"As a vowed teacher of the true faith, and a preacher of the holy Gospel," replied the Dominican, "I would warn you, my son, against any hesitation in those particulars where your eternal salvation is concerned. In matters of faith, as in matters of virtue, there can be but one right and wrong: there is no middle course in religion; and, if you are a true Catholic, holding the doctrines of the apostolic church, and reverencing that authority which the Saviour of mankind transferred to blessed St. Peter and his successors, you must hold the enemies of that church, who oppose its doctrines, and strive for its overthrow, as blasphemous and sacrilegious heretics, whose existence is an ulcer in the state, whose very neighbourhood is dangerous, and whose companionship is a pest. You must hold those who, pretending to be apostolic Catholics, support, maintain and consort with the enemies of that religion, as even worse than those enemies themselves, inasmuch as they add hypocrisy and falsehood to heresy and sacrilege; and when you perceive that every vice which can degrade human nature characterises those who are thus apostates to the church, and protectors of heresy, you will see the natural consequences which fall upon such as disobey the injunctions of the church they acknowledge, and the punishment that will attend all those who uphold a foul and evil cause,--disgrace, dishonour, loss of their own esteem, crimes that they once regarded with horror; in this life infamy, misfortune, and reverse; speedy death; and then eternal condemnation." In the same strain the Prior proceeded for some time, enlarging, and not without eloquence, upon all the common topics with which the preachers of the League were accustomed to stir up the fanatical spirit of their auditors. He touched also upon St. Real's own situation, his power of choosing, at that moment, between good and bad: he spoke of the unquestionable honour and high repute of many of the leaders of his faction; he painted in the most dark and terrible colours the vices and the crimes that stained the court of Henry III.; and he artfully glossed over, or passed in silence, all that could be detrimental to his own party in the opinion of an honourable and an upright gentleman. He said nothing of the ambition, the rapacity, the debauchery, the prostitution of feeling, honour, virtue, patriotism, to the basest party purposes and the most sordid self-interests, which disgraced the faction of the League.