/4-9S 
 MS 
 
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 Prefented to 
 The Cornell University, 1869, 
 
 BY 
 
 Goldwin Smith, M. A. Oxon., 
 
 Regius Profeffor of Hittory in the 
 Univerfity of Oxford. 
 
olin 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029383159 
 
LECTURES 
 
 PRESENT POSITION OF CATHOLICS 
 
 IN ENGLAND: 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE BROTHERS OF THE ORATORY. 
 
 JOHN HENRY ^TEWMAN, D.D. 
 
 PRIEST OF THE CONGREOATION OF ST. PHILIP NERI. 
 
 TEMPUS TACENDI, ET TEMPUS LOQUENDI. 
 
 ILontion: 
 BUEN8 & LAMBEET, 
 
 17, PORTMAN STREET, AND 63, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1851. 
 
TO THE 
 
 MOST REVEREND PAUL, 
 
 LORD ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 
 
 • AND 
 
 PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND. 
 
 My Dear Lord Primate, 
 
 It is the infelicity of the moment at which I 
 write, that it is not allowed me to place the fol- 
 lowing pages under the patronage of the successor 
 of St. Patrick, with the ceremony and observance 
 due to so great a name, without appearing to show 
 disrespect to an Act of Parliament. 
 
 Such appearance a Catholic is bound to avoid, 
 whenever it is possible. The authority of the ' 
 civil power is based on sanctions so solemn and 
 august, and the temporal blessings which all 
 classes derive from its protection are so many, 
 that both on Christian principle and from motives 
 of expedience it is ever a duty, unless religious 
 
IV DEDICATION'. 
 
 considerations interfere, to profess a simple de- 
 ference to its enunciations, and a hearty concur- 
 rence in its very suggestions ; but how can I deny 
 of your Grace what may almost be called a dog- 
 matic fact, that you are what the Catholic Church 
 has made you 1 
 
 Evil, however, is never without its alleviation ; 
 and I think I shall have your Grace's concurrence, 
 if in the present instance I recognize the opera- 
 tion, already commenced, of that unfailing law of 
 Divine Providence, by which all events, prosperous 
 or adverse, are made to tend, in one way or other, 
 to the triumph of our Religion. The violence of 
 our enemies has thrown us back upon ourselves 
 and upon each other ; and, though it needed no 
 adventitious cause to lead me to aspire to the 
 honour of associating my name with that of your 
 Grace, whose kindness I had already experienced, 
 so abundantly when 1 was at Rome, yet the 
 present circumstances furnish a motive of their 
 own, for my turning my eyes in devotion and 
 affection, to the Primate of that ancient and 
 glorious and much enduring Church, who, from 
 her own past history, can teach her restored 
 
DKDICATION. 
 
 English sister how to persevere in the best of 
 causes, and can interchange with her, amid trials 
 common to both, the tenderness of Catholic sym- 
 pathy and the power of Catholic intercession. 
 
 Begging of your Grace for me and mine, the 
 fulness of St. Patrick's benediction, 
 
 I am, my dear Lord Primate, 
 Your Grace's faithful and affectionate Servant, 
 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN, 
 
 Cang. Orat. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It may be necessary to state, that by " Brothers of the 
 Oratory," are meant the members of an Association or 
 Brotherhood of seculars or laymen, attached, but exter- 
 nal, to the Ecclesiastical Congregation, to which the 
 Author belongs. These are the persons to whom the 
 following Lectures are addressed, with the view of sug- 
 gesting to them, how best as Catholics, to master their 
 own position, and to perform their duties in a Protestant 
 country. 
 
 The Author repeats here, what he has several times 
 observed in the course of the Volume itself, that his 
 object has not been to prove the divine origin of Catho- 
 licism, but to remove some of .the moral and intellectual 
 impediments which prevent Protestants from perceiving 
 it. They cannot be expected to do justice to a religion, 
 whose professors they hate and scorn. It has been 
 objected to the Author, as regards both this and other of 
 his works, that he succeeds better in demolition than in 
 construction ; and he has been challenged to draw out a 
 proof of the truth of the Catholic Faith. Persons who so 
 
Vlll I'llEFACE. 
 
 speak, should consider the state of the case more accu- 
 rately ; that he has not attempted the task to which 
 they invite him, does not arise from any misgiving what- 
 ever in his mind about the strength of his cause, but 
 about the disposition of his audience. He has a most 
 profound misgiving about their fairness as judges, founded 
 on his sense of the misconceptions concerning Catholicism, 
 which generally pre-occupy the English mind. Irre- 
 sistible as the proof seems to him to be, so as even to 
 master and carry away the intellect, directly it is stated, 
 so that Catholicism is almost its own evidence, yet it 
 requires, as the great philosopher of antiquity reminds 
 us, as being a moral proof, a rightly-disposed recipient. 
 While a community is overrun with prejudices, it is as 
 premature to attempt to prove that to be true which is 
 the object of them, as it would be to think of building 
 in the aboriginal forest, till you had felled the trees. 
 
 The controversy with our opponents is not simple, but 
 various and manifold ; when a Catholic is doing one 
 thing, he cannot be doing another ; yet the common 
 answer given to his proof of this point, is that it is no 
 proof of that. Thus men shift about, silenced in nothing, 
 because they have not yet been answered in every thing. 
 Let them admit what we have proved, and they will have 
 a claim on us for proof of more. One thing at a time 
 is the general rule given for getting through business 
 well, and it applies to the case before us. In a large and 
 complicated question, it is much to settle portions of it ; 
 yet this is so little understood, that a course of Lectures 
 might profitably confine itself simply to the consideration 
 
PUEFACE. 
 
 of the canons to be observed in disputation. Catholics 
 would have cause to congratulate themselves, though they 
 were able to proceed no further, than to persuade Pro- 
 testants to argue out one point before going on to another. 
 It would be much to get them to give up what they coul4 
 not defend, and to promise they would not return to it. 
 It would be much to binder them from making a great deal 
 of an objection till it is refuted, and then suddenly con- 
 sidering it%o small that it is not worth withdrawing. It 
 would be much to hinder them from eluding a defeat on one 
 point by digressing to three or four others, and then pre- 
 sently running back, and to and fro, to the first, second, 
 and third, and treating each in turn as quite a fresh ( 
 subject on which not a word had yet been said. In all 
 controversy it is surely right to mark down and record 
 what has been proved, as well as what has not ; and this 
 is what the Author claims of the reader as regards the 
 following Volume. 
 
 He claims, and surely with justice, that it should not 
 be urged against his proof that Protestant views of 
 Catholics are wrong, that he has not thereby proved that 
 Catholicism is right. He wishes his proof taken for 
 what it is. He certainly has not proved what he did not 
 set about proving : and neither he, nor any one else, has 
 any encouragement to go on to prove something more, 
 until what he actually has accomplished is distinctly ac- 
 knowledged. The obligations of a controversialist He 
 with Protestants equally as with us. 
 
