"Oh, do not talk so, Severinus, dear, pious father! Do not Look at me so sadly; do not be so stern and bitter, but enjoy with me the blessing of this peaceful morning. Let holy nature be the church in which our souls can unite in adoration of our common God. See, my friend, clearness of vision is as unavoidable a necessity to me as light and air; in clearness of vision God shows himself to me, while you only perceive him in mysteries. In order to see him I open my spiritual eyes; you close yours. I receive his manifestations with sharpened, you with artificially deadened, senses. I see him in each of these light clouds floating over the sunny sky; you darken your churches, and shroud yourselves in clouds of incense, that in the mysterious, rich-hued twilight you may paint a vague, fanciful picture. His natural and moral laws everywhere announce themselves to me in shining characters, and I serve him by cheerful obedience to them; you collect from the ambiguous writings of the Bible a book of church regulations, to which you slavishly submit, and exhaust your hearts and minds the superhuman effort of satisfying all your self-created duties."
"I hope this is not the only result of your observation of our sublime worship. It must be the short residence on this dull German soil which has loosened the strings that resounded so clearly in Rome."
"Do not cherish such a fancy, Severinus," said Cornelia, as she walked up and down the shore with him. "The forms of your worship, as I saw them in Rome, delighted me; nay, their grandeur and poesy aroused a wild enthusiasm. But it was the revelation of art, not that of the Deity, at which I gazed. All your miracles, all your lofty precepts, proved nothing except the grandeur of the human intellect, and in this the existence and influence of a God, which I never doubted, and which had been just as clearly revealed to me in every creation of genius. My God, to whom I pray in childish adoration, has remained the same; he has come from Rome with me the same as he went. You neither strengthened nor shook my belief; I cherish the deepest reverence for your worship of God; it is more beautiful, more sublime, than ours; my heart has opened to much that revealed a character of sincere piety, but I still see in it only a transitory form, liable to alter with the changes of centuries; while I bear within me the imperishable essence, ever the same through the lapse of ages."
"Oh, Cornelia, how I pity you!" said Severinus, as he leaned against an oak, covering his dark eyes with his hand, while his breast rose and fell as if he were struggling for breath. "Cornelia," he suddenly exclaimed, encircling her forehead with both hands, "free your mind, your godlike mind, from the clutches of this prejudice; cast aside the arrogance of independent judgment; bend your haughty brow in obedience to our church. Oh, if I could give you the blessing to be found in unconditional submission,--blind faith,--I would willingly sacrifice my life to save for the church this soul, which has no peer in human form! Cornelia, a fiend has taken possession of you; that of pride, doubt, indifference. He has concealed himself under the false lustre of an abstract reverence for God, to lull your conscience to sleep, in order that you may the more surely fall into unbelief and destruction." He suddenly threw himself at her feet, and gazed despairingly into her eyes. "Here I lie before you in the dust, and I plead in infinite anguish for the precious imperiled property of Christ. The next moment of time may perhaps decide your fate, and part us forever. Cornelia, join our church; believe me, she alone can save you."
"Oh, God, how hardly you try me! You wrong me, Severinus. No evil spirit, no prejudice, guides me. Have you ever seen me arrogant? If I were, should I not go over to you? for you have opened the most tempting prospects to my pride; you would halt my conversion with joy, and receive me with every kind of pomp and distinction. My self-love would be so greatly flattered that it would far, far outweigh the self-denial of an outward subordination to the church, while in my own congregation no one asks about Cornelia Erwing. But I cannot thus belie myself. Do not sadden my heart with entreaties and lamentations: convince me, Severinus; for so long as you do not succeed in that I can do nothing but weep, because I must grieve my best friend so deeply."
"Convince you!" cried Severinus, starting up. "If the whole gigantic structure of our religion, whose foundations certainly do not rest upon air, the marvels of our worship, the words of the fathers of the church, the historical proofs of our traditions which reach beck to the time of the establishment of Catholicism by Peter himself, could not convince you, there is nothing left for me to say."
"All that, my friend, even granting that they were proofs, could not make me forget the causes of the Reformation. The Reformation is the mother of my faith."
"Ah, do not utter these words in the same breath! What had your Reformation in common with faith? Were your dry, philosophical Melanchthon, your rough, sensual Luther, your chiding, physically and morally starving Hutten, representatives of a religious transformation?"
"They were men who had the courage to appear before the hypocrisy of your degenerate priesthood as they really were; who did not seek the halo of sanctity in the denial of human nature, but honored God and his wisdom in his laws. Besides, we too do not lack sainted martyrs, and the flames that consumed a Huss branded an eternal stigma upon your church."
"I cannot argue with you about the means the church was permitted to use against such apostates. I will only tell you, my child, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was nothing more than a secular insurrection against abuses in the church, which unfortunately cannot be denied. But a secular revolution can never create a religion, and therefore Protestantism lacks the positive character the human heart needs, and where it strives to appropriate it, becomes a monster, for it is and remains nothing more than a--protest against Catholicism."