hypocrites taking pride in their hypocrisy. The many sold and
butchered for the malice, the caprice, the vanity of the few. The
plunderers of the poor plundered in their turn by worse devourers
than themselves. Every attempt at reform the parent of worse
scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties; every persecutor
silenced, only to enable others to persecute him in their turn:
every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven others worsethan
himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion seven
times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere--from the
emperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes
beneath his fetters.'

'If Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom shall not stand.'

'In the world to come. But in this world it shall stand and
conquer, even worse and worse, until the end. These are the last
days spoken of by the prophets,--the beginning of woes such as never
have been on the earth before--"On earth distress of nations with
perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear, and for the dread of
those things which are coming on the earth." I have seen it long.
Year after year I have watched them coming nearer and ever nearer in
their course like the whirling sand-storms of the desert, which
sweep past the caravan, and past again, and yet overwhelm it after
all--that black flood of the northern barbarians. I foretold it; I
prayed against it; but, like Cassandra's of old, my prophecy and my
prayers were alike unheard. My pupil spurned my warnings. The
lusts of youth, the intrigues of courtiers, were stronger than the
warning voice of God; then I ceased to hope; I ceased to pray for
the glorious city, for I knew that her sentence was gone forth; I
saw her in the spirit, even as St. John saw her in the Revelations;