in refutation, contented himself with detailing the spiritual exercises through which the Jesuit so frequently passes. Although, aided by F. Vaughan’s great theatrical power and by the operatic performances which preceded and followed it, the sermon produced considerable effect, it was in reality merely a trick of rhetoric. No one contends that the Jesuit is violating his conscience in his plots, intrigues, and equivocations; regret is usually felt that he should have been able to bring his moral sense into such an accommodating attitude. Every ecclesiastic claims to be unworldly in ultimate ambition; yet even a pope would think a life-time well spent in diplomatic intrigue for the restoration of his temporal power. All such activity is readily covered by the accepted principles of Catholic casuistry.
Still, whatever may have been the policy of Jesuits in past ages their activity in England at the present day is patent. In London they have no parish—except attached to their little church at Westminster, from which they long to withdraw—but they are continually seeking out the wealthier Catholics in various parishes and endeavouring to attach them to their congregation at Farm Street, or send them to help their struggling missions at Stamford Hill and Wimbledon. They have thus excited much hostility amongst the rest of the clergy, but four centuries of bad treatment from clergy and laity alike have sufficiently inured them, and only made them more self-
