There you see the hand of that aw­ful power, the Ro­man Catholic Church. In two or three lit­tle cen­turies it had con­verted a na­tion of men to a na­tion of worms. Be­fore the day of the Church’s supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man’s pride and spirit and in­de­pen­dence; and what of great­ness and po­si­tion a per­son got, he got mainly by achieve­ment, not by birth. But then the Church came to the front, with an axe to grind; and she was wise, sub­tle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat—or a na­tion; she in­vented “di­vine right of kings,” and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the Beat­i­tudes—wrench­ing them from their good pur­pose to make them for­tify an evil one; she preached (to the com­moner) hu­mil­ity, obe­di­ence to su­pe­ri­ors, the beauty of self-sac­ri­fice; she preached (to the com­moner) meek­ness un­der in­sult; preached (still to the com­moner, al­ways to the com­moner) pa­tience, mean­ness of spirit, non­re­sis­tance un­der op­pres­sion; and she in­tro­duced her­i­ta­ble ranks and aris­toc­ra­cies, and taught all the Chris­tian pop­u­la­tions of the Earth to bow down to them and wor­ship them.