At this (the book says) surely every man of sound mind will be ready to trample down the rebellions of the flesh, all love of self and of the world, and he will say: "Behold, O Thou Supreme King and Lord of all things, I, though most unworthy, yet relying on Thy grace and help, offer myself altogether to Thee, and submit all that is mine to Thee; testifying before Thy infinite goodness, as also in the sight of Thy glorious Virgin Mother and of the whole Court of Heaven, that it is my will, my desire, and my fixed determination, to follow Thee as close as possible, and to imitate Thee in bearing all injuries and adversities with true poverty, in things material as well as in things spiritual, if it shall please Thy Holy Majesty to choose me, and to receive me, for such ordination of my life." This is Christian doctrine in its widest aspect, Protestant quite as much as Catholic:

The Son of God goes forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;

His blood-red banner streams afar;
Who follows in his train?

Other counsels concern particular questions that beset scrupulous souls. Suppose that a rich man be perplexed as to the right attitude toward his money; his duty is neither to wish to keep the money, nor to give it up, but solely to do with it whatever may be for the better service of God. Or, suppose a man is to make election as to important matters of conduct; let him consider that there are some times better than others for coming to an impartial decision: God may give plain indication of His will; or, some interior joy of spiritual increase, or perhaps, a feeling of desolation, may throw light; and, always that time is best, when the soul is in a state of tranquillity. And having waited for this state of tranquillity, the chooser must remember that the end for which he was created is to praise God and to save his own soul. Let him put away all inordinate affections, bring himself into a state of indifference, and pray God to direct his will in the right way; and finally, considering all that may tend to the praise of God and sal

vation of his own soul from either choice, let him set the reasons on one side and on the other in a balance, and see which way the balance inclines. Besides this method there is another: Let the chooser be sure that the love which determines him to choose one way rather than the other descends from on high, from the love of God; let him imagine somebody else, whose eternal welfare he desires, as making the choice; let him reflect what his choice would be were he on the point of death; and, finally, let him bear in mind what decision he will wish that he had made when his soul shall be before the judgment seat. And the chooser must remember that he will make progress in all spiritual matters in proportion as he shall have divested himself of his own self-love, his own will and his own self-interest.

Then there are rules for the discernment of spirits, by which Ignatius means the way to tell whether feelings of elation and happiness on the one hand, and feelings of depression on the other, are to be interpreted as coming from a good or evil source, whether they indicate spiritual health or spiritual sickness. There is also an exposition of the three degrees of humility; the first, in which I so humble myself before God that I would not commit a mortal sin for all the world; the second, in which I am indifferent whether I have riches or poverty, honor or dishonor, a long or a short life, so long as the alternatives are irrelevant to the service of God; and the third, where "in order the better to imitate Christ our Lord, and to become more like Him, I desire and choose rather poverty with Christ poor, than riches; to be scorned with Christ scorned, than to possess honors; and to be esteemed useless and foolish for Christ's sake, since He was held to be such, rather than to be accounted wise and prudent in the things of this world." There are also provisions for confession and daily selfexaminations, suggestions for keeping a chart to see if one has made progress in bridling and diminishing some particular sin, and rules for penance and abstinence, for giving alms, rules as to scruples, and rules for thinking as the Church thinks, and so forth.

For those who go to the book not to practise its teachings

but to become better acquainted with Loyola, it possesses a biographical interest, for it is really the story, cast into the form of a manual for directors, of his own spiritual experiences, what he felt and what he did for the salvation of his soul and the greater glory of God; and, here and there, though rarely, a passage reveals his passionate temperament:

Take, O Lord, and keep all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will, whatsoever I have and possess. Thou hast given all these things to me; to Thee, O Lord, I restore them: All are Thine, dispose of them all according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and Thy grace; that is enough for me.

