The order of Dominicans had existed, under the patronage of the Church, for over three hundred years, and had made itself conspicuous for the part it took in the war of extermination prosecuted by Innocent III against the Albigenses, for having asserted the right to free religious thought and worship. The Dominicans were not restrained, therefore, by sympathy with any of the heresies which Loyola expressed the desire to suppress; so far from this, they sought after the most active and certain methods of putting an end to all heresy. Hence, it may be accepted as certain that they would willingly have accepted the Jesuits as coadjutors in the work of checking the progress of the Reformation if they had not seen in Loyola something to excite their indignation rather than their friendship. The conduct of the Jesuits at Salamanca, in Spain, had this effect in a high degree. Melchior Cano, one of the most distinguished and orthodox of the Dominican monks, having seen and conversed with Loyola at Rome, under circumstances which enabled him to form an estimate of his character, did not hesitate to denounce the Jesuits as impostors. What he said of Loyola personally deserves special notice, and was in these emphatic words: "When I was in Rome I took it into my head to see this Ignatius. He began at once, without preliminary, to talk of his virtue, and the persecution he had experienced in Spain without deserving it in the least. And a vast deal of mighty things he poured forth concerning the revelations which he had from on high, though there was no need of the disclosure. This induced me to look upon him as a vain man, and not to have the least faith in his revelations." Referring also to the Jesuits, as a society molded and governed by Loyola, he said "he apprehended the coming of Antichrist, and believed the Jesuits to be his forerunners," and charged them with "licentiousness," and the practice of "abominable mysteries."[37]