The Jesuits […] are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for emperor… that’s their ideal, but without any mysteries or exalted melancholy. It is simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination–something like a universal serfdom with them as masters–that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God perhaps.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”, 1880
