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A CANDID HISTORY OF THE JESUITS




  A CANDID HISTORY
  OF
  THE JESUITS

  BY
  JOSEPH McCABE

  AUTHOR OF
  "THE DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME" ETC.

  LONDON
  EVELEIGH NASH
  1913




PREFACE


It is the historic custom of the Church of Rome to enlist in its
service monastic or quasi-monastic bodies in addition to the ordinary
clergy. In its hour of greatest need, at the very outbreak of the
Reformation, the Society of Jesus was formed as one of these auxiliary
regiments, and in the war which the Church of Rome has waged since
that date the Jesuits have rendered the most spirited and conspicuous
service. Yet the procedure of this Society has differed in many
important respects from that of the other regiments of the Church, and
a vast and unceasing controversy has gathered about it. It is probable
that a thousand times, or several thousand times, more books and
pamphlets and articles have been written about the Jesuits than about
even the oldest and most powerful or learned of the monastic bodies.
Not a work of history can be opened, in any language, but it will
contain more references to the Jesuits than to all the other religious
orders collectively. But opinions differ as much to-day as they did a
hundred or two hundred years ago about the character of the Jesuits,
and the warmest eul