re traitors against the Giver
of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let
whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with _it_ we can have no
farther trade!--Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible
for wars; the false Simulacra that forced him to protest, they are
responsible. Luther did what every man that God has made has not only
the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood
when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?--No!--At what cost soever,
without counting of costs, this thing behooved to be done. Union,
organization spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or
Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world;
sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will
it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded
on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have
anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave
is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!

And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let
us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it no longer is. In
Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty,
to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul
of it a deathless good. The cry of "No Popery" is foolish enough in
these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new
chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very
curious: to count up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant
logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls
itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is _dead_; Popeism is
more alive than it, will be alive after it!--Drowsy inanities, not a
few, that call themselves Protestant are dead; but _Protestantism_ has
not died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in
these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the
French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom,
what else is alive _but_ Protestantism? The life of most else that one
meets is a galvanic one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of
life!

Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery
cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,--_which_ also still
lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with the