[311] "If the State of which we are the secular children passes away, that of which we are spiritual children passes not. Has God gone to sleep and let the house be destroyed, or let in the enemy through want of watchfulness? Why fearest thou when earthly kingdoms fall? Heaven is promised thee, that thou mightest not fall with them. The works of God Himself shall pass: how much sooner the works of Romulus! Let us not quail, my brethren: all earthly kingdoms must come to an end."
[312] "The cry of the whole world is 'Christ.' The mind is horrified in reviewing the ruins of our age. The Roman world is falling, and yet our stiff neck is not bent. The barbarians' strength is in our sins; the defeat of the Roman armies in our vices. We will not cut off the occasions of the malady, that the malady may be healed. The world is falling, but in us there is no falling off from sin" (St. Jerome, ep. 35, ad Heliodorum; ep. 98, ad Gaudentium).
[313] "None are better witnesses of the words of heaven than we, on whom the end of the world has come. We assist at the world's setting, and diseases precede its dissolution" (Expos. Ep. sec. Lucam, x.).
[314] "What is well-nigh all Christendom but a sink of iniquity?" (De Gub. Dei, iii. 9).
[315] "In our age the devil has so defiled everything that scarcely a thing is done without idolatry."
[316] "Do we wonder that God has granted all our lands to the barbarians, when they now purify by their chastity the places which the Romans had polluted with their debauchery?"
[317] Pope Anastasius writes to Clovis: "Sedes Petri in tanta occasione non potest non laetari, cum plenitudinem gentium intuetur ad eam veloci gradu concurrere" (Bouquet, iv. 50).
[318] "The noble people of the Franks, founded by God, converted to the Catholic faith, and free from heresy."
[319] "Vetati sunt a Spiritu sancto loqui verbum Dei in Asia ... Tentabant ire in Bithyniam, et non permisit eos spiritus Jesu" (Acts xvi. 6, 7).
[320] Innocent IV. wrote in 1246 to the Sicilians: "In omnem terram vestrae sonus tribulationis exivit ... multis pro miro vehementi ducentibus, quod pressi tam dirae servitutis opprobrio, et personarum ac rerum gravati multiplici detrimento, neglexeritis habere concilium, per quod vobis, sicut gentibus caeteris, aliqua provenirent solatia libertatis ... super hoc apud sedem apostolicam vos excusante formidine.... Cogitate itaque corde vigili, ut a collo vestrae servitutis catena decidat, et universitas vestra in libertatis et quietis gaudio reflorescat; sitque ubertate conspicuum, ita divina favente potentia secura sit libertate decorum" (Raynaldus, Ann. ad ann. 1246).