The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Jesuitism Most Potent Assailant of the Reformation

Among all the instruments and forces with which the church assailed the Reformation—the Jesuits, the Council of Trent, the Index, the counterinterpretations, and the Inquisition—none was more potent than the Jesuits, whose work was inwrought into all the others. In Jesuitism the consummation of error and in the Inquisition the maximum of force were arrayed against Protestantism. ³ This militant Company of Jesus, constituted by the bull, Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae, of Paul III in 1540, directed that those who enrolled in this army were to bear “the standard of the Cross, to wield the arms of God, to serve the only Lord, and the Roman Pontiff, His Vicar on earth.” ⁴ Declared Hagenbach: PFF2 466.1

“The Jesuit Order ... is the genuine double of the Reformation. From the very outset of the Reformation, the Jesuit Order hung upon its heels as closely as a shadow.” ⁵ PFF2 466.2

Thus at the very time the so-called Protestant “poison” of heresy sprang up in Germany, the papal “antidote” to the poison sprang up in Spain. Whereas Luther did not foresee the extent of the Protestant involvement that would grow out of his revolt, neither did Loyola envision the extent of the Jesuit movement that he had initiated in founding his order. The contrast is personified in the men themselves. Luther was led to the fountain of truth through the Scriptures, and rested in the mercy of God through Christ. Loyola hung upon Mary as the dispenser of mercy, and sought closeness to Christ through the mysterious host of the altar sacrament. Luther, on the one hand, was led to separate from the church, but Loyola, on the other, became the most effective tool the church had produced. ⁶ PFF2 466.3