“This new Society, which arrogates to itself in particular the unusual title of the name of Jesus—which receives with so much freedom, and without any choice, all sorts of persons, however criminal, lawless, and infamous they may be—which differs in nowise from the secular priests in outward dress, in the tonsure, in the manner of saying the canonical hours in private, or in chaunting in public, in the engagement to remain in the cloister and observe silence, in the choice of food and days, in fasting, and the variety of rules, laws, and ceremonies which serve to distinguish the different institutes of monks;—this Society, to which have been granted and given so many privileges and licences, chiefly in what concerns the administration of the sacraments of penance and the eucharist, and this without any regard or distinction being had of places or persons; as also in the function of preaching, reading, and teaching, to the prejudice of the ordinaries and the hierarchical order, as well as of the other religious orders, and even to the prejudices of princes and lords temporal, against the privileges of the universities,—in fine, to the great cost of the people;—this Society seems to blemish the honour of the monastic state; it weakens entirely the painful, pious, and very necessary exercises of the virtues of abstinences, ceremonies, and austerity. It even gives occasion very freely to desert the religious orders; it withdraws from the obedience and submission due to the ordinaries; it unjustly deprives lords, both temporal and ecclesiastical, of their rights, carries trouble into the government of both, causes many subjects of complaint amongst the people, many lawsuits, strifes, contentions, jealousies, and divers schisms and divisions. “Wherefore, after having examined all these matters, and several others, with much attention and care, this Society appears dangerous as to matters of faith, capable of disturbing the peace of the Church, overturning the monastic order, and more adapted to break down than to build up.”[79] Here, as in the denunciations of Cano, the faculty seem to have got a glimpse of the future history of the Jesuits, since, at that epoch at least, the accusation of receiving into the Society indiscriminately was not well founded. The apologists of the Jesuits have said—and we are partly inclined to admit the truth of their assertion—that as the Jesuits were then in possession of the education of youth in many parts of Europe, the university, jealous of its privileges, condemned the order of the Jesuits, not as an infamous and sacrilegious community, but as a dangerous rival. They have also affirmed, that the expulsion of the famous Postel[80] had irritated the Sorbonne, of which he was a doctor. But this we believe to be a gratuitous supposition.