" Similar the lesson taught us by the overthrow
of Belshazzar when, congratulating himself on the stability of his
throne, and in his excess of arrogance, he insulted the sacred vessels
which his father had plundered from the temple at Jerusalem. I say
taught us, for the foolhardy braggart was past learning anything
himself. Like the yet more silly Herod, who drank in the adulation of
the mob as he sat shimmering in his silver robe and slimed his speech
from his serpent-tongue, he was too inflated and bloated with vanity
to be corrected by wholesome discipline. Both of these rulers were too
self-satisfied to be reproved, and God's exterminating indignation
overtook them. Like empty bubbles, nothing could be done with them,
and hence the breath of the Almighty burst and dispersed their
glittering worthlessness. Pope John XXI., according to Dean Milman, is
another conspicuous monument of this folly. "Contemplating," writes
the historian, "with too much pride the work of his own hands"--the
splendid palace of Viterbo--"at that instant the avenging roof came
down, on his head.
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