Day by day they put forth fresh treatises, aroused
fierce controversies, subsided into new sects; and day by day they
altered more and more the once noble aspect of the ancient basilica.
They hung their nauseous relics on its mighty walls, they stuck their
tiny tapers about its glorious pillars, they wreathed their tawdry
fringes around its massive altars. Here they polished, there they
embroidered. Wherever there was a window, they curtained it with gaudy
cloths; wherever there was a statue, they bedizened it with artificial
flowers; wherever there was a solemn recess, they outraged its religious
gloom with intruding light; until (arriving at the period we write of)
they succeeded so completely in changing the aspect of the building,
that it looked, within, more like a vast pagan toyshop than a Christian
church. Here and there, it is true, a pillar or an altar rose
unencumbered as of old, appearing as much at variance with the frippery
that surrounded it as a text of Scripture quoted in a sermon of the
time.
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