 As regards his CathoUc readers, he would ask leave to 
 express a hope, that he^ay noLbe, supposed in his con- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 eluding Lecture to recommend to the Laity the cultiva- 
 tion of a controversial temper, or a forwardness and 
 rashness and unseasonableness in disputing upon religion. 
 No one knows so clearly the difficulty of arguing on 
 1 religious topics, consistently with their sacredness and 
 delicacy, as he who has taken piains to do so well. No 
 one shrinks so sensitively from its responsibility, when it 
 is not a duty, as he who has learned by experience his 
 own unavoidable inaccuracies in statement and in rea- 
 soning. It is no easy accomplishment in a Catholic to 
 know his religion so perfectly as to be able to volunteer 
 a defence of it. 
 
 He has, besides, to apologize to them for having made 
 some quotations of Scripture from the Protestant ver- 
 sion. He has been led to do so in cases, where, points 
 of faith not being involved, it was necessary for the 
 argumentative or rhetorical force of the passages in 
 which they occur. 
 
 And lastly he earnestly begs their prayers that he 
 may be prospered and blest in whatever he attempts, 
 however poorly, for God's glory and the edification of 
 His Church. 
 
 Oratory, Birmingham, ' 
 In Test. Nativ. B. M. V. 1851. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Protestant View of the Catholic Church ... 1 
 
 II. Tradition the Sustaining Power of the Protestant View 41 
 
 III. Fable the Basis of the Protestant View . .79 
 
 IV. True Testimony unequal to the Protestant View . 121 
 
 V. Logical Inconsistency of the Protestant View . . 169 
 
 VI. Prejudice the Life of the Protestant View . . . 215 
 
 VII. Assumed Principles the Intellectual Instrument of the 
 
 Protestant View 259 
 
 VIII. Want of Intercourse with Catholics the Protection of 
 
 the Protestant View 801 
 
 IX. Duties of Catholics towards the Protestant View . 347 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 PROTESTANT VIEW OF THE CATHOLIC CHUECH. 
 
 There is a well-known fable, of which it is to my purpose 
 to remind you, my Brothers of the Oratory, by way of in- 
 troducing to you the subject of the Lectures which I am 
 proposing to deliver. I am going to inquire why it is, that, 
 in this intelligent nation and in this rational nineteenth 
 century, we Catholics are so despised and hated by our 
 own countrymen, with whom we have lived all our lives, 
 that they are prompt to believe any story, however ex- 
 travagant, that is told to our disadvantage ; as if beyond a 
 doubt, we were, every one of us, either brutishly deluded 
 or preternaturally hypocritical, and they themselves, on 
 the contrary, were in comparison of us absolute specimens 
 of sagacity, wisdom, uprightness, manly virtue, and en- 
 lightened Christianity. I am not inquiring why they are 
 not Catholics themselves, but why they are so angry with 
 those who are. Protestants differ amongst themselves, 
 without calling each other fools and knaves. Nor, again, 
 am I proposing to prove to you or to myself, that knaves 
 
 B 
 
5J PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 and fools we are not, not idolaters, not blasphemers, not 
 men of blood, not profligates, not steeped in sin and 
 seared in conscience ; for we know each other and our- 
 selves. No, my Catholic friends, whom I am addressing, 
 I am neither attacking another's belief just now, nor de- 
 fending myself: I am not engaging in controversy, 
 though controversy is good in its place ; I do but pro-, 
 pose to investigate how Catholics come to be so trodden 
 under foot, and spurned by a people, which is endowed by 
 nature with many great qualities, moral and intellectual ; 
 how it is that we are cried out against by the very stones, 
 and bricks, and tiles, and chimney-pots of a populous busy 
 place, such as this town which we inhabit. The clearer 
 sense we have of our own honesty, of the singleness of 
 our motives, and the purity of our aims, — of the truth, the 
 beauty, the power, of our religion, its exhaustless fund of 
 consolation for the weary, and its especial correspondence 
 to the needs of the weak, — so much the greater may well 
 be our perplexity to find that its advocates for the most 
 part do not even gain a hearing in this country ; that facts, 
 and logic, and justice, and good sense, and right, and 
 virtue, are all supposed to lie in the opposite scale ; and 
 that it is bid be thankful and contented, if it is allowed 
 to exist, if it is barely tolerated, in a free people. Such 
 a state of things is not only a trial to flesh and blood, 
 but a discomfort to the reason and imagination : it is a 
 riddle which frets the mind from the difiieulty of solv- 
 ing it. 
 
 Now then for my fable, which is not the worse because 
 it is old. The Man once invited the Lion to be his guest, 
 and received him with princely hospitality. The lion 
 had the run of a magnificent palace, in which there were 
 a vast many things to admire. There were large saloons 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 3 
 
 and long corridors, richly furnished and decorated, and 
 filled with a profusion of fine specimens of sculpture and 
 painting, the works of the first masters in either art. 
 The subjects represented were various ; but the most 
 prominent of them had an especial interest for the noble 
 animal who stalked by them. It was that of the lion 
 himself; and as the owner of the mansion led him from 
 one apartment into another, he did not fail to direct his 
 attention to the indirect homage which these various 
 groups and' tableaux paid to the importance of the lion 
 tribe. 
 
 There was, however, one remarkable' feature in all of 
 them, to which the host, silent as he was from politeness, 
 seemed not at all insensible ; — that, diverse as were these 
 representations, in one point they all agreed, that the 
 man was always victorious, and the lion was always over- 
 come. The man had it all his own way, and the lion 
 was but a fool, and served to make him sport. There 
 were exquisite works in marble, of Samson rending the 
 lion like a kid, and young David taking the lion by 
 the beard and choking him. There was the man who 
 ran his arm down the lion's throat, and held him fast by 
 the tongue ; and there was that other who, when carried 
 oif in his teeth, contrived to pull a penknife from his 
 pocket, and lodge it in the monster''s heart. Then there 
 was a lion hunt, or what had been such, for the brute 
 was rolling round in the agonies of death, and his con- 
 queror on his bleeding horse was surveying them from 
 a distance. There was a gladiator from the Roman 
 amphitheatre in mortal struggle with his tawny foe, and 
 it was plain who was getting the mastery. There was a 
 lion in a net ; a lion in a trap ; four lions, yoked in 
 harness, were drawing the car of a Boman emperor ; and 
 
 B 2 
 
4 PKOTESTANT VIEW 
 
 elsewhere stood Hercules, clad in the lion's skin, and 
 with the club which demolished him. 
 