To my mind the order and arrangement of the Exercises does not appear to be determined by a very close logical connection, but the commentators are all agreed that the discipline proceeds from thought to thought, from meditation to meditation, from prayer to prayer, according to the very best system for bringing the novice to the wished for state of mind. Whether they are right or not, the underlying purpose is plain enough. Man's work is to do God's will, and he cannot do this, unless he becomes a tool for divine grace to work with, and to make himself a tool he must renounce self, and strive to follow the example of Christ on earth. In one of his letters, Ignatius says: "There are very few persons, perhaps none, who understand to the full how much a man hinders what God wishes to accomplish through him, and would accomplish through him, but for such hindering." His hope was to enable men to break down these hindrances within them, by persuading them to lift up their eyes to eternal values. Thomas-à-Kempis says: Beati qui interna penetrant, et ad capienda arcana cælestia magis ac magis per quotidiana exercitia se student præparare. (Blessed are they that enter into the things of the spirit, and by daily exercises strive to fit themselves more and more to understand the mysteries of heaven.)

CHAPTER XIV

LOYOLA AND THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE (1528-1535)

IGNATIUS stayed seven years in Paris. During these years he made his first real acquaintance with an educational force of far greater influence upon him than any academic studies. In an earlier chapter I laid stress upon the importance of his visit to Italy. The effect of the spirit of the Renaissance upon him had been that of the wind upon the traveller. In Paris, Loyola felt the fresh breezes of the Reformation, and again he wrapped the cloak of medieval tradition the closer about him. The result was of such magnitude in his later life that I must digress a little to describe how it came about; much as a biographer of Voltaire would feel obliged to dwell upon the state of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in France during his youth, or a biographer of Burke upon the French Revolution.

The new religious movement was still in its infancy. For generations there had been great discontent with the conduct of monks and of the priesthood, and ecclesiastical reforms of one kind or another had long been mooted, but the present agitation was of a wider scope and more dangerous temper. The strong wine of the Renaissance had begun to ferment in the old ecclesiastical bottles; and Luther's doings, like some disturbing chemical ingredients, had set it seething and foaming. The sixteenth century felt that it had reached its majority, and was free to ask such questions about life, about the meaning of things, about the truth of accepted opinions, as it might please. Speculation laid hands upon the traditions of the Church, the interpretation of the Bible, the doctrine of free will, of divine grace, and the relative merits of faith and good works, in short about the relations of God to man, and the ways in which

God's will is manifested. The storm was already violent in Germany, it had begun to rustle in the countries of the north, had touched Italy, and now, as I say, it was blowing westward over France.

I have space but for a hasty reference. In accordance with custom, I have spoken of Erasmus as the incarnation of the free spirit of inquiry and examination that marked those humanists, who were more interested in literature than in life; and of Luther as the embodiment of the ecclesiastical revolution in Germany. History is always easier to understand, or at least pleasanter to read, if we personify a movement in a man, and take a prominent actor as the symbol of very complex social phenomena. So, with regard to the manifestation of religious reform in France, I shall do the same, and speak of Lefèvre d'Étaples as comprehending in himself the first blossoming of the evangelical movement there. Lefèvre d'Étaples was a saintly scholar, full of sympathy for the mystical side of religious belief, full of desire to come closer and closer to the spirit of Christ, who, though bound by strong bonds of piety to the past, felt that the surer path was to be sought in the gospels rather than in scholastic philosophy. He was chief of the little group of righteous men who gathered about Briconnet, the good bishop of Meaux. His disposition was so gentle and loveable that one would like to conjecture that he belonged to the same blood as our friend Pierre Lefèvre, but I fear that there is no ground for doing so. As early as 1512 Lefèvre d'Étaples, then a professor of theology at the University of Paris, enunciated, in moderate form, the doctrine of justification by faith, and a few years later published a French translation of the New Testament. He was a noble spirit full of sweetness and light.

The outsider sometimes wonders if a way of reconciliation, some meeting place of charity, sympathy and mutual good will might not have been discovered. Lefèvre d'Étaples says:

You wear a hair shirt, you fast, you deny yourself; you punish your body, you pray, you shed tears; you roll in the