The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 236

When appearing as members of their order, they wore a garb of
sanctity, visiting prisons and hospitals, ministering to the sick and the
poor, professing to have renounced the world, and bearing the sacred
name of Jesus, who went about doing good. But under this blameless
exterior the most criminal and deadly purposes were often concealed.
It was a fundamental principle of the order that the end justifies the
means. By this code, lying, theft, perjury, assassination, were not only
pardonable but commendable, when they served the interests of the
church. Under various disguises the Jesuits worked their way into offices
of state, climbing up to be the counselors of kings, and shaping the policy
of nations. They became servants to act as spies upon their masters.
They established colleges for the sons of princes and nobles, and schools
for the common people; and the children of Protestant parents were
drawn into an observance of popish rites. All the outward pomp and
display of the Romish worship was brought to bear to confuse the mind
and dazzle and captivate the imagination, and thus the liberty for which
the fathers had toiled and bled was betrayed by the sons. The Jesuits
rapidly spread themselves over Europe, and wherever they went, there
followed a revival of popery.
To give them greater power, a bull was issued re-establishing the
inquisition. (See Appendix.) Notwithstanding the general abhorrence
with which it was regarded, even in Catholic countries, this terrible
tribunal was again set up by popish rulers, and atrocities too terrible
to bear the light of day were repeated in its secret dungeons. In many
countries, thousands upon thousands of the very flower of the nation,
the purest and noblest, the most intellectual and highly educated, pious
and devoted pastors, industrious and patriotic citizens, brilliant scholars,
talented artists, skillful artisans, were slain or forced to flee to other
lands.
Such were the means which Rome had invoked to quench the light
of the Reformation, to withdraw from men the Bible, and to restore the
ignorance and superstition of the Dark

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