"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

98 "SAM:" OR, THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY.
in a short time, the Roman religion, founded in ancient
and deep-rooted prejudices, supported by the two greatest
powers in the world, the Pope and the Emperor, defended by
all the bishops and priests who lived luxuriously by it, was
overturned throughout a great part of Europe.
Now was the time, when gloom had settled upon the cupola:
of St. Peter's, when the thunders of the Vatican were tamed,
and the debauched and hoary despotism of Rome tottered on
a throne of straw-now was the time which was to add terror
to terror, crime to crime, which, in a new birth of darkness,
was to people earth with incarnate ghosts more drear and
powerful of evil than the creatures of a supernal hell.
The period had come when, in the dulcet language of the
Fathers of the Church, it was declared " that, as from time
to time new heresies have inflicted the Church of God, so
He has raised up holy men to combat them; and as he had
raised up St. Dominic against the Albigenses and Vaudois,
so He sent Loyola and his disciples against the Lutherans
and Calvinists.""
It is of this new mystery, according to such authority,
"raised up by God," to resist those elements out of which
the birth of Sam came, that we would now proceed to narrate.
Helyot, Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, Religieux et Militaires, tome
vii, p. 452. When we have modern authors we quote from Sacchinus Orlandinus, etc., we shall quote them, as books are easily to be had.