Having obtained possession of the Franciscan seminary at Goa, Xavier decided that the building should be improved, so as to impress the simple natives with the superiority of the Jesuits over the monks. To an ordinary mind this would appear to be a difficult thing to accomplish, inasmuch as it is not probable that voluntary contributions could have been procured in such a community. But to Xavier it was easy to overcome so trivial a difficulty as this, as it always has been to the Jesuits, without finding the least impediment in the vow of "extreme poverty." All he had to do was to employ the Portuguese troops stationed at Goa "in pulling down the heathen temples in the neighborhood of Goa, and appropriating their very considerable property, for the use and benefit of the new college."[85] Admirable strategy! The poor natives were powerless to resist the Portuguese troops with arms in their hands, and were compelled to stand by in silence and see their property despoiled without compensation, all under the pretense that "the greater glory of God" required it, when, in fact, it was prompted by Jesuit ambition. Xavier must have felt gratified at his inexpensive mode of improving his new college, and Loyola undoubtedly rejoiced when the fact was reported to him. The former, therefore, having so successfully occupied the missionary field at Goa by this display of Jesuit power to the natives, and by reducing the Franciscan monks to inferiority, hastened to other parts of India, to carry on the work he had begun under such flattering auspices. He proceeded to the coast of Malabar, where the missionaries previously sent from Goa, under the authority and within the jurisdiction of that episcopal see, had baptized a large number of the natives, whom they claimed to have been converted to Christianity under the methods employed by them. But in order to make it appear that these missionaries were inefficient and incompetent, the Jesuits pretend that these professed converts still "retained their superstitions and vices,"[86] and that it was absolutely necessary they should be brought under the influence of Xavier. The purpose of this, at that time, was to prove to the Christian world that the Church and the papacy had failed to accomplish any good missionary results through the agency of the monks, and that the Jesuits were absolutely indispensable. In this way it was hoped, doubtless, to overcome the prejudice existing against the society in Europe. Therefore, Xavier is represented as having saved the Malabar converts from relapsing into heathenism, and increased the number of natives who submitted to baptism. Whilst all this is spoken in his praise, it is quite certain, from the most favorable accounts, that they entertain but little, if any, just conception of the ceremony of baptism, or, indeed, of any of the fundamental principles of Christianity.