"I can repeat by heart what I read above a year agone, albeit I
cannot bring to mind the title of the book in which I read it.
These are the words, -
"'The most venal and sordid of all the superstitions that have swept
and darkened our globe may, indeed, like African locusts, have
consumed the green corn in very extensive regions, and may return
periodically to consume it; but the strong, unwearied labourer who
sowed it hath alway sown it in other places less exposed to such
devouring pestilences. Those cunning men who formed to themselves
the gorgeous plan of universal dominion were aware that they had a
better chance of establishing it than brute ignorance or brute force
could supply, and that soldiers and their paymasters were subject to
other and powerfuller fears than the transitory ones of war and
invasion. What they found in heaven they seized; what they wanted
they forged.
"'And so long as there is vice and ignorance in the world, so long
as fear is a passion, their dominion will prevail; but their
dominion is not, and never shall be, universal. Can we wonder that
it is so general? Can we wonder that anything is wanting to give it
authority and effect, when every learned, every prudent, every
powerful, every ambitious man in Europe, for above a thousand years,
united in the league to consolidate it?
"'The old dealers in the shambles, where Christ's body is exposed
for sale in convenient marketable slices, {111a} have not covered
with blood and filth the whole pavement.
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