"Oh, Cornelia, how I pity you!" said Severinus, as he leaned against an oak, covering his dark eyes with his hand, while his breast rose and fell as if he were struggling for breath. "Cornelia," he suddenly exclaimed, encircling her forehead with both hands, "free your mind, your godlike mind, from the clutches of this prejudice; cast aside the arrogance of independent judgment; bend your haughty brow in obedience to our church. Oh, if I could give you the blessing to be found in unconditional submission,--blind faith,--I would willingly sacrifice my life to save for the church this soul, which has no peer in human form! Cornelia, a fiend has taken possession of you; that of pride, doubt, indifference. He has concealed himself under the false lustre of an abstract reverence for God, to lull your conscience to sleep, in order that you may the more surely fall into unbelief and destruction." He suddenly threw himself at her feet, and gazed despairingly into her eyes. "Here I lie before you in the dust, and I plead in infinite anguish for the precious imperiled property of Christ. The next moment of time may perhaps decide your fate, and part us forever. Cornelia, join our church; believe me, she alone can save you." "Oh, God, how hardly you try me! You wrong me, Severinus. No evil spirit, no prejudice, guides me. Have you ever seen me arrogant? If I were, should I not go over to you? for you have opened the most tempting prospects to my pride; you would halt my conversion with joy, and receive me with every kind of pomp and distinction. My self-love would be so greatly flattered that it would far, far outweigh the self-denial of an outward subordination to the church, while in my own congregation no one asks about Cornelia Erwing. But I cannot thus belie myself. Do not sadden my heart with entreaties and lamentations: convince me, Severinus; for so long as you do not succeed in that I can do nothing but weep, because I must grieve my best friend so deeply." "Convince you!" cried Severinus, starting up. "If the whole gigantic structure of our religion, whose foundations certainly do not rest upon air, the marvels of our worship, the words of the fathers of the church, the historical proofs of our traditions which reach beck to the time of the establishment of Catholicism by Peter himself, could not convince you, there is nothing left for me to say." "All that, my friend, even granting that they were proofs, could not make me forget the causes of the Reformation. The Reformation is the mother of my faith." "Ah, do not utter these words in the same breath! What had your Reformation in common with faith? Were your dry, philosophical Melanchthon, your rough, sensual Luther, your chiding, physically and morally starving Hutten, representatives of a religious transformation?"