And here we should especially observe that Leo X., though in the management of general affairs a man of consummate skill, prompt, adroit, and energetic; yet, in reference to the storm arising beyond the Alps, seemed bereft of his accustomed policy, while they were endued with uncommon sagacity who were undermining his throne, and plucking from his crown its richest gems. The cardinals, his advisory council, appeared, in the language of Scripture, to have lost their hands, and were strangely blind; but Leo himself was most like the son of Balak, whose common sight was darkened, as much as the eyes of his mind were open, who, when he stood upon the commanding height, foresaw the advent of the Messiah, and foreknew the countless hosts of the spiritual Israel, yet pushed against the armed angel of the Lord more stupidly than the ass he bestrode.
When the reformation of the sixteenth century broke out, Catholicism, like Tithonus of the fable, had reached the last stage of decrepitude, without being permitted to die. The work of resuscitation was greatly needed, and might have been much more thoroughly done. Religion, while she exults in every recent auxiliary to her cause, and is especially grateful for each searching trial that may have purged her holy flame, can not with ingratitude forget the papal domination which kept it burning through long centuries of obscurest gloom. The agency of Luther was a notable episode in progressive history, but nothing about it was either isolated or accidental. The aim of divine interference is clearly discernible through it all, and the means employed were as strongly marked, as they were manifestly fitted for the parts they performed. A regular system of conserving causes prepared for the crisis, by which, and in the results thus accruing, the sovereign design was sublimely exposed. As soon as the desired end had been accomplished, the whole system began to dissolve, and a new cycle succeeded, which was also in turn to have its end.
It was neither Romanism, nor Germanism, that was destined to mold the sacred institutions of a new world, not even the more republican Frenchism elaborated by the frigid dialectician at Geneva; but the gospel of Jesus, with all its blessed freedom, completely disenthralled from priestly dictation and arbitrary creeds. English independency was the true spark struck from the Eternal Rock; and when, like the post-diluvian altar of Noah, it burned on the heights of America's eastern coast, it was manifestly the will of Providence that with augmented might it should sweep westward to enlighten and redeem the world.
WASHINGTON;
OR,
THE AGE OF UNIVERSAL AMELIORATION.
PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.
"Antiquity deserveth that reverence that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression."—Lord Bacon.
"The faith in the perpetual progression of human nature toward perfection—will, in some shape, always be the creed of virtue."—Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
"The Lutheran clergy have exhibited this spirit of priestcraft under their consistorial polity, and the Calvinist under their presbyterian form of government, as much as the Oriental, Roman, and Anglican bishops; it was manifested as much at Wittemberg, Geneva, and Dort, as at Jerusalem, Rome, and Canterbury."—Christian Charles Josias Bunsen.