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The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

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Chapter 1<br />

Ignatius Loyola<br />

PROTESTANTISM had marshalled its<br />

spiritual forces a second time, and placing itself at<br />

the heart of Christendom--at a point where three<br />

great empires met--it was laboring with redoubled<br />

vigor to propagate itself on all sides. It was<br />

expelling from the air of the world that ancient<br />

superstition, horn of Paganism and Judaism, which,<br />

like an opaque veil, had darkened the human mind:<br />

a new light was breaking on the eyes and a new life<br />

stirring in the souls of men: schools of learning,<br />

pure Churches, and free nations were springing up<br />

in different parts of Europe; while hundreds of<br />

thousands of disciples were ready, by their holy<br />

lives or heroic deaths, to serve that great cause<br />

which, having broken their ancient fetters, had<br />

made them the heirs of a new liberty and the<br />

citizens of a new world. It was clear that if let<br />

alone, for only a few years, Protestantism would<br />

achieve a victory so complete that it would be vain<br />

for any opposing power to think of renewing the<br />

2

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