[Footnote 160:  Sarpi, though he expressed an opinion that the Jesuits of his day had departed from the spirit of their founders, spoke thus of Loyola’s worldly aims (Lettere, vol. i. p 224):  ’Even Father Ignatius, Founder of the Company, as his biography attests, based himself in such wise upon human interest as though there were none divine to think about.’]

Lainez, who succeeded the founder as General, digested the constitutions and supplied them with a commentary or Directorium.  He defined, formulated, and stereotyped the system; but the essential qualities of Jesuitry, its concentration upon political objects, its unscrupulousness in choice of means to ends, the worldliness which lurked beneath the famous motto Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, were implicit in Loyola’s express words, and in his actual administration.  The framework of the Order, as he fixed it, was so firmly traced, and so cunningly devised for practical efficiency, that it admitted of no alteration except in the direction of more rigid definition.  Lainez may, indeed, have emphasized its tendency to become a political machine, and may have weakened its religious tone, by his rules for the interpretation of the constitutions; but we have seen that the development of Loyola’s own ideas ran in this direction.  The real strength, as well as the worst vices of Jesuitry, were inherent in the system from the first; and in it we have perhaps the most remarkable instance on record, of the evolution of a cosmopolitan and world-important organism from the embryo of one man’s conception.

The Bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae restricted the number of the Jesuits to sixty.  If Ignatius did not himself propose this limit, the restriction may perhaps have suggested his policy of reserving the full privileges of the Society for a small band of selected members—­the very essence of the body, extracted by processes which will be afterwards described.  Anyhow, it is certain that though the Papal limitation was removed in 1543, and though candidates flowed on the tide of fashion toward the Order, yet the representative and responsible Fathers remained few in numbers.  These were distributed as the General thought fit.  He stayed in Rome; for Rome was the chosen headquarters of the Society, the nucleus of their growth, and the fulcrum of their energy.  From Rome, as from a center, Ignatius moved his men about the field of Europe.  We might compare him under one metaphor to a chess-player directing his pieces upon the squares of the political and ecclesiastical chessboard; under another, to a spider spinning his web so as to net the greatest number of profitable partisans.  The fathers were kept in perpetual motion.  To shift them from place to place, to exclude them from their native soil, to render them cosmopolitan and pliant was the first care of the founder.  He forbade the follies of ascetic piety, inculcated the study of languages and exact knowledge,