have gradually formed that popular idea according to which the Jesuit is the embodiment of craft, deceit, ambition, and all sorts of wickedness. "It began to be rumored up and down," complains Bunyan, "that I was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like." Last year it was very correctly stated by Mr. Andrew Lang, the celebrated Scotch scholar, that this popular idea and the Protestant dislike of the Jesuits is not based on historical facts, but largely on works of fiction. There is a certain picturesqueness about the mythic Jesuit which makes him highly important in works of fiction. Accordingly, a number of writers have introduced him with great effect, as Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and even Thackeray. Mr. Lang himself rises above that vulgar conception of the Jesuits, and he freely confesses: "The Jesuits are clever, educated men; on the whole I understand their unpopularity, but with all their faults I love them still."[1] And the words of another Protestant deserve to be meditated on by all fair-minded Protestants: "Why should a devoted Christian find a difficulty in seeing good in the Jesuits, a body of men whose devotion to their idea of Christian duty has never been surpassed?"[2]
But some Protestants will say: The Jesuits have always been the most strenuous and most successful supporters of the Catholic Church; hence they weaken the Protestant cause. – To men who argue thus apply
