Romanism, in the hope of thus opening the way for him to the throne of Poland, which Cardinal Hosius had promised him. Two Jesuits, Florentius Feyt and Lawrence Nicolaï, sent by the famous society with which the king was in correspondence, arrived at Stockholm in 1576, and gave themselves out for Lutheran ministers. They ingratiated themselves amiably and adroitly, says one of them, with the Germans, and this at first more easily than with the Swedes.[505] They paid visits to the pastors and conversed with them on all manner of subjects for the purpose of gaining them over. They spoke Latin with ease and elegance, so that the good Swedish pastors, who were unlettered men, were filled with admiration, and promised them their co-operation.[506] Feyt, in a college at Stockholm, newly founded by the king, and Nicolaï, at the university of Upsala, spread out their nets, and by lectures, sermons, disputations, and conversation, they succeeded in bringing back to the abandoned faith now one and now another, thus drawing after them a goodly number of souls.[507] The cardinal lavished his instructions upon them. ‘Let them avoid creating any scandal,’ he wrote to the Jesuit confessor of the queen; ‘let them extol faith to the skies; let them declare that works without faith are profitless; let them preach Christ as the only mediator and His sacrifice on the cross as the only sacrifice that saves.’[508] The main point was to get the Swedes to re-enter the Roman pale by giving them to understand that nothing was preached there but the doctrines of the Gospel. This once accomplished, some means would certainly be found of again setting meritorious works by the side of faith, the Virgin Mary by the side of Christ as intercessor, and the sacrifice of the mass by the side of the sacrifice of [Sidenote: Proceedings Of The Jesuits.] Calvary. The king commanded all the pastors to attend the lectures of these Jesuits, passing themselves off as Lutherans. These men quoted the writings of the reformers, but at the same time confuted them, and endeavored to show that they contradicted one another. The king was sometimes present at these disputations, and even took part in them. He spoke against the pope, and thus gave the foreign theologians a pretext for making a clever apology for the Roman court. The reverend fathers, moreover, were not particular. They gained over a secretary of the king, named Johan Henrikson, who was living with a woman whose husband he had killed. Father Lawrence, in the first instance, gave absolution to these two wretched people; and afterwards a dispensation to marry. This _convert_, after having again been an accomplice in crimes, died from drunkenness. In a short time, other Romish priests arrived in Sweden, and were placed in various churches. At the instigation of these missionaries of the pope, many young Swedes were sent abroad, to Rome, to Fulda, and to Olmutz, to be educated there in Jesuit colleges at the expense of the state.