 Nor was this all : the lion was not only triumphed 
 over, mocked, spurned ; but he was tortured into extrava- 
 gant forms, as if he were not only tha slave and creature, 
 but the very creation of man. He became an artistic 
 decoration, and an heraldic emblazonment. The feet of 
 alabaster tables fell away into lions'' paws ; lions' faces 
 grinned on each side the shining mantelpiece ; and lions' 
 mouths held tight the handles of the doors. There were 
 sphinxes too, half lion, half woman ; there were lions 
 rampant holding flags, lions couchant, lions passant, lions 
 regardant ; lions and unicorns ; there were lions white, 
 black, and red : in short, there was no variety of mis- 
 conception or excess of indignity which was thought too 
 great for the lord of the forest and the king of brutes. 
 After he had gone over the mansion, his entertainer 
 asked him what he thought of the splendours it con- 
 tained ; and he in reply did full justice to the riches of 
 its owner and the skill of its decorators, but he added, 
 " Lions would have fared better, had lions been the 
 artists." 
 
 You see the application. Brothers of the Oratory, 
 before I make it. There are two sides to every thino- ; 
 there is a Catholic side of the argument, and there is a 
 Protestant. There is a story of two knights who met 
 together on opposite sides of a monument : one of them 
 praised the gold on the shield of the warrior sculptured 
 upon it, and the other answered that it was not gold but 
 silver. On this issue they fought ; and, in the course of 
 the combat, they changed places, and were flung, dis- 
 mounted and wounded, each upon the ground occupied 
 originally by his foe. Then they discovered that the 
 
OF THK CATHOLIC CHUECH. 5 
 
 shield was gold on one side, silver on the other, and 
 that both of them were right, and both were wrong. 
 Now Catholic and Protestant are not both right and 
 both wrong : there is but one truth, not two truths ; and 
 that one truth, we know, is in the Catholic religion. 
 However, without going on just now to the question 
 where the truth lies (which is a further question not to 
 my present purpose), still it is certain, though truth is^ 
 one, that arguments are many, and there are always two 
 sides in every dispute, I do not say both of them sup- 
 ported by arguments equally cogent and convincing, of 
 course not ; still, there is a Protestant side, and there is 
 a Catholic side, and if you have heard but one of them, 
 you will think nothing at all can be said on the other. If, 
 then, a person listens only to Protestantism, and does 
 not give fair play to the Catholic reply to it, of course he 
 thinks Protestantism very rational and straightforward, 
 and Catholics very absurd ; because he takes for granted 
 the Protestant facts, which are commonly fictions, and 
 opens his mind to Protestant arguments, which are always 
 fallacies. A case may be made out for any one or any 
 thing : the veriest villain at the bar of justice is an in- 
 jured man, a victim, a hero, in the defence made for him 
 by his counsel. There are writers who dress up vice till 
 it looks like virtue ; Goethe, I believe, has invested 
 adultery with a sentimental grace ; and Schiller's drama 
 of the " Robbers" is said to have sent all the young 
 Germans of his day upon the highway. The same has 
 been reported of Gay's "Beggar's Opera;" and in our 
 own time a celebrated poet has thrown an interest over 
 Cain, the first murderer. Any thing will become plau- 
 sible, if you read all that can be said in its favour, and 
 exclude all that can be said against it. 
 
PEOTESTANT VIEW 
 
 Thus it comes to pass, that every one (as I may say), 
 in a measure, has his own sphere of ideas and method of 
 thought, in which he lives, and as to which he differs 
 from every one else ; and, unless he is a philosopher, he 
 will be apt to consider his own view of things, his own 
 principles, his own tastes, just and right, and to despise 
 others altogether. He despises other men and other 
 modes of opinion and action, simply because he does not 
 understand them. He is fixed in his own centre, refers 
 every thing to it, and never throws himself, perhaps 
 cannot throw himself, into the minds of strangers, or 
 into a state of things not familiar to him. So it is 
 especially between country and country; the Englishman 
 thinks his beef and pudding worth all the resources 
 of the French cuisine; and the Frenchman thought for 
 certain, until the peace, that he had gained the battle 
 of Trafalgar. Taking men as they are commonly found, 
 ,' they are not equal to appreciating the circle of ideas and 
 I the atmosphere of thought which is the life of another; 
 and yet they will commonly be forward in criticizing and 
 condemning it ; condemning it, not as having heard what 
 it has to say for itself, but simply and precisely for the 
 very opposite reason, because they have not. 
 
 You know it is a favourite device with writers of fiction 
 to introduce into their composition personages of very 
 different characters taking their respective views of one 
 and the same transaction, or describing and criticizing 
 each other; the interest which such an exhibition creates 
 in the reader lying in this, that each of the persons in 
 question is living in his own world, and cannot enter into 
 the world of another, and therefore paints that other in 
 his own way, and presents us with a caricature instead of 
 a Ukeness, though he does not intend it. I recollect an 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHUECH. 7 
 
 amusing passage of this kind, out of many which might 
 be cited, in one of Sir Walter Scott's tales, which I hope 
 it is not unbecoming to quote, since it is so much to the 
 purpose. 
 
 A middle-aged country gentleman and his wife for 
 a while have the care of a very young lady. The host is 
 very matter-of-fact, and his youthful guest, on the other 
 hand, is very romantic; and the humour of the narrative 
 lies in the very opposite judgments passed respectively 
 on the guest by the host, and on the host by the guest. 
 The elderly man, with whom the shadows and illusions 
 of human existence are over, and who estimates things 
 not by their appearance, but by their weight, writing to 
 the father of his young charge with a good deal of kind 
 feeling towards her, and some good-humoured contempt 
 of her flightiness, tells him that she "has much of a 
 romantic turn" in her disposition, with a " little of the 
 love of admiration ;" that " she has a quick and lively 
 imagination, and keen feelings, which are apt to exag- 
 gerate both the good and evil they find in life ;" that 
 " she is generous and romantic, and writes six sheets 
 a week to a female correspondent." " You know," he 
 says, " how I have jested with her about her soft melan- 
 choly, and lonely walks at morning before any one is up, 
 and in the moonlight, when all should be gone to bed, or 
 set down to cards, which is the same thing." And he 
 ends by speaking with some apprehension and dislike of 
 a- place of amusement near his grounds, which is " the 
 resort of walking gentlemen of all descriptions, poets, 
 players, painters, musicians, who come to rave and recite 
 and madden about this picturesque land of ours. It is 
 paying some penalties for its beauties," he adds, " if they 
 
8 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 are the means of drawing this swarm of coxcombs toge- 
 ther." 
 
 On the other hand, the young lady, writing to a school 
 acquaintance of her own age, says, " If India be the land 
 of magic, this is the country of romance. The scenery 
 is such as nature brings together in her sublimest moods; 
 all the wildness of Salvator here, and there the fairy 
 scenes of Claude. I am at present the inmate of an old 
 friend of my father. He is a different, quite a different 
 being from my father, yet he amuses and endures me. 
 He is fat and good-natured, gifted with strong, shrewd 
 sense, and some powers of humour; and having been 
 handsome, I suppose, in his youth, has still some preten- 
 sion to be a heau gar^on, as well as an enthusiastic 
 agriculturist. I delight to make him scramble to the 
 tops of eminences, and to the foot of waterfalls ; and am 
 obliged in turn to admire his turnips, his lucerne, and 
 his timothy grass. He thinks me, I fancy, a simple, 
 romantic miss ; so he rallies, hands, and hobbles (for the 
 dear creature has got the gout too), and tells old stories 
 of high life, of which he has seen a good deal ; and 
 I listen, and smile, and look as pleasant and as simple as 
 I can, and we do very well.'" 
 
