irreverence, self-idolatry, blindness, follow in their course, and the
whole nature loses its balance and becomes through pride a pitiful
wreck.

The assenting mind has its own possibilities for good and evil, more
human than those of Nonconformity, for "pride was not made for men"
(Ecclus. x 22), less liable to great catastrophes, and in general
better adapted for all that belongs to the service of God and man. It
is a happy endowment, and the happiness of others is closely bound up
with its own. Again, its faults being more human are more easily
corrected, and fortunately for the possessor, punish themselves more
often. This favours truthfulness in the mind and humility in the
soul--the spirit of the _Confiteor_. Its dangers are those of too easy
assent, of inordinate pursuit of particular good, of inconstancy and
variability, of all the humanistic elements which lead back to
paganism. The history of the Renaissance in Southern Europe testifies
to this, as it illustrates in other countries the development of the
spirit of Nonconformity and revolt. Calvinism and a whole group of
Protestant schools of thought may stand as examples of the spirit of
denial working itself out to its natural consequences; while the
exaggerations of Italian humanism, frankly pagan, are fair
illustrations of the spirit of assent carried beyond bounds. And those
centuries when the tide of life ran high for good or evil, furnish
instances in point abounding with interest and instruction, more
easily accessible than what can be gathered from modern characters, in
whom less clearly defined temperaments and more complex conditions of
life have made it harder to distinguish the characteristic features of
the mind. To mention only one or two--St. Francis of Sales and Blessed
Thomas More were great assentors, so were Pico de Mirandola and the
great Popes of the Renaissance, an example of a great Nonconformist is