Vitelleschi, Acquaviva’s immediate successor, was a well-intentioned man, mild and conciliatory. He was called by his friends the _angel of peace_, and on his death-bed he found consolation from the conviction that he had never injured any one.[306] But it is evident that such a kind and indulgent man could not oppose any effectual resistance to the fast-spreading corruption of the order, nor to the demands of determined ambition. What under Acquaviva had only been the expedient of the moment, became under Vitelleschi a rule. The professed members became, if not exclusively, at least simultaneously with the coadjutors, the administrators of the temporal concerns of the Society; and the control which the two classes had exercised, the one over the other, according to the wise enactments of Ignatius, was for ever annihilated. While the number of the coadjutors decreased, that of the professed became out of all proportion numerous, but lost some of that veneration which they had earned in former times by a life, in appearance at least, wholly spiritual and ascetic. Besides, as we have said, persons of the highest families, eager for ecclesiastical dignities or temporal power, now sought admission into the order, and Vitelleschi had neither the intention nor perhaps the power to refuse them, whether they were qualified or not. The strict and searching scrutiny to which the candidate ought to have submitted, and to which in fact he had been subjected under Loyola and the two following Generals, had become gradually less severe; but under Vitelleschi it was altogether neglected, and the novices were absolved from many obligations to which the Constitution rightfully subjected them. The abuses resulting from the non-observance of the most essential rules increased so greatly, that Vitelleschi himself was much affected by it, and poured forth his affliction in a most eloquent and deprecatory letter, which he addressed to the members of the order. From this letter we extract the following passage:—“But whence can we suspect our disinclination to Divine things—our feeling of laborious irksomeness in recollection—in checking the wanderings of our vagrant imaginations, frequently tending in that direction which is least to be desired, because we have not repressed them when we could? What is that tenacious and entangling love of the lowest objects—the world, honour, parents, and worldly comforts?—that greater authority conceded to the rebellious flesh and blood rather than to the spirit in action, for I care not for words;—that enervated exhausted weakness in resisting the solicitations of the adversary in our conflicts with the domestic enemy, perhaps not entirely yielding, but still not evincing that alacrity and exaltation of mind to which only victory is granted? These are the fruits of timidity and of a dissolute spirit, which, unless it is raised betimes, and warmed anew, is clearly