George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[73] thoughts and secret places of every mind, and com-

Chap. II.}

pel assent by fines, imprisonment, excommunication, but especially by the sword and fire. The infallible interpreter of morals may, in unbridled licentiousness, order and do what is right in his own eyes;¹ ruling in all things and never ruled; judging all things and never judged.

In Greece, as may be read in Plato's Republic, ‘mendicant diviners went to rich men's doors, persuading them that they have received from the gods power to absolve a man himself or his forefathers from sins; and for the living and for the dead there are ceremonies which deliver from pains in the life to come; but dreadful things await those neglecting the rite.’² The method practised on a small scale by vagabond prophets in Athens was formed by the papal see into a system for the world; and it filled its treasury by an organized traffic in indulgences and promises of pardon here and beyond the grave. In a decretal of the ninth of November, 1518, Pope Leo the Tenth affirmed his power as the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Christ to remit the sins alike of the living and of the dead.³

All absolute power brings its holders, first or last, to perdition: absolute power over mind, conquered from the emperor and continued for centuries, at last