The point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder.

Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a time when mortals were divided into almost equal troops.

The age of Philip II.
was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren, of Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue, Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare.

It was not an age of blindness, but of glorious light.

If the man whom the Maker of the Universe had permitted to be born to such boundless functions, chose to put out his own eyes that he might grope along his great pathway of duty in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he must be judged.