The General, instead of holding office for a term of years, was to be elected for life, with unlimited command over the whole Order in its several degrees.

He was to be regarded as Christ present and personified.

This autocracy of the General might have seemed to menace the overlordship of the Holy See, but for a fourth vow which the Company determined to adopt.

It ran as follows: 'That the members will consecrate their lives to the continual service of Christ and of the Popes, will fight under the banner of the Cross, and will serve the Lord and the Roman Pontiff as God's vicar upon earth, in such wise that they shall be bound to execute immediately and without hesitation or excuse all that the reigning Pope or his successors may enjoin upon them for the profit of souls or for the propagation of the faith, and shall do so in all provinces whithersoever he may send them, among Turks or any other infidels, to furthest Ind, as well as in the region of heretics, schismatics, or believers of any kind.' Loyola himself drew up these constitutions in five chapters, and had them introduced to Paul III., with the petition that they might be confirmed.

This was in September 1539, and it is singular that the man selected to bring them under the Pope's notice should have been Cardinal Contarini.