capable of a single great conception since the separation of
Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance.
Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist
merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate
itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became
themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was
turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of
both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's
people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and
died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been
borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of
faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was
borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony
or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an
intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further
use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship
the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come,
then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us
know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed
to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look
upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her
palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the
sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we
shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on
which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should
efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished
it."