 This is but a sample of what meets us in life on every 
 hand ; the young have their view of things, the old have 
 theirs ; high and low, trader and farmer, each has his 
 own, by which he measures every thing else, and which 
 is proved to be but a view, and not a reality, because 
 there are so many other views just as good as it is. 
 What is true of individuals is true of nations ; however 
 plausible, however distinct, however complete the national 
 view of this or that matter may be, it does not follow 
 
OF THK CATHOLIC CHCRCH. 9 
 
 that it is not a mere illusion, if it has not been duly 
 measured with other views of the same. No conclusion is 
 trustworthy which has not been tried by enemy as well as 
 friend ; no traditions have a claim upon us which shrink 
 from criticism, and dare not look a rival in the face. 
 Now this is precisely the weak point of Protestantism in 
 this country. It is jealous of being questioned ; it resents 
 argument ; it flies to State protection ; it is afraid of the 
 sun ; it forbids competition. How can you detect the 
 sham, but by comparing it with the true? Your arti- 
 ficial flowers have the softness and brilliancy of nature, 
 till you bring in the living article fresh from the garden ; 
 you detect the counterfeit coin by ringing it with the 
 genuine. So is it in religion. Protestantism is at best 
 but a fine piece of wax-work, which does not look dead, 
 only because it is not confronted by that Church which 
 really breathes and lives. The living Church is the test 
 and the confutation of all false Churches; therefore get rid 
 of her at all hazards ; tread her down, gag her, dress her 
 like a felon, starve her, bruise her features, if you would 
 keep up your mumbo-jumbo in its place of pride. By no 
 manner of means give her fair play ; you dare not. The 
 dazzling brightness of her glance, the sanctity beaming 
 from her countenance, the melody of her voice, the grace 
 of her movements, will be too much for you. Blacken 
 her ; make her Cinderella in the ashes ; do not hear a 
 word she says. Do not look on her, but daub her in 
 your own way; keep up the good old sign-post repre- 
 sentation of her. Let her be a lion rampant, a grifiin, 
 a wivern, or a salamander. She shall be red or black ; 
 she shall be always absurd, always imbecile, always mali- 
 cious, always tyrannical. The lion shall not draw the 
 
10 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 lion, but the man shall draw him. She shall be always 
 worsted in the warfare with Protestantism; ever un- 
 horsed and disarmed, ever running away, ever prostrated, 
 ever smashed and pounded, ever dying, ever dead ; and 
 the only wonder is that she has to be killed so often, and 
 the life so often to be trodden out of her, and her priests 
 and doctors to be so often put down, and her monks and 
 nuns to be exposed so often, and such vast sums to be sub- 
 scribed by Protestants, and such great societies to be kept 
 up, and such millions of tracts to be written, and such 
 persecuting acts to be passed in Parliament, in order tho- 
 roughly, and once for all, and for the very last time, and for 
 ever and ever to annihilate her once more. However, so 
 it shall be ; it is, forsooth, our received policy as Eng- 
 lishmen, our traditionary view of things, to paint up the 
 Pope and Papists in a certain style. We have a school 
 of painting all our own. Every character or personage 
 has its own familiar emblem: Justice has her balance, 
 Hope her anchor, Britannia her trident. Again, history 
 has its conventional proprieties : Richard the First was 
 the lion-hearted, and Richard the Third was the crook- 
 back; William the First was the Conqueror, and Wil- 
 liam the Third, "the pious, glorious, and immortal." 
 These are our first principles : they are unalterable ; like 
 the pillars of heaven, touch them, and you bring our 
 firmament down. True or false is not the question; 
 there they are. So is it in the view we take of Popery ; 
 its costume is fixed, like the wigs of our judges, or the 
 mace of our mayors. Have not free-born Britons a right 
 to think as they please ? We rule Popery to be what we 
 say it is, not by history, but by act of Parliament ; not 
 by sight and hearing, but by the national will. It is the 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHCRCH. 11 
 
 will of the Legislature, it is the voice of the people, 
 which gives facts their complexion, and logic its course, 
 and ideas their definition. 
 
 Now I repeat, in order to obviate misconception, I 
 am neither assuming nor intending to prove that the 
 Catholic Church comes from above (though, of course, 
 I should not have become one of her children, unless I 
 firmly held her to be the direct work of the Almighty) ; 
 but here I am only investigating how it is she comes to 
 be so despised and hated among us; since a religion 
 need not incur scorn and animosity simply because it is 
 not recognised as true. And, I say, the reason is this, 
 that reasons of state, political and national, prevent her 
 being heard in her defence. She is considered too absurd 
 to be inquired into, and too corrupt to be defended, and 
 too dangerous to be treated with equity and fair dealing. 
 She is the victim of a prejudice which" perpetuates itself, 
 and gives birth to what it feeds upon. 
 
 I will adduce two or three instances of what I mean. 
 It happens every now and then that a Protestant, some- 
 times an Englishman, more commonly a foreigner, thinks 
 it worth while to look into the matter himself, and his 
 examination ends, not necessarily in his conversion (though 
 this sometimes happens too), but, at least, in his con- 
 fessing the absurdity of the outcry raised against the 
 Catholic Church, and the beauty or the excellence, on 
 the other hand, of those very facts and doctrines which 
 are the alleged ground of it. What I propose to do, 
 then, is simply to remind you of the popular feeUng con- 
 cerning two or three of the characteristics of her history 
 and her teaching, and then to set against them the tes- 
 timony of candid Protestants who have examined into 
 them. This will be no proof that those candid Protest- 
 
12 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 ants are right, and the popular feeling wrong (though 
 certainly it is more likely that they should be right who 
 have impartially studied the matter, than those who 
 have nothing whatever to say for their belief but that 
 they have ever been taught it), but, at least, it will make 
 it undeniable, that those who do not know there are two 
 sides of the question (that is, the bulk of the English 
 nation), are violent because they are ignorant, and that 
 Catholics are treated with scorn and injustice simply 
 because, though they have a good deal to say in their 
 defence, they have never patiently been heard. 
 
