Montesinos.—­Sir Ghost, you are almost as dreadful an alarmist as our Cumberland cow, who is believed to have lately uttered this prophecy, delivering it with oracular propriety in verse: 

“Two winters, a wet spring,
A bloody summer, and no king.”

Sir Thomas More.—­That prophecy speaks the wishes of the man, whoever he may have been, by whom it was invented:  and you who talk of the progress of knowledge, and the improvement of society, and upon that improvement build your hope of its progressive melioration, you know that even so gross and palpable an imposture as this is swallowed by many of the vulgar, and contributes in its sphere to the mischief which it was designed to promote.  I admit that such an improved condition of society as you contemplate is possible, and hath ought always to be kept in view:  but the error of supposing it too near, of fancying that there is a short road to it, is, of all the errors of these times, the most pernicious, because it seduces the young and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly into an alliance with whatever is flagitious and detestable.  The fact is undeniable that the worst principles in religion, in morals, and in politics, are at this time more prevalent than they ever were known to be in any former age.  You need not be told in what manner revolutions in opinion bring about the fate of empires; and upon this ground you ought to regard the state of the world, both at home and abroad, with fear, rather than with hope.

Montesinos.—­When I have followed such speculations as may allowably be indulged, respecting what is hidden in the darkness of time and of eternity, I have sometimes thought that the moral and physical order of the world may be so appointed as to coincide; and that the revolutions of this planet may correspond with the condition of its inhabitants; so that the convulsions and changes whereto it is destined should occur, when the existing race of men had either become so corrupt as to be unworthy of the place which they hold in the universe, or were so truly regenerate by the will and word of God, as to be qualified for a higher station in it.  Our globe may have gone through many such revolutions.  We know the history of the last; the measure of its wickedness was then filled up.  For the future we are taught to expect a happier consummation.

Sir Thomas More.—­It is important that you should distinctly understand the nature and extent of your expectations on that head.  Is it upon the Apocalypse that you rest them?

Montesinos.—­If you had not forbidden me to expect from this intercourse any communication which might come with the authority of revealed knowledge, I should ask in reply, whether that dark book is indeed to be received for authentic Scripture?  My hopes are derived from the prophets and the evangelists.  Believing in them with a calm and settled faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding which constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear annunciation of that kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of which Christ himself has taught and commanded us to pray.