"This great revival of the papal religion, after the shock it had sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for ever to restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our ears.... In the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have found little else to warrant hope than their trust in heaven. The late rush of many nations toward democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that period. It is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed this current. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness, and unity of purpose that for the most part distinguished the court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigor of the Inquisition, the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith, the influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion. Superstition, it might be, in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion indestructible. That revival of an ardent zeal, through which the Franciscans had, in the thirteenth century, with some good and much more evil effect, spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more displayed in counteraction of those new doctrines that themselves had drawn their life from a similar development of moral emotion."[14] In the Council of Trent were again fulfilled the words of the prophet concerning the Messiah: "Behold, he cometh ... like a refining fire, and like the fuller's herb; and he shall sit refining and cleansing the silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold, and as silver; and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice; and the sacrifice shall please the Lord, as in the days of old, and in the ancient years."[15] The zeal of the fathers did not, it is true, succeed in bringing back all the Protestants; but neither did the Council of Nice succeed with the Arians, or that of Ephesus with the Nestorians, or that of Chalcedon with the followers of Eutyches. But they kept the Catholic faith pure; they sternly applied the pruning-hook to the numerous excrescences which had been allowed to accumulate. God blessed their work; and the tree of life, planted by running waters, again produced new flowers and fruits of holiness.