se, to living under
Falsehood,--who, once for all, will not live under Falsehood; but
having drawn the sword against it (the time being come for that rare
and important step), throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious
clearness, with their whole soul: 'Come on, then! Life under Falsehood
is not good for me; and we will try it out now. Let it be to the death
between us, then!'"

Once risen into this divine white-heat of temper, were it only for a
season and not again, the Nation is thenceforth considerable through all
its remaining history. What immensities of DROSS and crypto-poisonous
matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in
the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his Puritans,--making
England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of
centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages, by being
thrown once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no Nation that
has not had such divine paroxysms at any time is apt to come to much.

That was now, in this epoch, the English of "adopting Protestantism;"
and we need not wonder at the results which it has had, and which the
want of it has had. For the want of it is literally the want of loyalty
to the Maker of this Universe. He who wants that, what else has he,
or can he have? If you do not, you Man or you Nation, love the Truth
enough, but try to make a Chapman-bargain with Truth, instead of giving
yourself wholly soul and body and life to her, Truth will not live with
you, Truth will depart from you; and only Logic, "Wit" (for example,
"London Wit"), Sophistry, Virtu, the AEsthetic Arts, and perhaps (for a
short while) Bookkeeping by Double Entry, will abide with you. You will
follow falsity, and think it truth, you unfortunate man or nation. You
will right surely, you for one, stumble to the Devil; and are every day
and hour, little as you imagine it, making progress thither.

Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Poland,--the offer of the Reformation was
made everywhere; and it is curious to see what has become of the nations
that would not hear it. In all countries were some that accepted; but in
many there were not enough, and the rest, slowly or swiftly, with fatal
difficult industry, contrived to burn them out. Austria was once full of
Protestants; but the hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding
over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; we, with our
dull obstinate Cimburgis u