260 ST. MARK’S REST

to say, in every case, of nine-tenths of the religion of this world.

67. With no less thankfulness for the lesson, than shame for what it showed, I have myself been forced to recognize the degree in which all my early work on Venetian history was paralyzed by this petulance of sectarian egotism;¹ and it is among the chief advantages I possess for the task now undertaken in my closing years, that there are few of the errors against which I have to warn my readers, into which I have not myself at some time fallen. Of which errors, the chief, and cause of all the rest, is the leaning on our own understanding; the thought that we can measure the hearts of our brethren, and judge of the ways of God. Of the hearts of men, noble, yet “deceitful above all things, who can know them?”²-that infinitely perverted scripture is yet infinitely true. And for the ways of God! Oh, my good and gentle reader, how much otherwise would not you and I have made this world?

¹ [See below, § 88, p. 277.]

² [Jeremiah xvii. 9.]

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