We have explained that owing to the profanations and impieties of Gnostics the Church proscribed Magic. The condemnation of the Knights Templar completed the rupture, and from this time forward, compelled to seek concealment and plan revenge in the shadows, Magic ostracised the Church in turn. More prudent than those arch-heretics who opposed altar to altar in public day, and thus entailed denunciation and the headsman’s axe on themselves, the adepts dissimulated their resentment as well as their doctrines. They bound themselves together by dreadful oaths and, realising the importance of first securing a favourable view at the tribunal of public opinion, they turned back on their accusers and judges the sinister rumours by which they were pursued themselves and denounced the priesthood to the people as a school of Black Magic. So long as his convictions and beliefs are not rooted in the irremovable foundation of reason, man ardently and indifferently desires both truth and falsehood; on either side he finds that there are cruel reactions. Who shall put an end to this warfare? Only the spirit of Him who has said: “Render not evil for evil, but overcome evil by good.” The Catholic priesthood has been charged with the spirit of persecution, though its mission is that of the good Samaritan, for which reason it superseded the unpitying Levites who continued their way without extending compassion to him who had fallen among thieves. It is in the exercise of humanity that priests prove their Divine consecration. Hence it is a supreme injustice to cast upon sacerdotalism at large the crimes or certain men who are unfortunately sealed with the priesthood. For a man, as such, it is always possible to be wicked; but a true priest is, on the contrary, always charitable. Now, the false adepts did not look at the question from this standpoint;[218] for them the Christian priesthood was made void and was hence an usurping power since the proscription of the Gnostics. What, said they, is a hierarchy whose degrees are no longer regulated by conscience? The same ignorance of the Mysteries and the same blind faith drive into the same fanaticism or the same hypocrisy the prime leaders and lowest ministers of the sanctuary. The blind are leaders of the blind. The supremacy between equals is no longer anything but the result of intrigue and chance. The pastors consecrate the sacred elements with a gross and disordered faith; they are jugglers in bread and eaters of human flesh; they are no longer thaumaturgists but sorcerers. Such was the sectarian verdict. To support the calumny they invented fables, affirming for example that the popes had been given over to the spirit of darkness ever since the tenth century. The learned Gerbert, who was crowned as Sylvester II, made confession—as it is said—to this effect on his death-bed. Honorius III, being he who confirmed the Order of St. Dominic and preached the Crusades,