of all the monastic and superstitious ceremonies, gave the Jesuits to understand that they should undertake the choral hours as prescribed by Pius IV., and that no Jesuit should be ordained a priest before he had pronounced the four vows. We shall not repeat the conversation which took place between the Holy Father and the saint Borgia, as given by Sacchini and other historians; we shall only give some extracts of the bold and eloquent memorials which the Jesuits presented to the Pope on this occasion. After reminding his holiness, in a gentle yet admonitory manner, that their Constitutions had been approved of by three popes, and that they could not be altered without good reasons for so doing, they proceed to state, “that their Society had been established to repel the impious efforts of the heretics, to oppose the infernal tricks which had been had recourse to to extinguish the light of the Catholic truth, and to resist the barbarous enemies of Christ, who were besieging the holy edifice of the Church, undermining it insensibly; that, in order that they might be able to resist this invasion effectually, their holy father Ignatius thought that it would be better for them to leave singing to others.... And did not the same causes still exist, they inquired, for the exercise of their activity, as the signs of the times unmistakably demonstrated? They submitted that a vast conflagration was devouring France; that Germany was in a great measure consumed; that England was one heap of ashes; that Belgium was falling into ruins; that Poland smoked in every quarter; that the flames were already blazing around the confines of Italy.... And they should lose their time in undertaking the choral hours.”[127] On this point the Pope yielded; but, on the other, he was inflexible, saying, that it was requisite that at least as much learning and virtue should be in a priest as in a Jesuit, even of the class of the Professed. This Sacchini denies, affirming that it is more difficult to make one good Jesuit than a thousand priests. The Jesuits, who stood in need of priests, but would not enlarge the aristocratic class of the Professed members, who alone take the four vows, obtained as usual their end by exercising a little cunning. They presented themselves for ordination, not as Jesuits, but as secular ecclesiastics.