenth century it undertook great commercial enterprises, and for this and other reasons lost the confidence and respect of even the