Louis had a Jesuit confessor from his childhood,[255] who, by insidious and daily-repeated insinuations, had rendered him a fanatical bigot, and made him believe that the greatest glory he could achieve would be the upholding of the Popish religion. In this point, as indeed in many others, Louis bears a resemblance to Philip II. of Spain. Both gloried in the appellation of champions of Popery, both had its persecuting spirit, both sacrificed the love of their people to the wish to appear most zealous Romanists; yet both, despotic and jealous of their royal prerogative, waged war against their god on earth when he attempted to impugn it. Philip sent Alva, who, having conquered the Papal troops, entered Rome, and obliged the Pope to subscribe his master’s conditions; while Louis took possession of Avignon, threw the Papal nuncio into prison, and obliged every member of the French clergy to subscribe the four articles of the Gallican Church, expressly got up against the pretensions of Rome. With such a man as Louis, the Jesuits could not succeed in gaining their ends but by the most complete subjection to his orders or caprices. So, accommodating themselves at once to the prince’s character, there was no mark of devotion and servility which they did not shew to him. They supported him in his schism against the Pope, subscribed the articles of the Gallican Church, and refused to publish the bull of excommunication the former had fulminated against _the first-born of the Church of Rome_,[256] persuading him, however, that he would always remain a good Roman Catholic while they confessed and absolved him. They praised him for his military achievements, and encouraged him in his profligacy, taking great care to abandon the former mistress the moment they saw the inclination of the prince directed towards a new one. For these criminal compliances, they obtained, in exchange, full liberty to persecute the Jansenists and Protestants to their hearts’ content. The Jansenists were the first who experienced the vindictive hatred of the progeny of Loyola; not because they were considered more dangerous heretics than the Huguenots, but because they had dared to attack the Order openly; because the _Provincial Letters_ had covered it with shame and confusion, and because the most considerable among them were related to that Arnauld who first opposed its establishment in France, and declared its members to be the accomplices of the crime of Jacques Clement. We insist upon that point, because it shews one of the most prominent characteristics of Jesuitism, never to forgive an injury, and to persecute the remotest descendants for the offences they may have received from their ancestors.