The supreme deliberative bodies of the order created, transmitted, and continuously modified its tradition of policy.
This tradition some member, partially initiated into their counsels, may have reduced to precepts in the published _Monita Secreta_ of 1612.

But the quintessential flame which breathed a breath of life into the fabric of the Jesuits through two centuries of organic activity, was far too vivid and too spiritual to be condensed in any charter.

A friar and a jurist, like Sarpi, expected to discover some controlling code.

The public, grossly ignorant of evolutionary laws in the formation of social organisms, could not comprehend the non-existence of this code.
Adventurers supplied the demand from their knowledge of the ruling policy.

But like the _Liber Trium Impostorum_ we may regard the _Monita Secreta_ of the Jesuits as an _ex post facto_ fabrication.
[Footnote 171: _Lettere_, vol.ii.p.