In Europe the Mendicant friars by their coarseness had disgusted the upper classes; the affable and cultured Jesuit won their hearts.  The Jesuits became chaplains in noble families, learned the secrets of every government in Europe, and became the best schoolmasters in the age.  They were to be found in various disguises in every castle of note and in every palace.  “There was no region of the globe,” says Macaulay, “no walk of speculative or active life in which Jesuits were not to be found.”  That they were devoted to their cause no one can deny.  They were careless of life and, as one facetiously adds, of truth also.  They educated, heard confessions, plotted crimes and revolutions, and published whole libraries.  Worn out by fatigue, the Jesuits still toiled on with marvelous zeal.  Though hated and opposed, they wore serene and cheerful countenances.  In a word, they had learned to control every faculty and every passion, and to merge every human aspiration and personal ambition into the one supreme purpose of conquering an opposing faith and exalting the power of priestly authority.  They hold up before the subjects of the King of Heaven a wonderful example of loving and untiring service, which should be emulated by every servant of Christ who too often yields an indifferent obedience to Him whom he professes to love and to serve.

Francis Parkman, in his brilliant narrative of “The Jesuits in North America,” presents the following interesting contrast between the Puritan and the Jesuit:  “To the mind of the Puritan, heaven was God’s throne; but no less was the earth His footstool; and each in its degree and its kind had its demands on man.  He held it a duty to labor and to multiply; and, building on the Old Testament quite as much as on the New, thought that a reward on earth as well as in heaven awaited those who were faithful to the law.  Doubtless, such a belief is widely open to abuse, and it would be folly to pretend that it escaped abuse in New England; but there was in it an element manly, healthful and invigorating.  On the other hand, those who shaped the character, and in a great measure the destiny, of New France had always on their lips the nothingness and the vanity of life.  For them, time was nothing but a preparation for eternity, and the highest virtue consisted in a renunciation of all the cares, toils and interests of earth.  That such a doctrine has often been joined to an intense worldliness, all history proclaims; but with this we have at present nothing to do.  If all mankind acted on it in good faith, the world would sink into decrepitude.  It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of active life, and is like the error of those who, in their zeal to cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and pine, till body and mind alike lapse into feebleness and disease.”