ions such as those
between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, whose discords
were founded on points admitted by all to be great and essential; the
same principle ran down through all the modes of sectarian combination
as they emerged into life, producing among those of equal power
struggles, and in the strong toward the weak persecution. [Sidenote:
Effect of sectarian disputes.] Very soon the process of decomposition
had advanced to such an extent that minor sects came into existence on
very unessential points. Yet even among these little bodies there was
just as much acrimony, just as much hatred as among the great. These
differences were carried into the affairs of civil life, each sect
forming a society within itself, and abstaining, as far as might be,
from associations with its rivals. Of such a state of things the
necessary result was weakness, and, had there been no other reason, this
in itself would have been quite sufficient in the end to deprive
Protestantism of its aggressive power. An army divided against itself is
in no condition to make warfare against a watchful and vigorous enemy.

[Sidenote: Want of concentrated power.] But this was not all. It was in
the nature of Protestantism from its outset that it was not
constructive. Unlike its great antagonist, it contained no fundamental
principle that could combine distant communities and foreign countries
together. It originated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. It
could not possess a concentrated power, nor recognize one apostolic man
who might compress its disputes, harmonize its powers, wield it as a
mass. For the attainment of his aims the Protestant had only wishes, the
Catholic had a will. The Church of England, of Scotland, or of any other
Protestant nation, undoubtedly did discharge its duty excellently well
for the community in which it was placed, but, at the most, it was only
a purely local institution, altogether insignificant in comparison with
that great old Church, hoary and venerable with age, which had seen
every government and every institution in Europe come into existence,
many of them at its bidding, which had extirpated paganism from the
Roman empire, compelled the Caesars to obey its mandates, precipitated
the whole white race upon the Holy Land--that great old Church, once the
more than imperial sovereign of Christendom, and of which the most
respectable national Church was only a fragment of a fragment.

[Sid