We, looking as we deem on the Papacy
trembling to its fall, can very imperfectly enter into the awful gravity
of this struggle. To us, the prohibition of an Alexander Borgia may seem
of small account, and his anathema of small weight in the councils of the
universe. But it was otherwise with Savonarola: the Monk-apostle,
trained and vowed to unqualified obedience, has thus forced on him the
most difficult problem of his time. This to him more than earthly
authority, the visible embodiment of the Divine on earth, the direct and
only representative of the one authority of God in Christ, has declared
his course to be a course of error and sin. Shall he accept or reject
the decision? To reject, is to break with the supposed tradition of
fourteen centuries, and with all his own past training, predilections,
and habits of thought; it is to nullify his own voluntary act of the
past, accepting implicit obedience, and to go forth on a path which has
thenceforth no outward guidance, light, or stay. To accept, is to break
with all his own truest and deepest past, to abandon all that for him
gives truth and reality to life, and to retire to his cell, and limit his
attention thenceforth--if he can--to making the "salvation" of his own
soul secure.
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