Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/35

I] must always be considered as an epoch in the religious history of man. Not only was its hostility to the Christian faith the most direct that the world has seen since the days of Julian; not only did it spring, in great measure, out of the corrupt state of the French clergy—the Church of Dubois, of Maury, Sieyes, and Talleyrand; but it possessed in itself that frightful energy which, as has been truly observed by its latest exponent, can only be likened to the propagation of a new religion,—the wild fanaticism, the proselytism, the self-devotion, the crimes, as though of a Western Mahometanism,—of what its own disciples have often called it, an imitation, a parody, a new, distorted edition of the Gospel. It was itself swallowed up in the gulf which it had created. Its traces on European religion have, to all outward appearance, been almost effaced. But as a moral warning to all existing Churches it can never be overlooked; as an interpreter of the great religious storms of former ages it is most instructive; in the inward sifting and trial of the religious thoughts of men, its effects can even now be felt, not only in the country from which it sprang, but even in those most removed from its immediate influence.

And this leads us finally to the third great ecclesiastical system which stands alone and apart, yet with its own peculiar mission, in the general fortunes of the Western Church. At least for