Each Worships After The Fashion Of His Fathers Before Him, And Each,
By The Dim Illumination Of His Own Particular Light, Fancies Himself
Upon The True Path, And Is Able Plainly To Perceive His Neighbour
Groping In The Outer Darkness.
Seeing all this, and turning in imagination to other lands, it is
curious to consider that the Church which
Possesses the only Lamp
of Truth, and who by the help of its light pronounces all these
zealous worshippers alike, to be but "Infidels and Turks," and
says to all, in language not quite so polite as that of Touchstone,
"Truly, shepherds, ye are in a parlous state," herself makes no such
public demonstration of her faith. To an Eastern infidel travelling
in the West, she would even appear, to outward eye, a tenfold greater
infidel than her neighbours. Except on one day in seven, he would
seldom find a place of public worship open to his gaze, while the Name
which he himself has learned to reverence to such a degree that every
scrap of paper that might chance to bear it, is sacred in his eyes,
he might hear a thousand times, and perhaps not once in adoration;
and while it commences every action of his own life he would there
find it utterly excluded from its accustomed place. Even the form of
parting salutation, which in almost all lands - Infidel and Heretical
- greets him in the name of God, would, in Protestant England, fall
upon his ear with no such signification.
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