 For instance, the simple notion of most people is, that 
 Christianity was very pure in its beginning, very corrupt 
 in the middle age, and very pure in England now, though 
 still corrupt every where else ; that in the middle age, a 
 tyrannical institution, called the Church, arose and swal- 
 lowed up Christianity ; that that Church is alive still, and 
 has not yet disgorged its prey, except, as aforesaid, in 
 our own favoured country ; but in the middle age, there 
 was no Christianity any where at all, but all was dark, 
 and horrible, as bad as paganism, or rather much worse. 
 No one knew any thing about God, or whether there 
 was a God or no, nor about Christ or His atonement ; 
 for the blessed Virgin, and saints, and the Pope, and 
 images, were worshipped instead ; and thus, so far from 
 religion benefitting the generations of mankind who lived 
 in that dreary time, it did them indefinitely more harm 
 than good. Thus the Homilies of the Church of 
 England say, that " in the pit of damnable idolatry all 
 the world, as it were, drowned, continued until our age" 
 (that is, the Eeformation), " by the space of above 800 
 years ... so that laity and clergy, learned and unlearned, 
 all ages, sects, and degrees of men, women, and children, of 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHDECH. 13 
 
 whole Christendom (an horrible and most dreadful thing to 
 think), have been at once drowned in abominable idolatry, 
 of all other vices most detested of God, and most dam- 
 nable to man." Accordingly it is usual to identify this 
 period with that time of apostasy which is predicted in 
 Scripture, the Pope being the man of sin, and the 
 Church being the mother of abominations, mentioned in 
 the Apocalypse. Thus Bishop Newton says, "In the 
 same proportion as the power of the [Roman] empire 
 decreased, the authority of the Church increased, the 
 latter at the expense and ruin of the former ; till at 
 length the Pope grew up above all, and ' the wicked 
 one' was fully manifested and ' revealed,' or the ' lawless 
 one,' as he may be called; for the Pope is declared 
 again and again not to be bound by any law of God or 
 man." " The tyrannical power thus described by Daniel 
 and St. Paul, and afterwards by St. John, is, both by 
 ancients and moderns, generally denominated Antichrist, 
 and the name is proper and expressive enough, as it may 
 signify both the enemy of Christ and the vicar of Christ '." 
 " The mind of Europe was prostrated at the feet of a 
 priest," says a dissenting writer. " The stoutest hearts 
 quailed at his frown. Seated on the throne of blasphemy, 
 he 'spake great words against the Most High,' and 
 ' thought to change times and laws.' Many hated him, 
 but all stood in awe of his power. Like Simon Magus, 
 he 'bewitched the people.' Like Nebuchadnezzar, 
 ' whom he would he slew.' " I need not give you the 
 trouble of listening to more of such language, which you 
 may buy by the yard at the first publisher's shop you 
 fall in with. Thus it is the man paints the lion. Go 
 > Dissert. 22. 
 
14 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 into the first Protestant church, or chapel, or public 
 meeting which comes in your way, you will hear it from 
 the pulpit or the platform. The Church (who can doubt 
 it ?) is a sorceress, intoxicating the nations with a goblet 
 of blood. 
 
 However, all are not satisfied to learn by rote what 
 they are to affirm on matters so important, and to feed 
 all their life long on the traditions of the nursery. They 
 examine for themselves, and then forthwith we have 
 another side of the question in dispute. For instance, 
 I say, hear what that eminent Protestant historian, 
 M. Guizot, who was lately Prime Minister of France, 
 says of the Church in that period, in which she is reported 
 by our popular writers to have been most darkened and 
 corrupted. You will observe, what makes his remarks 
 the stronger, that, being a Protestant, he does not believe 
 the Church really to have been set up by Christ Him- 
 self, as a Catholic does, but to have taken her present 
 form in the middle age ; and he contrasts, in the extract 
 I am about to read, the pure Christianity of Primitive 
 times, with that later Christianity, as he considers it, 
 which took an ecclesiastical shape. 
 
 " If the Church had not existed," he observes, " I 
 know not what would have occurred during the decline 
 of the Roman empire. I confine myself to purely human 
 considerations, I cast aside every element foreign to the 
 natural consequence of natural facts, and I say that, if 
 Christianity had only continued, as it was in the early 
 ages — a beUef, a sentiment, an individual conviction, — it 
 is probable it would have fallen amidst the dissolution of 
 the empire, during the invasion of the barbarians. ... I 
 do not think I say too much when I affirm, that, at the 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 15 
 
 close of the fourth, and the commencement of the fifth 
 century, the Chrixtian Church was the salvation of Chris- 
 tianity '." 
 
 In like manner. Dr. Waddington, the present Pro- 
 testant Dean of Durham, in his Ecclesiastical History, 
 observes to the same purport; "At this crisis," viz. 
 " when the Western Empire was overthrown, and occu- 
 pied by unbelieving barbarians," " at this crisis it is not 
 too much to assert, that the Church was the instrument of 
 heaven for ike preservation of the religion. Christianity 
 itself, unless miraculously sustained, would have been 
 swept away from the surface of the West, had it not 
 been rescued by an established body of ministers, or had 
 that body been less zealous or less influential." And 
 then he goes on to mention six special benefits which 
 the Church of the middle ages conferred on the world ; 
 viz. first, she provided for the exercise of charity ; 
 secondly, she inculcated the moral duties by means of 
 her penitential discipline; thirdly, she performed the 
 office of legislation in an admirable way ; fourthly, she 
 unceasingly strove to correct the vices of the existing 
 social system, setting herself especially against the 
 abomination of slavery ; fifthly, she laboured anxiously in 
 the prevention of crime and of war ; and lastly, she has pre- 
 served to these ages the literature of the ancient world." 
 
 Now, without entering into the controversy about 
 idolatry, sorcery, and blasphemy, which concerns matters 
 of opinion, are these Protestant testimonies which relate 
 to matters of fact, compatible with such imputations 1 Can 
 blasphemy and idolatry be the salvation of Christianity ! 
 Can sorcery be the promoter of charity, morality, and 
 social improvement ! Yet, in spite of the fact of these 
 
 ' Europ. Civ., p. 56, Beckwith. 
 
16 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 contrary views of the subject ; in spite of the nursery 
 and school-room authors being against us, and the manly 
 and original thinkers being in our favour, you will hear it 
 commonly spoken of as notorious that the Church in the 
 middle ages was a witch, a liar, a profligate, a seducer, 
 and a bloodthirsty tyrant ; and we, who are her faithful 
 children, are superstitious and slavish, because we enter- 
 tain some love and reverence for her, who, as a number 
 of her opponents confess, was then, as she is now, the 
 mother of peace, and humanity, and order. 
 
 So much for the middle ages ; next I will take an 
 instance of modern times. If there is any set of men in 
 the whole world who are railed against as the pattern of 
 all that is evil, it is the Jesuit body. It is vain to ask 
 their slanderers what they know of them ; did they ever 
 see a Jesuit! can they say whether they are many or 
 few ! what do they know of their teaching ? " Oh ! it is 
 quite notorious," they reply ; " you might as well deny 
 the sun in heaven ; it is notorious that the Jesuits are a 
 crafty, intriguing, unscrupulous, desperate, murderous, 
 and exceedingly able body of men ; a secret society, ever 
 plotting against liberty, and government, and progress, 
 and thought, and the prosperity of England. Nay, it is 
 awful ; they disguise themselves in a thousand shapes, as 
 men of fashion, farmers, soldiers, labourers, butchers, and 
 pedlers; they prowl about with handsome stocks, and 
 stylish waistcoats, and gold chains about their persons, 
 or in fustian jackets, as the case may be ; and they do not 
 hesitate to shed the blood of any one whatever, prince or 
 peasant, who stands in their way." Who can fathom 
 the inanity of such statements? which are made, and 
 therefore, I suppose, believed, not merely by the igno- 
 rant, but by educated men, who ought to know better, 
 
OF THK CATHOLIC CHUKCH. ] 7 
 
 and will have to answer for their false witness. But all 
 this is persisted in ; and it is affirmed that they were 
 found to be too bad for Catholic countries, the govern- 
 ments of which, it seems, in the course of the last century, 
 forcibly obliged the Pope to put them down. 
 
