"My dear, friend," I replied, "what you say is excellent. It never struck me before, and certainly books would never have imparted it to me. I thank you for the lesson, and again repeat, that though I quit with sorrow the one Rome I so much love, I do so execrating from my soul the other that I so much hate; and who can say whether you do not hate it even more than I do, and did not hate it long before I did; for you have known it longer and better than I have! But tell me another thing, (and may the blessing of God be with you!)--Do you think this wicked Rome--this Babylon, as you call it, and which St. John the Evangelist calls 'the great whore,' 'with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication,'[56]--do you think it will always remain in such transgressions, or do you believe a day will come in which popish Rome will be reformed, and that we shall unite with the Protestants to form one only church; that is, one and the same body of believers in the pure doctrine of ancient Christianity? Tell me truly your opinion--do you prophesy that it will be so?" "I will tell you what I think; but first I will say that which I believe. I believe that popish Rome will be destroyed. The eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse strengthens me in this belief. I also think that papal Rome can in no way reform itself. Popes are bound hand and foot, so that they cannot move. Popery is become immovable--a petrifaction. Can she alter her creed to anything different from that composed by Pius IV.? She must first destroy the Council of Trent. Can the Latin Church return to the faith of the Greek Church, in all in which the latter is right? She must first destroy the Council of Florence. Can she, in short, be brought to approve the doctrine that the Reformers profess? and that, too, after having burnt as many of the Reformers themselves as she could get into her clutches? This outrage was first committed by the Council of Constance, by which those two holy men, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, were sentenced to be burnt alive! Would Rome, then, condemn the Council of Constance? The French, in one of their Gallic propositions,[57] (which, by-the-bye, is not prohibited,[58]) would come forward and say that the council is superior to the pope, and cannot be destroyed by him. So you see that Rome has deprived herself of every means of extrication, and shut the door upon the possibility of return. "Papal Rome must therefore necessarily remain as she is, or cease to exist. But she will never die by her own hand, and she will make every possible struggle against any other that may be lifted up to give her her death-stroke; unless it be the hand of God, which, let us hope, will strike her so surely that she shall never raise her head again. So be it. Amen. And this may be the case even in our time. Do you not think, indeed, that she herself is hastening the moment, and that, as David says, she will fall into the pit she has dug for others?