to the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore,
have no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus,
while they agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they
dispute, nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his
attributes. While they agree that his pretended transformation into man
is an enigma above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction
or distinction of his two wills and his two natures, on his change
of substance, on the real or fictitious presence, on the mode of
incarnation, etc.

Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have
already perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist,
display those numberless banners which here distract your sight.

The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic
dress, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled
garments--with heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair--with
red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the
standard of the Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to
the priesthood, has erected the supremacy of his city into a point of
religion, and made of his pride an article of faith.

On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of
his metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians,