FRANCIS COSTER.
The subject of this memoir was born at Malines in the
year 1531; he was one of the first to join the new
Society of Jesus, and at the age of twenty-one was
received into it by the illustrious founder himself.
St. Ignatius soon discovered the remarkable talents and the deep spirituality of the young man, and he stationed him at Cologne, placing him in the van of the army of the Church, and in the thick of the fight then waging between Catholics and Protestants. He was admirably adapted for his position, and fully justified the confidence placed in him by Loyola. The Lutherans and Calvinists found in him an enemy of no ordinary power, and quite invulnerable to their blows. His knowledge of Scripture was as thorough as, and was sounder than, their own. Their arguments were dissected, and the fallacies exposed, by Coster, in a manner so clear and so conclusive that he stung them to madness.
Volume after volume passed through the press from his pen, many of them composed in the vernacular, so
