rt from which there can be but darkness
and damnation. I quite understand that what you mean to imply is a return
to early Christianity. But the error of so-called Protestantism, so
culpable and so deplorable in its consequences, never had any other
pretext. As soon as one departs from the strict observance of dogma and
absolute respect for tradition one sinks into the most frightful
precipices.... Ah! schism, schism, my son, is a crime beyond
forgiveness, an assassination of the true God, a device of the loathsome
Beast of Temptation which Hell sends into the world to work the ruin of
the faithful! If your book contained nothing beyond those words 'a new
religion,' it would be necessary to destroy and burn it like so much
poison fatal in its effects upon the human soul."

He continued at length on this subject, while Pierre recalled what Don
Vigilio had told him of those all-powerful Jesuits who at the Vatican as
elsewhere remained in the background, secretly but none the less
decisively governing the Church. Was it true then that this pope, whose
opportunist tendencies were so freely displayed, was one of them, a mere
docile instrument in their hands, though he fancied himself penetrated
with the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas? In any case, like them he
compounded with the century, made approaches to the world, and was
willing to flatter it in order that he might possess it. Never before had
Pierre so cruelly realised that the Church was now so reduced that she
could only live by dint of concessions and diplomacy. And he could at
last distinctly picture that Roman clergy which at first is so difficult
of comprehension to a French priest, that Government of the Church,
represented by the pope, the cardinals, and the prelates, whom the Deity
has appointed to govern and administer His mundane possessions--mankind
and the earth. They begin by setting that very Deity on one side, in the
depths of the tabernacle, and impose whatever dogmas they please as so
many essential truths. That the Deity exists is evident, since they
govern in His name which is sufficient for everything. And being by
virtue of their charge the masters, if they consent to sign covenants,
Concordats, it is only as matters of form; they do not observe them, and
never yield to anything but force, always reserving the principle of
their absolute sovereignty which must some day finally triumph. Pending
that day's arrival, they act as diplomatists, slowly c