Macaulay on the Catholic Church

There is not and never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church ... She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had crossed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St Paul's.

From Lord Macaulay's review of Von Ranke's Political History of the Popes in 1840.