conserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all
the philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the
literature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that
remained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times--the
mediaeval clerics were the great conservators of knowledge, which we
inherit directly from Europe; and we should be, therefore, grateful to
them equally with Mohammedanism, from which we received, through the
Crusaders and the Moors, the basis of nearly all science and luxury,
from Asia. There were, undoubtedly, many bad popes, men as bad as the
incestuous, and, according to the recent dogma, the infallible
Alexander Borgia; priests who are not all vile, but many nobler than
their system, acknowledge this with regret, and among whom there are
some whom I can reverence, such as John Henry Newman, for instance,
whose life would favorably compare with that of Shelley, or any
liberal. There have been popes, also, whose lives have been as pure,
as disinterested, and as virtuous as that of any stoic or epicurean.
We owe much to Sixtus the Fifth, founder of the Vatican Library, and
would-be regenerator of order in his temporal dominions; to Leo the
Great, whose patronage of the arts has sent us down the wondrous
statuary, painting, and works of genius, which are the admiration of
the world; and to Hildebrand, who brought together, in one harmonious
whole, the struggling elements of European society. It is well to
note, too, in order that I may not be misunderstood, that Catholicism
is better than savage Fetishism, and Rationalism in degree superior to
either; and, further, that Liberalism should only war with evil
principles, and not with men whom they are generally the exponents of
ignorantly, and to the best of their knowledge. Comtism[D]
acknowledges the fact that Christianity was not simply a mere advance
on, but where we shall only find the civilization of Europe as it was
during mediaeval times, and recognizes this most strongly, by placing