Again, as preachers, though popular and eloquent, they devoted their talents to convert men to the _Roman church_ rather than to _God_. They were bigoted sectarians; strove to make men Catholics rather than Christians. As missionaries, they were content with a mere nominal conversion. They gave men the crucifix, but not the Bible, and even permitted their converts to retain many of their ancient superstitions and prejudices. And thus they usurped the authority of native rulers, and sought to impose on China and Japan their despotic yoke. They greatly enriched themselves in consequence of the credulity of the natives, whom they flattered, and wielded an unlawful power. And this is one reason why they were expelled, and why they made no permanent conquests among the millions they converted in Japan. They wished not only to subjugate the European, but the Asiatic mind. Europe did not present a field sufficiently extensive for their cupidity and ambition. Finally, as confessors, they were peculiarly indulgent to those who sought absolution, provided their submission was complete. Then it was seen what an easy thing it was to bear the yoke of Christ. The offender was told that sin consisted in wilfulness, and wilfulness in the perfect knowledge of the nature of sin, according to which doctrine blindness and passion were sufficient exculpations. They invented the doctrine of mental reservation, on which Pascal was so severe. Perjury was allowable, if the perjured were inwardly determined not to swear. A man might fight a duel, if in danger of being stigmatized as a coward; he might betray his friend, if he could thus benefit his party. The Jesuits invented a system of casuistry which confused all established ideas of moral obligation. They tolerated, and some of them justified, crimes, if the same could be made subservient to the apparent interests of the church. Their principle was to do evil that good might come. Above all, they conformed to the inclinations of the great, especially to those of absolute princes, on whom they imposed no painful penance, or austere devotion. Their sympathies always were with absolutism, in all its forms and they were the chosen and trusted agents of the despots of mankind, until even the eyes of Europe were open to their vast ambition, which sought to erect an independent empire within the limits of despotism itself. But the corruptions of the Jesuits, their system of casuistry, their lax morality, their disgraceful intrigues, their unprincipled rapacity, do not belong to the age we have now been considering. These fruits of a bad system had not then been matured; and the infancy of the society was as beautiful as its latter days were disgraceful and fearful. In a future chapter, we shall glance at the decline and fall of this celebrated institution--the best adapted to its proposed ends of any system ever devised by the craft and wisdom of man. [Sidenote: The Popes in the Seventeenth Century.]