But while the Word of God was thus rescuing such multitudes from idolatry, the Spirit of Evil, furious at the escape of so many victims whom he had already counted his own, made a desperate effort to retrieve his past, and prevent future losses. He saw, with dismay, Divine truth, like a vast and ever-extending inundation, rapidly undermining and throwing down, one by one, his many strongholds of superstition and ignorance; and, with the despairing energy of baffled malignity, he set about rearing up a bulwark which should check the tide ere its work of destruction was completed. For this bulwark he devised the since famous order of the Jesuits, which arose almost simultaneously with the establishment of the Reformation. So _we_ may say. The Roman Catholic writers, however, ascribe the origin of the Jesuits to a far different influence. _They_ declare, “that, as from time to time new heresies have afflicted the Church of God, so He has raised up holy men to combat them; and as He had raised up St Dominic against the Albigenses and Vaudois, so _He_ sent Loyola and his disciples against the Lutherans and Calvinists.”[2]
It is of this renowned and dreaded Society that I purpose to write the history. As a matter of course, the first few pages will contain a biographical sketch of its bold and sagacious founder, to whom altars have been consecrated, and who is still regarded as the type and soul of the order.
Iñigo, or, as commonly called, Ignatius Loyola, the youngest of eleven children of a noble and ancient family, was born in the year 1491, in his father’s castle of Loyola at Guipuscoa in Spain. He was of middle stature, and rather dark complexion; had deep-set piercing eyes, and a handsome and noble countenance. While yet young he had become bald, which gave him an expression of dignity, that was not impaired by a lameness arising from a severe wound. His father, a worldly man, as his biographer says, instead of sending him to some holy community to be instructed in religion and piety, placed him as a page at the court of Ferdinand V. But Ignatius, naturally of a bold and aspiring disposition, soon found that no glory was to be reaped in the antechambers of the Catholic king; and, delighting in military exercises, he became a soldier—and a brave one he proved. His historians, to make his subsequent conversion appear more wonderful and miraculous, have represented him as a perfect monster of iniquity; but, in truth, he was merely a gay soldier, fond of pleasure no doubt, yet not more debauched than the generality of his brother officers. His profligacy, whatever it was, did not prevent him from being a man of strict honour, never backward in time of danger.