The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions, and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.
* Reprinted from Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism: Considered in Their Fundamental Principles by Juan Donoso Cortés, Marquis of Valdegamas, Preserving Christian Publications,2014, p. 3