 Now I conceive that just one good witness, one person 
 who has the means of knowing how things really stand, 
 is worth a tribe of these pamphleteers, and journalists, 
 and novelists, and preachers, and orators. So I will turn 
 to a most impartial witness, and a very competent one ; 
 one who was born of Catholic parents, was educated a 
 Catholic, lived in a Catholic country, was ordained a 
 Catholic priest, and then renouncing the Catholic reli- 
 gion, and coming to England, became the friend and 
 proUgS of the most distinguished Protestant Prelates of 
 the present day, and the most bitter enemy of the faith 
 which he had once professed ; I mean the late Rev. 
 Joseph Blanco White. Now hear what he says about 
 the Jesuits in Spain, his native country, at the time of 
 their suppression. 
 
 "The Jesuits ^" he says, "till the abolition of that 
 order, had an almost unrivalled influence over the better 
 classes of Spaniards. They had nearly monopolized the 
 instruction of the Spanish youth, at which they toiled 
 without pecuniary reward, and were equally zealous in 
 promoting devotional feelings both among their pupils 
 
 ' I have omitted some clauses and sentences which either expressed 
 the opinions of the author, as distinct from his testimony, or which at 
 least are irrelevant to the matter in hand ; which is simply to show, not 
 that a Protestant can speak against (which no one can doubt), hut what 
 he can say infcmmr of this calumniated body ; however, to prevent mis- 
 representation, the entire passage shall be given at the end of the 
 volume. 
 
 C 
 
18 PEOTESTANT VIEW 
 
 and the people at large. . . . Whenever, as in France and 
 Italy, literature was in high estimation, the Jesuits spared 
 no trouble to raise among themselves men of eminence in 
 that department. In Spain their chief aim was to pro- 
 vide their houses with popular preachers, and zealous, yet 
 prudent and gentle confessors. Pascal, and the Jansenist 
 party, of which he was the organ, accused them of sys- 
 tematic laxity in their moral doctrines ; but the charge, 
 I believe, though plausible in theory, was perfectly ground- 
 less in practice. . . . The influence of the Jesuits on Spanish 
 morals, from every thing I have learned, was undoubtedly 
 favourable. Their kindness attracted the youth from 
 their schools to their company ; and . . . they greatly con- 
 tributed to the preservation of virtue in that slippery age, 
 both by the ties of affection, and the gentle check of 
 example. Their churches were crowded every Sunday 
 with regular attendants, who came to confess and receive 
 the sacrament. . . . Their conduct was correct, and their 
 manners refined. They kept up a dignified intercourse 
 with the middling and higher classes, and were always 
 ready to help and instruct the poor, without descending 
 
 to their level Whatever we may think of the political 
 
 delinquencies of their leaders, their bitterest enemies have 
 never ventured to charge the Order of Jesuits with moral 
 irregularities.'" Does this answer to the popular notion 
 of a Jesuit ? Will Exeter Hall be content with the tes- 
 timony of one who does not speak from hereditary preju- 
 dice, but from actual knowledge ? Certainly not ; and in 
 consequence it ignores all statements of the kind ; they 
 are to be uttered, and they are to die ; and the received 
 slander is to keep its place as part and parcel of the old 
 stock in trade, and in the number of the heirlooms of 
 Protestantism, the properties of its stage, the family 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 19 
 
 pictures of its old mansion, in the great controversy 
 between the Lion of the tribe of Judah and the children 
 of men. 
 
 Now I will go back to primitive times, which shall furnish 
 me with a third instance of the subject I am illustrating. 
 Protestants take it for granted that the history of the 
 monks is a sore point with us ; that it is simply one of 
 our difficulties ; that it at once puts us on the defensive, 
 and is, in consequence, a brilliant and effective weapon 
 in controversy. They fancy that Catholics can do no- 
 thing, when monks are mentioned, but evade, explain 
 away, excuse, deny, urge difference of times, and at the 
 utmost make them out not quite so bad as they are 
 reported. They think monks are the very types and 
 emblems of laziness, uselessness, ignorance, stupidity, 
 fanaticism, and profligacy. They think it a paradox to 
 say a word in their favour, and they have converted their 
 name into a title of reproach. As a Jesuit means a 
 knave, so a monk means a bigot. Here, again, things 
 would show very differently, if Catholics had the paint- 
 ing ; but I will be content with a Protestant artist, the 
 very learned, and thoughtful, and celebrated German 
 historian, who is lately dead, Dr. Neander. No one can 
 accuse him of any tendencies toward Catholicism, nor 
 does he set about to compose a panegyric. He is a deep- 
 read student, a man of facts, as a German should be ; 
 and, as a narrator of facts, in his life of St. Chrysostom 
 he writes thus : — 
 
 " It was by no means intended that the monks should 
 lead a life of listless contemplation ; on the contrary, 
 manual labour was enjoined on them as a duty by their 
 rational adherents, by Chrysostom, as well as Augustine, 
 although many fanatical mystics, and advocates of an 
 
 c 2 
 
20 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 inactive life" (who, by the way, were not Catholics, but 
 heretics), " rejected, under the cloak of sanctity, all con- 
 nexion of a laborious with a contemplative life. Oassian 
 relates, that not only the monasteries of Egypt, but that 
 the districts of Libya, when suffering from famine, and 
 also the unfortunate men who languished in the prisons 
 of cities, were supported by the labour of the monks. 
 Augustine relates that the monks of Syria and Egypt 
 were enabled, by their labour and savings, to send ships 
 laden with provisions to distressed districts. The monks 
 of the East were remarkable for their hospitality, although 
 their cells and cloisters were infinitely poorer than those 
 of their more recent brethren of the West. The most 
 rigid monks, who lived only on salt and bread, placed 
 before their guests other food, and at times consented to 
 lay aside their accustomed severity, in order to persuade 
 them to partake of the refreshments which were set 
 before them. A monk on the Euphrates collected toge- 
 ther many blind beggars, built dwellings for them, taught 
 them to sing Christian hymns with him, and induced a 
 multitude of men, who sought him from all classes, to 
 contribute to their support. 
 
