V. No stronger proof of the dramatic power of the poem is, perhaps, to be found than that afforded by the criticism quoted below, to which it has seemed almost impossible to avoid reference, bearing as it does the highest literary authority. Browning appears here to be regarded as occupying the position assigned by him to the soliloquist, so completely has he succeeded in identifying himself with his _dramatis persona_. "Of English nonconformity in its humblest forms Browning can write, as it were, from within" [the soliloquist has become a member of the Calvinistic congregation when he narrates his experiences]; "he writes of Roman Catholic forms of worship as one who stands outside" [the position literally and metaphorically assigned to the critic on the threshold-stone of St. Peter's]; "his sympathy with the prostrate multitude in St. Peter's at Rome is of an impersonal kind, founded rather upon the recognition of an objective fact than springing from an instinctive feeling" [May not the sympathy capable of inspiring the closing lines of Section X be taken as indicative of something deeper than this?]. "For a moment he is carried away by the tide of their devout enthusiasms; but he recovers himself to find, indeed, that love is also here, and therefore Christ is present, but the worshippers fallen under 'Rome's gross yoke,' are very infants in their need of these sacred buffooneries and posturings and petticoatings.... And this, though the time has come when love would have them no longer infantile, but capable of standing and walking, 'not to speak of trying to climb.' Such a short and easy method of dealing with Roman Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended for its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same side as Browning without being as crude as he is in misconception. He does not seriously consider the Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own creed, which treats any intermediary between the human soul and the Divine as an obstruction or a veil." Then after quoting the passage describing the soliloquist's final choice: "This was the creed of Milton and of Bunyan; and yet with both Milton and Bunyan the imagery of the senses is employed as the means, not of concealing, but revealing the things of the spirit."[80] Was it not just this inability to seriously consider the things of sense as made luminous by the spirit which Browning wishes to represent as accounting for the otherwise unaccountable presence of the man of culture and intellect in Zion Chapel? Surely to the characteristic weaknesses of the soliloquist, not to the crude misconception of the author, is attributable the intolerance of the criticism, whether directed, as in the earlier Sections, against the congregation of Zion Chapel, or, in the later, against that of St. Peter's?