Such a reception as this by so distinguished a body of prelates as the Council of Trent, was well calculated to incite the pride and ambition of the Jesuits--especially of Laynez--and to create in their minds the belief that if they continued to pursue the cautious but aggressive policy of Loyola, they would bring the pope and all the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church into obedience to them. Manifestly, the society considered this the ultimate end contemplated by Loyola; and Laynez was sufficiently skilled in the methods of government to understand the necessity of obtaining from the Council of Trent the recognition of the superiority of the Jesuits over the monastic orders. He had not yet succeeded in accomplishing the admission of the society into France, and this he evidently regarded as an important step in that direction. Flattering as was his reception by the Council, it was not all he desired. He considered an additional step necessary to obtain from the Council a full approval of the reasons assigned by Loyola to justify the establishment of his society. Accordingly, after the Council had passed upon the questions of faith and dogma, it proceeded to investigate "the causes of the evils which afflicted the Church." This opened an exceedingly broad field of inquiry, and resulted, doubtless as Laynez desired, in the conclusion stated by Daurignac, "that these causes were, principally, the ignorance and immorality of a great portion of the clergy and the monastic orders," and that "the best remedy for this great evil was to prepare Christian generations by a good system of education;"[63] that is to say, that any effort to reform the existing clergy and ancient orders would be unavailing, but that the remedy lay in educating other and future generations. It is easy to see that this conclusion was unavoidable under the doctrine established by the same Council, and affirmed also by the Jesuits, that the clergy who lead virtuous and those who lead vicious lives, possess the same power and authority in the Church. This was a great triumph for Laynez and his society, inasmuch as it was a specific approval by the Council of Trent of the grounds upon which Loyola had justified the creation of the Jesuit society; that is, the incompetency of the Church to reform itself without extraneous aid, apart from the existing clergy and the monastic orders, and the necessity for an educational organization, like that of the Jesuits, to be maintained by authority and discipline for that purpose.[64] And thus equipped by so important an indorsement, the Jesuits at once assumed to have been constituted, with Divine approval, the exclusive educators of the world, and to be endowed with authority to enter every nation at will, and so to train and discipline the "Christian generations" as to bring them down to a common level of obedience to the united authority of Church and State.