 " Besides the promotion of love and charity, there was 
 another object which induced the lawgivers of monachism 
 to enjoin labour as an especial duty. They wished to 
 keep the passions in subjection, and to maintain a due 
 balance between the spiritual and physical powers of 
 human nature, because the latter, if unemployed and 
 under no control, easily exercise a destructive influence 
 over the former. 
 
 " Among the rules of Basil, we find the following deci- 
 sion respecting the trades which formed the occupation 
 of the monks. Those should be preferred, which did not 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 21 
 
 interfere with a peaceable and tranquil life ; which occa- 
 sioned but little trouble in the provision of proper mate- 
 rials for the work, and in the sale of it when completed ; 
 which required not much useless or injurious intercourse 
 with men, and did not gratify irrational desires and 
 luxury ; while those who followed the trades of weavers 
 and shoemakers were permitted to labour so far as was 
 required by the necessities, but by no means to admi- 
 nister to the vanities of life. Agriculture, the art of 
 building, the trades of a carpenter and a smith, were in 
 themselves good, and not to be rejected ; but it was to 
 be feared that they might lead to a loss of repose, and 
 cause the monks to be much separated from each other. 
 Otherwise, agricultural occupation was particularly to be 
 recommended ; and it was by agriculture that the monks, 
 at a later period, so much contributed to the civilization 
 of the rude nations of the West. 
 
 " The most venerated of the monks were visited by men 
 of every class. A weighty word, one of those pithy sen- 
 timents, uttered by some great monk, of which so many 
 have been handed down to us, proceeding from the mouth 
 of a man universally respected, and supported by the im- 
 pression which his holy life and venerable appearance 
 had created, when spoken at a right moment, oftentimes 
 effected more than the long and repeated harangues 
 of other men. The children were sent to the monks 
 from the cities to receive their blessings ; and, on these 
 occasions, their minds were strewed with the seeds of 
 Christian truth, which took deep root. Thus Theodoret 
 says of the Monk Peter ; ' He often placed me on his 
 knees, and fed me with bread and grapes ; for my mother, 
 having had experience of his spiritual grace, sent me to 
 him once every week to receive his blessing.' 
 
 "The duties of education were particularly recom- 
 
22 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 mended to the monks by Basil. They were enjoined to 
 take upon themselves voluntarily the education of orphans ; 
 the education of other youths, when entrusted to them 
 by their parents. It was by no means necessary that 
 these children should become monks ; they were, if fitted 
 fot it, early instructed in some trade or art ; and were 
 afterwards at hberty to make a free choice of their voca- 
 tion. The greatest care was bestowed on their religious 
 and moral acquirements. Particular houses were ap- 
 pointed, in which they were to be brought up under the 
 superintendence of one of the oldest and most ex- 
 perienced monks, known for his patience and benignity, 
 that their faults might be corrected with paternal mild- 
 ness and circumspect wisdom. Instead of the mythical 
 tales, passages out of the Holy Scriptures, the history 
 of the divine miracles, and maxims out of Solomon's 
 Proverbs, were given them to learn by heart, that they 
 might be taught in a manner at the same time instruc- 
 tive and entertaining. 
 
 " The monks of the East greatly contributed to the 
 conversion of the heathen, both by their plain, sincere 
 discourse, and by the veneration which their lives in- 
 spired ; and their simple mode of living rendered it easy 
 for them to establish themselves in any place." 
 
 Now, the enemies of monks may call this an ex-parte 
 statement, if they will, — though, as coming from a Pro- 
 testant, one does not see with what justice it can undergo 
 such an imputation. But that is not the point : I am 
 not imposing this view of the Monastic Institute on any 
 one : men may call Neander's representation eoo-parte, 
 , they may doubt it, if they will ; I only say there are 
 I evidently two sides to the question, and therefore that 
 I the Protestant public, which is quite ignorant of more 
 i sides than one, and fancies none but a knave or a fool 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 23 
 
 can doubt the received Protestant traditions on the sub- 
 ject of monks, are for the very reason of their ignorance, 
 first furiously positive that they are right, and next sin- 
 gularly likely to be wrong. 
 
 Audi alteram partem, hear both sides, is generally an 
 Englishman's maxim ; but there is one subject on which 
 he has intractable prejudices, and resolutely repudiates 
 any view but that which is familiar to him from his 
 childhood. Rome is his Nazareth ; " Can any good 
 come out of Nazareth I " settles the question with him ; 
 happy rather, if he could be brought to imitate the 
 earnest inquirer in the Gospel, who, after urging this ob- 
 jection, went on nevertheless to obey the invitation made 
 to him in consequence of it, " Come and see 1 " 
 
 And here I might conclude my subject, which has 
 proposed to itself nothing more than to suggest to those 
 whom it concerns, that they would have more reason to be 
 confident in their view of the Catholic rehgion, if it ever 
 had struck them that it needed some proof, if there ever 
 had occurred to their minds at least the possibility of truth 
 being maligned, and Christ being called Beelzebub ; but 
 I am tempted, before concluding, to go on to try whether 
 something of a monster indictment similarly frightful 
 and similarly fantastical, to that which is got up against 
 Catholicism, might not be framed against some other 
 institution or power, in its degree and place, of parallel 
 greatness and excellence, to the communion of Rome. 
 For this purpose I will take the British Constitution, 
 which is so specially the possession, and so deservedly 
 the glory, of our own people ; and in taking it, I need 
 hardly say, I take it for the very reason that it is so 
 rightfully the object of our wonder and veneration. I 
 
24 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 should be but a fool for my pains, if I laboured to prove 
 it otherwise ; it is one of the greatest of human works, 
 as admirable in its own line, to take the productions of 
 genius in very various departments, as the Pyramids, as 
 the wall of China, as the paintings of Raffaelle, as the 
 Apollo Belvidere, as the plays of Shakspeare, as the 
 Newtonian theory, and as the exploits of Napoleon. It 
 soars, in its majesty, far above the opinions of men, 
 and will be a marvelj almost a portent, to the end of 
 time ; but for that very reason it is more to my purpose, 
 when I would show you how even the British Consti- 
 tution would fare, when submitted to the intellect of 
 Exeter Hall, and handled by the instruments of those, 
 whose highest effort at dissection, is to chop and to mangle. 
 I will suppose, then, a speaker, and an audience too, 
 who never saw England, never saw a member of parlia- 
 ment, a policeman, a queen, or a London mob ; who never 
 read the English history, nor studied any one of our philo- 
 sophers, jurists, moralists, or poets ; but who has dipped 
 into Blackstone and several English histories, and has 
 picked up facts at third or fourth hand, and has got 
 together a crude farrago of ideas, words, and instances, 
 a httle truth, a deal of falsehood, a deal of misrepresen- 
 tation, a deal of nonsense, and a deal of invention. And 
 most fortunately for my purpose, here is an account 
 transmitted express by the private correspondent of a 
 morning paper, of a great meeting held about a fortnight 
 since at Moscow, under sanction of the Czar, on occa- 
 sion of an attempt made by one or two Russian noble- 
 men to spread British ideas in his capital. It seems the 
 emperor thought it best in the present state of men's 
 minds, when secret societies are so rife, to put down the 
 movement by argument rather than by a military force ; 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 25 
 
