the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty
empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking
to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the
politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men
to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in
nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did
not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above
them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was,
while leaving to Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, to place a
Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the
legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a
death-blow to Christianity,--to the idea of universal truth, because if
that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the
liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became
ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.

I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it?
Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will
answer you, without hesitation: Liberty comes from the French
revolution!--No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not
forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the
principles which the revolution put in practice.--That is all very well,
a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the
Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its
date.--Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the
Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the
impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of
the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed
to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic
causes. But this I venture to affirm,--that if any one thinks to fix