Note 190 — Chapter IX · 1560-1600. PROCEEDINGS OF THE JESUITS IN THE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES OF EUROPE.

Sigismond, on the death of his father John, having proceeded from Poland to Upsala for the ceremony of his coronation, the estates peremptorily refused to render him homage, till he had solemnly sworn that the Augsburg Confession should be inculcated everywhere, alone and purely, whether in churches or schools. In this strait, the prince applied to Malaspina, the Pope’s nuncio, to know whether in conscience he could give such promise. The nuncio denied that he could. The king thereupon addressed himself to the Jesuits in his train, and what the nuncio had not dared, they took upon themselves to do. They declared that, in consideration of the necessity, and of the manifest danger in which the sovereign found himself, he might grant the heretics their demands without offence to God.—Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, vol. ii. pp. 147, 8.