definitely refused to become Calvinistic, though many Englishmen became Calvinists. France, as we have seen, having to choose between Calvinism and unity, not only chose to remain Catholic and united, but set herself deliberately to root out the political influence of the Huguenot organisation. [Sidenote: =Religious revival in the Church.=] But after all, it was not the inherent weakness of Protestantism, either in its philosophical, religious, or political aspects, which finally put an end to its progress, and turned back the tide. It was the greatly increased strength of Catholicism. The power of Protestantism lay, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in its protest against wicked lives and a degraded system. By the end of the century that protest was no longer needed, and no longer effective. The Church, which had refused to reform itself after the horrors of the great schism under the pressure of the councils of Constance and Basel, and had answered the trumpet call of Savonarola with an excommunication at the hands of Alexander VI., had at length been forced into reform by the success of Protestantism. The Council of Trent left its mark upon the Roman Church in two special ways. By the establishment of the seminaries, and the enforcement of residence, it reformed the clergy and taught them to be the teachers of the people. By the acknowledgment of Papal supremacy it centralised the organisation of the Roman Church, as an army is centralised under the absolute command of its leader, to whom unquestioning obedience is due. From that time the Pope has exercised influence over a smaller area of Europe than before the Reformation, but with far greater power of compelling obedience among his own adherents. The institution of new religious orders, and the remarkable revival of the religious life in the Roman Church in the century following the Reformation, is perhaps the proof rather than the cause of the renewal of personal piety and the spirit of self-sacrifice, but the foundation of the Society of Jesus marks a turning-point in the religious history of the world. [Sidenote: =Influence of the Jesuits.=] Ignatius Loyola was a soldier before he was a priest, and his Society was a military organisation for religious purposes. The conquest of heresy and infidelity was its object, obedience and renunciation of personality were to it the first of virtues. A Jesuit, who was thoroughly imbued with the principles of his order, lost his individuality and became but a part of a great machine. He lived, moved, felt, thought, but in his Society and for it alone. Trained on one system, directed by the will of one man, bound by its constitution to implicit obedience to the Pope, the Society of Jesus, as it spread over the whole world in the ardour and pure enthusiasm of its earlier years, formed a power in the hands of the Papacy, which, from the intense concentration of its government, and