under Acquaviva’s lifetime, Henry IV., to please his father confessor, and render him still more indulgent to his immoralities, had, by an autograph letter, asked the reigning Pope to find a place in heaven for the two founders of the order; but Paul V., thinking, perhaps, that the recommendation of the ex-Huguenot Henry would be rather a suspicious passport for opening the gates of heaven, did not feel inclined to comply. There were, however, other sovereigns, as those of Bavaria, Poland, Spain, &c., who had Jesuits for their confessors; and now that those monarchs united in begging from the Holy See the canonisation of the two Jesuits, Gregory XV., who had been educated in the fathers’ schools, could no longer refuse to comply with their wishes. He accordingly solemnly pronounced them to be saints, but being surprised by death, the glory of having issued the bull for their apotheosis belongs to his successor, Urban VIII.[245] As the Jesuits, in the short space of less than a century, have furnished eight or ten saints to the calendar, perhaps it will not be extraneous to our work to devote a few pages to shew in what manner, mortals such as we are, and who but yesterday were mere loathsome corpses, are, by the pretended power of another mortal man, transformed into privileged and divine beings, to whom is attributed a power almost equal to that of the Almighty. A word of any Pope, even of an Alexander VI., will change every fragment of those corrupted remains into sacred relics, possessing such miraculous powers, that the worship of them is deemed sufficient to insure eternal salvation. The practice of investing certain persons with the honours of saintship originated with the people. In the early ages of Christianity, when an individual, whether a truly holy Christian or a consummate hypocrite, had struck the impressible imaginations of the multitude by a pious and extraordinary course of life, he was regarded by them as a supernatural being, and was addressed and worshipped as such. A little later, persons of this description began, with the help of the priests, to work miracles; and when the renown of their holiness and of the prodigies they had performed had spread far and wide, the Court of Rome interfered and gave them a regular patent for saintship.