not the avowed object of his ambition, to succeed Damasus as Bishop of Rome. Is the rejection of an aspirant so singularly unfit for the station, from his violent passions, his insolent treatment of his adversaries, his utter want of self-command, his almost unrivalled faculty of awakening hatred, to be attributed to the sagacious and intuitive wisdom of Rome?" ('History of Latin Christianity' Book I., chap, ii.)
33. You may observe, as an almost unexceptional character in the "sagacious wisdom" of the Protestant clerical mind, that it instinctively assumes the desire of power and place not only to be universal in Priesthood, but to be always purely selfish in the ground of it. The idea that power might possibly be desired for the sake of its benevolent use, so far as I remember, does not once occur in the pages of any ecclesiastical historian of recent date. In our own reading of past ages we will, with the reader's permission, very calmly put out of court all accounts of "hopes cherished in secret"; and pay very small attention to the reasons for mediaeval conduct which appear logical to the rationalist, and probable to the politician[1]We concern ourselves only with
- ↑ The habit of assuming, for the conduct of men of sense and feeling, motives intelligible to the foolish, and probable to the base, gains upon every vulgar historian, partly in the ease of it, partly in the pride ; and it is horrible to contemplate the quantity of false witness against their
