They stand out from the other religious congregations of the Roman world only in the attainment of greater power and wealth, and the means by which they attain them. Here alone is there a distinctive strand in the story of the Jesuits, perceptible from the foundation of the Society. Unquestionably they did far more for their Church in the first century after the Reformation than any other religious body; and they did this specifically by seeking wealth and power. They strained every nerve to secure the ear of popes, princes, and wealthy people. That was the plain direction of their founder. But we may be confident that Ignatius would not have sanctioned the fraud, hypocrisy, slander, intrigue, and approval of violence which this eagerness for power brought into the Society. In India and China, in England and Sweden, they assumed a right to lie in the service of God; and in the same high cause they counselled or connived at murder, slandered their fellow-priests, violated their sacred obligations, fostered wars, and accommodated the Christian ethic to the passions of wealthy or influential sinners. It was never necessary for a Jesuit theologian to declare that "the end justifies the means."[22] If the phrase is regarded, not as a citation from a written book of rules, but as an interpretation of the conduct of the Jesuits, it expresses the most distinctive feature of the character of the Society during its first hundred years. We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.