The society generally, but not unanimously, exhibited this same spirit of resistance to the pope and the authority of the Church. By the decree of abolition the members were allowed to act as secular priests, and exercised sacerdotal functions, subject to the authority of the Church. A few of them availed themselves of this provision, and "settled themselves quietly in different capacities." Others endeavored insidiously to preserve the principles of their constitution and organization, by abandoning the name of Jesuits, and adopting other titles. "But," says Nicolini, "_the greater part, the most daring and restless, would not submit to the Brief of Suppression; impugned its validity in a thousand writings; called in question the validity of Clement's election, whom they called Parricide, Sacrilegious, Simoniac, and considered themselves still forming part of the still existing company of Jesus_."[146] Catharine, Empress of Russia, had given some protection to the Jesuits before their suppression, and Ricci, the general, admitted in his examination that he had held correspondence with Frederick of Prussia after the decree. How is it to be accounted for, in any mode consistent with due respect for the Church, that the Jesuits in Russia did not withdraw themselves from the protection of the emperor, and that others sought shelter and protection in Prussia, after the decree of the pope had declared the order to be forever abolished throughout the world? Russia had long before rejected all the overtures of the Roman Church, and established the Greek faith as the religion of the State, with the reigning sovereign as the spiritual head of the national Church. The Church of Rome taught that the Russians were schismatics, and therefore heretics. The Prussians were Lutherans--that is, Protestants--and were, consequently, looked upon at Rome as the deadly enemies of the Church, and were, besides, under the ban of excommunication for heresy. Consequently, an alliance of the Jesuits with either Russia or Prussia, after their suppression, could be looked upon in no other light than as an act of rebellion against the authority of the Church and the pope--a desire to pass from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome to that of alien authority arrayed against it. It amounted to a desire to exchange their allegiance from what they had considered legitimate authority to that of schismatics and heretics. It is impossible for the Jesuits to escape this view of the attitude they occupied after their abolition. They were simply rebels against the Church.