The above-named ten persons were the first companions of Loyola, and, with him, the founders of the Society. But the merit of framing the Constitution which was to govern it belongs solely to Ignatius himself. He alone among them all was capable of such a conception. He alone could have devised a scheme by which one free rational being is converted into a mere automaton—acting, speaking, even thinking, according to the expressed will of another. There is no record in history, of any man, be he king, emperor, or pope, exercising such absolute and irresponsible power over his fellow-men as does the General of the Jesuits over his disciples. In the _Spiritual Exercises_ Loyola appears to be merely an ascetic enthusiast; in the _Constitution_ he shews himself a high genius, with a perfect and profound knowledge of human nature and of the natural sequence of events. Never was there put together a plan so admirably harmonious in all its parts, so wonderfully suited to its ends, or which has ever met with such prodigious success. Prompt, unhesitating obedience to the commands of the General, and (for the benefit of the Society, and _ad majorem Dei gloriam_) great elasticity in all other rules, according to the General’s goodwill, are the chief features of this famous Constitution, which, as it constitutes the Jesuits’ code of morality, we shall now proceed to examine, doing our best to shew the spirit in which it was dictated. CHAPTER II. 1540-52. CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SOCIETY.[17] The times in which Ignatius wrote the Constitutions were, for the Court of Rome and the Catholic religion, times of anxiety and danger. The Reformation was making rapid progress, and all Christendom, Catholic[18] as well as Protestant, resounded with the “Hundred Complaints” (_Centum gravamina_) brought forward at the Diet of Nuremberg against the Roman court—complaints and accusations which the wonderfully candid Adrian VI. acknowledged to be too well founded. This pontiff, by his nuncio, frankly declared to the Diet, “that all this confusion was originated by men’s sins, and, above all, by those of the clergymen and prelates—that for many years past the _Holy See had committed many abominations_—that numerous abuses had crept into the administration of spiritual affairs, and many _superfluities into the laws_—that all had been perverted—and that the corruption, descending from the head to the body, from the Sovereign Pontiff to the prelates, was so great, that there could hardly be found one who did good.”[19] When a pope confessed so much to Protestant ears, it may well be imagined to what a degree of rottenness the moral leprosy must have arrived.