Deprived of their native resources, their ancient independence of spirit, as well as of the laws, customs, institutions, and leaders, that had kept them together under their old dynasties, and now deserted by their foreign protectors, they were apparently left at the mercy of blind fortune, the wretched vicissitudes of which there was none to foresee, none to resist.

The glory of the Romans now passed away.

The mighty fabric of their own proud empire crumbled into ruins.

Civil liberty gave place to barbarism; Christian truth, to papal superstition; and the lights of science were put out by both.

The shades of night gathered over all; settling and condensing, "till almost every point of that wide horizon, over which the Sun of Righteousness had diffused his cheering rays, was enveloped in a darkness more awful and more portentous than that which of old descended upon rebellious Pharaoh and the callous sons of Ham."-- _Hints on Toleration_, p.