In court the principal witness was confounded by proof, under his own hand, of the falseness of the allegation he had advanced; and at the same time testimonials from the highest quarters in favor of the fathers, severally and individually, arrived opportunely; in a word, the society, in this early and signal instance, triumphed over its assailants, and thenceforward it occupied a position the most lofty and commanding in the view of the Catholic world. Loyola and his colleagues saw the ruin of their adversaries, two of whom, falling into the hands of the inquisitors, were burned as heretics. The time was now come for effecting a permanent organization of the society and for installing a chief at its head. With these purposes in view, Loyola summoned his colleagues to Rome from the cities of Italy where they were severally laboring. The fathers being assembled, he commended to them anew the proposal which they had already accepted, but which he seemed anxious to fix irrevocably upon their consciences by often-repeated challenges of the most solemn kind. To impart the more solemnity to this repetition of their mutual engagements, and to preclude, by all means, the possibility of retraction, he advised that several days should be devoted to preliminary prayer and fasting, during which season each should, with an absolute surrender of himself to the will of God, await passively the manifestation of that will. "Heaven," said Loyola to his companions, "heaven has forbidden Palestine to our zeal--nevertheless that zeal burns with increasing intensity from day to day. Should we not hence infer that God has called us--not, indeed, to undertake the conversion of one nation or of a country, but of all the people and of all the kingdoms of the world?" Such was the founder's profession and such the limits of his ambition. The spiritual mechanism which he had devised, and which he was now putting in movement, intends nothing that is partial or circumscribed; its very purport is universality; it is absolutism carried out until it has embraced the human family and has brought every human spirit into its toils. But so small a band could hope for no success that should be indicative of ultimate triumph unless they would surrender themselves individually to a common will, which should be to each of them as the will of God, articulately pronounced. After renewing, therefore, the vows of poverty, of chastity, and of unconditional obedience to the Pope, the fathers assented to the proposal that one of their number should, by the suffrages of all, be constituted the superior or general of the order, and as such be invested with an authority as absolute as it was possible for man to exercise or for men to submit to. Yet to whose hands should be assigned--and for life--this irresponsible power over the bodies, souls, and understandings of his companions?