The conceits of their pulpit oratory, its artificial cadences and flowery verbiage, its theatrical appeals to gross sensations, wrought miracles and converted thousands.
Their sickly Ciceronian style, their sentimental books of piety, 'the worse for being warm,' the execrable taste of their poetry, their flimsy philosophy and disingenuous history, infected the taste of Catholic Europe like a slow seductive poison, flattering and accelerating the diseases of mental decadence.

Sound learning died down beneath the tyranny of the Inquisition, the Index, the Council of Trent, Spain and the Papacy.

A rank growth of unwholesome culture arose and flourished on its tomb under the forcing-frames of Jesuitry.

But if we peruse the records of literature and science during the last three centuries, few indeed are the eminences even of a second order which can be claimed by the Company of Jesus.
The same critique applies to Jesuit morality.

It was the Company's aim to control the conscience by direction and confession, and especially the conscience of princes, women, youths in high position.