It will be thought astonishing, without doubt, that an order, become so powerful and so celebrated, should have for its founder such a man. This founder was however wise enough to decline entering into the order of Theatins, which a cardinal, who some years after became pope, had just established a little before the Jesuits began to appear. Ignatius, in spite of all the opposition which his society experienced at its birth, chose rather to be the legislator of an institution than to subject himself to laws which were not of his making. It seems as if he foresaw, from that very time, the future grandeur of his order, and the small figure the other would make, though destined to be in our times the cradle of a pious prelate, raised from the bosom of that order (by an impenetrable Providence) to the first dignities of the state and of the church[2]. Ignatius had also the wit to perceive, that a society which made particular profession of devotion to the holy see, would find infallible support from the head of the Roman church, and by these means from the catholic princes, its dear and faithful sons; and that thus this society would triumph at length over the transitory obstacles which it might meet with at its origin. It was in this view that he gave to it those famous constitutions, since perfected, and always on the same plan, by two successors very superior to Ignatius, the two generals Lainez and Aquiviva, so celebrated in the annals of the Jesuits: the latter especially, intriguing, adroit, and full of great views, was on all these accounts very proper for the government of an ambitious society: to him it is indebted, more than to any other, for those regulations so well contrived and so wise, that we may style them the master-piece of the industry of human nature in point of policy, and which have contributed, during two hundred years, to the aggrandizement and glory of this order. These regulations, it is true, have ended in being the cause or the motive of the destruction of the Jesuits in France; but such is the fate of all human grandeur and power, it is in their very nature to grow worse and become extinct when they have arrived at a certain degree of greatness and lustre. The empire of the Assyrians, that of the Persians, the Roman empire itself, have disappeared, precisely for this very reason, because they were become too large and too powerful. These examples ought to console the Jesuits, if it be possible for Jesuitical pride to be consoled.