1880

“We can only estimate correctly the Reformation, when we rightly understand the state of things in the Church which called for it. If it was not necessary, it ought not to have taken place.

“You see, now, why the Church of of Rome abhors your schools. It is because you want to make men, and she wants to make brutes. You want to raise men to the highest sphere to which his intelligence can allow him to reach; she wants to keep him in the dust, at the feet of the priests; you want to form free citizens, she wants to form abject and obedient slaves of the priests; you teach man to keep his sacred promises and stand by his oath, she teaches him that the Pope has the right to dissolve the most sacred promises, and to annul all his oaths, even the oath of allegiance to his country…

“God is a Sovereign and a Judge as well as a Father; and there come crises when it would but be weakness in him not to be inflexible in severity. The safety of the universe throughout unceasing ages demands that God illustrate everlasting justice upon sinners, as well as that.

"It is a love story, pure and simple, of the type that belongs to no age or clime or school, because it is the story of the love that has been common to humanity, wherever it has been lifted above the level of the brutes.