the arts of peace, at least five hundred thousand men, in the prime of Hfe, have been massacred by the folly of one Christian emperor, the insolence of another, and the mingling of mean rapacity with meaner vanity, which Christian nations now call 'patriotism.'
248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his brother,) who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged to murder, were still too savage to conceive the spirit or the character of this Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to you; not, I imagine, without question from many who have been accustomed to look to these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in example. We alike err in supposing them more spiritual, or more dark, than our own. They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have despised, nor dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have again overclouded ours.
Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged indeed with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed storm; while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of misguided pools; and are pestilential most surely as they retire.
