JESUITS, ORDER of. This celebrated society was founded in 1534, by Ignatius Loyola, a Spaniard of ardent imagination and earnest spirit, and was confirmed by Pius III. in 1540. There can be but little doubt that he intended it to be a mystical and contemplative association, resembling, in many things, the colleges of Egyptian priests; and the original objects of the Order, as promulgated by Loyola, were certainly entitled to respect. To defend and propagate the faith, to educate the young, to assist each other, to renounce the honors of the world, and ecclesiastical digni ties; such was the basis upon which was erected a fabric that destroyed itself as soon as it lost sight of its first ideal, and ceased to be what it promised at the commencement of its career. The Jesuits appear to have taken the Egyptian priests for their model. Like them, they were the con servators and interpreters of religion. The vows, they pronounced, bound them to their company, as indissolubly as the interest and politics of the Egyptian priests fixed them in the sacred college of Memphis. Like those ancient priests, they subjected all who aspired to membership in the Order to the severest trials; like them, they sent forth missionaries to propagate and interpret the faith; they were the counselors of princes, and the educators of statesmen.
But the Order lost its power, and received the condemnation of the world as soon as it became the ally of despots and made a traffic of the rights of man. After the Order of Jesus had fallen from its high estate, and became merely a secret society of political agitators and intriguers, some ardent and enthusiastic men conceived the idea of superseding it by a new Order that should retain all the good of the old, and be better adapted to the circumstances of modern times, and the wants of modern society. The Society of the Illuminati and that of the Rosecrucians were formed with this aim and purpose. The adepts of the Illuminati were governed by rules nearly identical with those of the Jesuits, and the whole machinery of the two orders was constructed after the same idea.