which alone entrance was to be gained into the inner chamber of divine love. This is the real meaning that underlies the bizarre and at times extravagant humour of the dialogue: it points out the purification to which the human soul must submit before it can become a fitting vessel for the divine enthusiasm. [Sidenote: Faith and works.] Before a purer morality can be taught to any avail, there must exist a desire for it in the minds of those to whom it shall be revealed. In the way of Bruno's proposed reformation there stood the attitude of the Church and of the religious orders towards "faith" and towards "works" respectively. Faith meant merely professed belief in, or acceptance of, their doctrines, and conformity with their practices--blind acceptance and unreasoning conformity--in contrast with which an earthly life that was simply moral was held to be of no value towards the blessed life hereafter. Under the influence of this spirit the worst vices were practised, condoned, and pardoned, even in Bishops and Cardinals, not to speak of the ordinary priests and monks. It is only as embodying this conception that Bruno attacked the Church. Thus Jupiter, in the _Spaccio_, complains that his powers are decaying:--"I have not vigour enough to pit myself against certain half-men, and I must, to my great chagrin, leave the world to run its course as chance and fortune direct. I am like the old lion of Æsop--the ass kicked it with impunity, the ape played tricks upon it, the pig came and rubbed its dusty paunch upon it, as if it were some lifeless log. My noble oracles, fanes, and altars are thrown down, and most unworthily desecrated; while altars and statues are raised there to some whom I am ashamed to name, for they are worse than our satyrs, fauns, and other half-beasts, viler than the crocodiles of Egypt; for these at least showed some mark of divinity when magically guided, but those are quite the scum of the earth."[439] Bruno is ironically contrasting the Christian ideal, as he interprets it, with that of the Greeks and Egyptians. The former is that of a being only half-human, half-free; on one side of his nature he is reduced to the level of the beast, the ass, the bearer of burdens, unquestioning, faithful. Again, one of the constellations, the _Corona Borealis_, is to be left in the heavens, escaping the general fate,[440] until the time when it shall be given in reward to "the invincible arm that shall bring peace, the long-desired, to a miserable, long-suffering Europe, cutting down the many heads of that worse than Lernean monster that is scattering its fateful poison of manifold heresy, and sending it through every portion of her veins."[441] To this decision of Jupiter, Momus, the critic and wit of the assembly, adds that it would be enough "if a certain sect of pedants could be rooted out, who, doing no good themselves, as the divine and natural law bade, yet thought themselves, and desired to