He had also his own duty of obedience, which was to Holy Church.  ’In making the sacrifice of our own judgment, the mind must keep itself ever whole and ready for obedience to the spouse of Christ, our Holy Mother, the Church orthodox, apostolical and hierarchical.’[164] Not a portion of the Catholic creed, of Catholic habits, of Catholic institutions, of Catholic superstitions, but must be valiantly defended.—­’It is our duty loudly to uphold reliques, the cult of saints, stations, pilgrimages indulgences, jubilees, the candles which are lighted before altars.’  To criticise the clergy, even though notoriously corrupt, is a sin.  The philosophy of the Church, as expressed by S. Thomas Aquinas, S. Bonaventura, and others, must be recognized as equal in authority with Holy Writ.  It follows that just as a subordinate was enjoined to sin, if sin were ordered by his Superior, so the whole Company were bound to lie, and do the things they disapproved, and preach the mummeries in which they disbelieved, in virtue of obedience to the Church.  They may not even trust their senses; for ’If the Church pronounces a thing which seems to us white to be black, we must immediately say that it is black.’[165]

[Footnote 164:  Read in the Exercitia (Inst.  Jesu, vol. iv. p. 167-173) the Rules for right accord with the Orthodox Church.  What follows above is taken from that chapter.]

[Footnote 165:  Exercitia, ibid. p. 171.  In this spirit a Jesuit of the present century writing on astronomy develops the heliocentric theory while he professes his submission to the geocentric theory as maintained by the Church.]

The Jesuits were enrolled as an army, in an hour of grave peril for the Church, to undertake her defense.  They pledged themselves, by this vow of obedience, to perform that duty with their eyes shut.  It was not their mission to reform or purify or revivify Catholicism, but to maintain it intact with all its intellectual anachronisms.  How well they succeeded may be judged from the issue of the Council of Trent, in which Lainez and Salmeron played so prominent a part.  That rigid enforcement of every jot and tittle in the Catholic hierarchical organization, in Catholic ritual, in the Catholic cult of saints and images, in the Catholic interpretation of Sacraments, in Catholic tradition as of equal value with the Bible, and lastly in the theory of Papal Supremacy, which was the astounding result of a Council convened to alter and reform the Church, can be attributed in no small measure to Jesuit persistency.

Ignatius attained his object.  Obedience, blind, servile, unquestioning, unscrupulous, became the distinguishing feature of the Jesuits.  But he condemned his Order to mediocrity.  No really great man in any department of human knowledge or activity has arisen in the Company of Jesus.  In course of time it became obvious to any one of independent character and original intellect that their ranks were not the