While the Jesuits in France and in England, where the monarch was adverse to them, not only propounded the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, but taught that every individual had a right to murder the king if he were disliked by the nation or accursed by the Pope—in Poland, Sweden, and Germany, where the population was adverse and the sovereign friendly to them, they inculcated the contrary doctrine, and did not scruple to enforce it by the most cruel and violent proceedings. In France and in England, Henry and Elizabeth had forfeited their thrones by holding the doctrines of the Reformation. In Sweden, the Jesuits compelled the Roman Catholic Sigismond to swear to maintain the Confession of Augsburg, that he might not be driven from his kingdom.[190] But in those countries, the Jesuits, being in close alliance with the civil power, were the cause of more mischief, and greatly injured the cause of truth and religion. The introduction of the Jesuits into the north of Europe was the signal for a powerful reaction against Protestantism; and they not only checked its progress, but, what is more strange, they succeeded in reviving an obsolete doctrine—the temporal supremacy of the Roman Church, which, after having for centuries governed almost the whole of Europe, had fallen into decay, and ought not, according to the ordinary course of human institutions, to exercise any further influence, since it had not undergone any material change or acquired a new prestige. Yet such was the case. Many were the requisites of success possessed by the Jesuits. Admirable unity of purpose—versatility of character—unscrupulous pliability of conscience—the confessional—the pulpit—the conviction that upon their first success depended the duration of their order, and, it must be added, their unexceptionable outward conduct, all rendered them in the highest degree fit for their task. But, above all, it was by the education of the youth, that they wrought such changes in Germany. It was, in fact, for this purpose that they were first introduced into the country. In one of the autograph letters that Ferdinand I. wrote to Loyola, he declares it to be his opinion, that the only means by which the declining tenets of Catholicism could be restored in Germany was, to supply the youth with learned and pious Catholic teachers.[191] The Jesuits entered into the king’s view with amazing activity and energy. They established themselves in Vienna in 1551, and soon after had the management of the university. Their second important establishment was at Cologne; the third, at Ingolstadt; and from these three principal points, they spread all over Germany. We think we cannot do better than transcribe a passage from Ranke on the project:—