278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of Cain to Abel--but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos; Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these; let him at least assume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his country, there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister's ruin.
279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed enemies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church's virtue, or insolent in declamation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good.