"Bede's account of the Ayrshire seer's vision gives Purgatory in words very like Dante's description of the second stormy circle in Hell; and the angel which ultimately saves the Scotchman from the fiends comes through hell, 'quasi fulgor stellae micantis inter tenebras'--'qual sul presso del mattino Per gli grossi vapor Marte rosseggia.' Bede's name was great in the middle ages. Dante meets him in Heaven, and, I like to hope, may have been helped by the vision of my fellow-countryman more than six hundred years before."] 56. Neither do I know nor care to know--at what time the notion of Justification by Faith, in the modern sense, first got itself distinctively fixed in the minds of the heretical sects and schools of the North. Practically its strength was founded by its first authors on an asceticism which differed from monastic rule in being only able to destroy, never to build; and in endeavouring to force what severity it thought proper for itself on everybody else also; and so striving to make one artless, letterless, and merciless monastery of all the world. Its virulent effort broke down amidst furies of reactionary dissoluteness and disbelief, and remains now the basest of popular solders and plasters for every condition of broken law and bruised conscience which interest can provoke, or hypocrisy disguise. 57. With the subsequent quarrels between the two great sects of the corrupted church, about prayers for the Dead, Indulgences to the Living, Papal supremacies, or Popular liberties, no man, woman, or child need trouble themselves in studying the history of Christianity: they are nothing but the squabbles of men, and laughter of fiends among its ruins. The Life, and Gospel, and Power of it, are all written in the mighty works of its true believers: in Normandy and Sicily, on river islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks of Orvieto, and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the active mind of North Europe, is this on the foundation stones of Amiens. 58. Believe it or not, reader, as you will: understand only how thoroughly it _was_ once believed; and that all beautiful things were made, and all brave deeds done in the strength of it--until what we may call 'this present time,' in which it is gravely asked whether Religion has any effect on morals, by persons who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either Religion or Morality. Concerning which dispute, this much perhaps you may have the patience finally to read, as the Fleche of Amiens fades in the distance, and your carriage rushes towards the Isle of France, which now exhibits the most admired patterns of European Art, intelligence, and behaviour.