general plague, to rage as long as any remained for victims. [Footnote: In
the interval since this was written, some change has taken place in favor
of the admission of the elements of knowledge, in the capital, and in the
second city of the Mohammedan regions; but with very slight alterative
influence on the mass; and with respect to the faith, probably none at
all. Within this interval, also, the central power has been hastening
rapidly to its catastrophe.]

* * * * *

But let us now look, for a moment, at the intellectual state of the people
denominated Christian, during the ages preceding the Reformation. The best
of all the acquisitions by earth from heaven, Christianity, might have
seemed to bring with it an inevitable necessity of a great and permanent
difference soon to be effected, in regard to the competence of men's
knowledge to prevent their destruction. It was as if, in the physical
system, some one production, far more salutary to life than all the other
things furnished from the elements, had been reserved by the Creator to
spring up in a later age, after many generations of men had been
languishing through life, and prematurely dying, from the deficient virtue
of their sustenance and remedies. The image of the inestimable plant had
been shown to the prophets in their visions, but the reality was now given
to the world; it was of "wholly a right seed," "had the seed in itself,"
and claimed to be cultivated by the people, who in every land were
suffering the maladies which it had the properties to heal. But, while by
the greater part of mankind it was not accounted worth admission to a
place on their blasted, desolated soil, the manner in which its virtue was
frustrated among those who pretended to esteem it, as it was, the best
gift of the divine beneficence, is recorded in eternal reproach of the
Christian nations.