Whom they justify, they compliment.

They, seeing all the facts, are not unintelligent of distinctions, as the
world is.

What, to them, is the spot of the error?--admitting it as an error.
They know it for a thing of convention, not of Nature. We stand forth
to plead it in proof of an adherence to Nature's laws: we affirm, that
far from a defilement, it is an illumination and stamp of nobility. On
the beloved who shares it with us, it is a stamp of the highest nobility.
Our world has many ways for signifying its displeasure, but it cannot
brand an angel.

This was another favourite sentence of Love's grand oration for the
defence. So seductive was it to the Powers who sat in judgement on the
case, that they all, when the sentence came, turned eyes upon the angel,
and they smiled.

They do not smile on the condemnable.

She, then, were he rebuked, would have strength to uplift him. And who,
calling her his own, could be placed in second rank among the blissful!

Mr. Radnor could rationally say that he was made for happiness; he flew
to it, he breathed, dispensed it. How conceive the clear-sighted
celestial Powers as opposing his claim to that estate? Not they. He
knew, for he had them safe in the locked chamber of his breast, to yield
him subservient responses. The world, or Puritanic members of it, had
pushed him to the trial once or twice--or had put on an air of doing so;
creating a temporary disturbance, ending in a merry duet with his