censured by it, is now becoming more and more their own domain, though the chief places are still in the hands of the Dominicans; and this may gradually take place with most of the Congregations in whose hands is centralized the guidance and administration of Church affairs in all countries. And thus, if Papal Infallibility becomes a dogma, what inevitably awaits us is, that this Infallibility will not merely be worked in certain cases by the counsel and direction of the Jesuits; much more than that. The Jesuits will for the future be the regular stewards of this treasure, and architects of the new dogmas we have to expect. They will stamp the dogmatic coinage and put it into circulation. It is enough to know the earlier history of the Society to know what this means, and what an immense capital of power and influence it will place at their command. “Rulers and subjects”—that will henceforth be the relation between the Jesuits and the theologians of other Orders. Worst of all will be the position of theologians and teachers who belong to no Order. At the mercy of the most contradictory judgments, as is already, _e.g._, the case in France, constantly exposed to the displeasure of the Jesuits, of the _Curia_, and of their Bishop or his adviser, and daily threatened in their very existence, how are they to get spirit, perseverance, or zeal for earnest studies, deep researches, and literary activity? Every Jesuit, looking down from the impregnable height of his privileged position, will be able to cry out to the theologians of the secular clergy, “Tu longe sequere et vestigia prorsus adora;” for now is that fulfilled which the Belgian Jesuits demanded 230 years ago in their _Imago Societatis Jesu_. Their Order is now really, and in the fullest sense, the Urim and Thummim and breastplate of the High Priest—the Pope—who can only then issue an oracular utterance when he has consulted his breastplate, the Jesuit Order.(18) Only one thing was still wanting for the salvation of a world redeemed and regenerated once again: the Jesuits must again become the confessors of monarchs restored to absolute power. It is one of the notes of an age so rich in contradictions that the present General of the Order, Father Beckx, is not in harmony with the proceedings of his spiritual militia. Here, in Rome, he is reported to have said, “In order to recover two fractions of the States of the Church, they are pricking on to a war against the world—but they will lose all.” But for that reason, as is known, he possesses only the outward semblance of Government, while it is really in the hands of a conference. With this the fact seems to be connected that he has appointed for his theologian at the Council the most learned and liberal-minded man of his Order, Father de Buck—a man whose views stand in much the same relation to those of his fellow-Jesuits Perrone, Schrader, and Curli, as the Bishop of Orleans’s views to those of the Archbishop of Westminster.