The
following memorable words were written over five hundred and sixty
years ago, while Dante was still a member of the Roman Catholic
Church:- "Every Divine law is found in one or other of the two
Testaments; but in neither can I find that the care of temporal
matters was given to the priesthood. On the contrary, I find that
the first priests were removed from them by law, and the later
priests, by command of Christ, to His disciples."--DE MONARCHIA,
lib. iii. cap. xi.
Dante also, still clinging to 'the Church he wished to reform,'
thus anticipated the fundamental doctrine of the Reformation:-
"Before the Church are the Old and New Testament; after the
Church are traditions. It follows, then, that the authority
of the Church depends, not on traditions, but traditions
on the Church."
(20) 'Blackwood's Magazine,' June, 1863, art. 'Girolamo
Savonarola.'
(21) One of the last passages in the Diary of Dr. Arnold, written
the year before his death, was as follows:- "It is the misfortune
of France that her 'past' cannot be loved or respected--her
future and her present cannot be wedded to it; yet how can the
present yield fruit, or the future have promise, except their
roots be fixed in the past? The evil is infinite, but the blame
rests with those who made the past a dead thing, out of which no
healthful life could be produced."--LIFE, ii. 387-8, Ed.
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