While an extended discussion of the characteristics of the Jesuit order is not necessary, some of the respects in which it differed from the others should be pointed out, in order to make clear the effect of the Jesuit appearance in Spain and the Americas. Great emphasis was placed on the military side; Loyola was wont to say that he had never ceased to be a soldier,--he had merely become a soldier of God. Obedience to superiors and to the pope was not a new idea, but with the Jesuits it was as rigidly literal as in an army. They became one of the principal supports of the popes at a time when many church leaders were advocating the reform of the papacy with a view to limiting the powers of the head of the church. Like soldiers, they attacked the enemies of the pope, church, and the Catholic religion, and were charged with employing methods which gave rise to the term “Jesuitry” in an opprobrious sense. They did not stay in convents, but went forth among the people to fight for the principles for which they stood. There was no election of their leaders; the attainment of office came through appointment by the general, who even chose his own successor. Education was their principal weapon,--education of the high and the low. In other respects the Jesuits were at the same time more simple and more mundane in their exterior practices--at least in the beginning--than the other orders. They opposed choral singing, the wearing of a distinctive habit, participation in religious processions, the monastic life, and asceticism. They believed in the individual poverty of their members, but were willing that the order and its separate institutions should prosper in a material way. In other words they were going into the world, not away from it, and were desirous of the best equipment for the struggle which lay before them. [Sidenote: Spanish opposition to the Jesuits.]