 and so he instructed the governor of Moscow to connive 
 at the project of a great public meeting which should be 
 open to the small faction of Anglo-maniacs or John 
 Bullists, as they are popularly termed, as well as to the 
 mass of the population. As many as ten thousand men, 
 as far as the writer could calculate, were gathered toge- 
 ther in one of the largest places of the city : a number 
 of spirited and impressive speeches were made, in all of 
 which, however, was illustrated the fable of the " Lion 
 and the Man," the man being the Russ, and the lion our 
 old friend the British ; but the most successful of all is 
 said to have been the final harangue by a member of a 
 junior branch of the Potemkin family, one of the im- 
 perial aide-de-camps, who has spent the last thirty years 
 in the wars of the Caucasus. This distinguished veteran, 
 who has acquired the title of Blood-sucker, from his ex- 
 traordinary gallantry in combat with the Circassian 
 tribes, spoke at great length ; and the express contains 
 a portion of his highly inflammatory address, of which, 
 and of certain consequences which followed it, the Bri- 
 tish minister is said already to have asked an explana- 
 tion of the cabinet of St. Petersburgh : I transcribe it 
 as it may be supposed to stand in the morning print : — 
 
 The Count began by observing that every day, as it 
 came, called on his countrymen more and more impor- 
 tunately to choose their side, and to make a firm stand 
 against a perfidious power, which arrogantly proclaims 
 that there is nothing like the British Constitution in the 
 whole world, and that no country can prosper without it ; 
 which is yearly aggrandizing itself in East, West, and 
 South, which is engaged in one enormous conspiracy 
 against all states, and which was even aiming at modifying 
 
26 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 the old institutions of the North, and at dressing up the 
 army, navy, legislature, and executive of his own country 
 in the livery of Queen Victoria. " Insular in situation," 
 he exclaimed, " and at the back gate of the world, what 
 has John Bull to do with continental matters, or with 
 the poUtical traditions of our holy Russia ? " And yet 
 there were men in that very city who were so far the 
 dupes of insidious propagandists and insolent traitors to 
 their emperor, as to maintain that England had been a 
 civilized country longer than Eussia. On the contrary, 
 he maintained, and he would shed the last drop of his 
 blood in maintaining, that, as for its boasted constitution, 
 it was a crazy old-fashioned piece of furniture, and an 
 eyesore in the nineteenth century, and would not last a 
 dozen years. He had the best information for saying so. 
 He could understand those who had never crossed out of 
 their island, listening to the songs about "Rule Bri- 
 tannia,'" and " Eosiif" and " Poor Jack," and the " Old 
 Enghsh Grentleman," he understood and he pitied them ; 
 but that Russians, that the conquerors of Napoleon, that 
 the heirs of a paternal government, should bow the knee, 
 and kiss the hand, and walk backwards, and perform 
 other antics before the face of a limited monarch, this 
 was the incomprehensible foolery which certain Russians 
 had viewed with so much tenderness. He repeated, 
 there were in that city, educated men, who had openly 
 professed a reverence for the atheistical tenets and 
 fiendish maxims of John BulUsm. 
 
 Here the speaker was interrupted by one or two mur- 
 murs of dissent, and a foreigner, supposed to be a partner 
 in a Scotch firm, was observed in the extremity of the 
 square making earnest attempts to obtain a hearing. 
 He was put down, however, amid enthusiastic cheering, 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 27 
 
 and the Count proceeded with a warmth of feeling which 
 increased the effect of the terrible invective which fol- 
 lowed. He said he had used the words "atheistical" 
 and "fiendish" most advisedly, and he would give his 
 reasons for doing so. What was to be said to any 
 political power which claimed the attribute of Divinity ? 
 Was any term too strong for such a usurpation ? Now, 
 no one would deny Antichrist would be such a power ; an 
 Antichrist was contemplated, was predicted in Scripture, 
 it was to come in the last times, it was to grow slowly, 
 it was to manifest itself warily and craftily, and then to 
 have a mouth speaking great things against the Divinity 
 and against His attributes. This prediction was most 
 literally and exactly fulfilled in the British Constitution. 
 Antichrist was not only to usurp, but to profess to usurp 
 the arms of heaven — he was to arrogate its titles. This 
 was the special mark of the beast, and where was it ful- 
 filled but in John Bullism ? " I hold in my hand," con- 
 tinued the speaker, " a book which I have obtained under 
 very remarkable circumstances. It is not known to the 
 British people, it is circulated only among the lawyers, 
 merchants, and aristocracy, and its restrictive use is 
 secured only by the most solemn oaths, the most fearful 
 penalties, and the utmost vigilance of the police. I 
 procured it after many years of anxious search by the 
 activity of an agent, and the co-operation of an English 
 bookseller, and it cost me an enormous sum to make it 
 my own. It is called ' Blackstone's Commentaries on 
 the Laws of England,' and I am happy to make known 
 to the universe its odious and shocking mysteries, known 
 to few Britons, and certainly not known to the deluded 
 persons whose vagaries have been the occasion of this 
 meeting. I am sanguine in thinking that when they 
 
28 PROTKSTANT VIEW 
 
 come to know the real tenets of John Bull, they will at 
 once disown his doctrines with horror, and break off all 
 connexion with his adherents. 
 
 " Now, I should say, gentlemen, that this book while it 
 is confined to certain classes is, on the other hand, of those 
 classes, of judges, and lawyers, and privy councillors, and 
 justices of the peace, and police magistrates, and clergy, 
 and country gentlemen, the guide, and I may say, the gos- 
 pel. I open the book, gentlemen, and what are the first 
 words which meet ray eyes ? ' The King can do no wrongi" 
 I beg you to attend, gentlemen, to this most significant 
 assertion ; one was accustomed to think that no child of 
 man had the gift of impeccability ; one had imagined 
 that, simply speaking, impeccability was a divine attri- 
 bute ; but this British Bible, as I may call it, distinctly 
 ascribes an absolute sinlessness to the King of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. Observe, I am using no words of 
 my own, I am still but quoting what meets my eyes in 
 this remarkable document. The words run thus : ' It 
 is an axiom of the law of the land that the King himself 
 can do no wrong? Was I wrong, then, in speaking of 
 the atheistical maxims of Johnbullism ? But this is far 
 from all : the writer goes on actually to ascribe to the 
 Sovereign (I tremble while I pronounce the words) 
 absolute perfection ; for he speaks thus ; ' The law 
 ascribes to the King in his political capacity absolute 
 PERFECTION; the King can do no wrong f (groans.) 
 One had thought that no human power could thus be 
 described, but the British legislature, judicature, and 
 jurisprudence, have had the unspeakable effrontery to 
 impute to their crowned and sceptred idol, to their 
 doll,"^ — here cries of " shame, shame," from the same 
 individual who had distinguished himself in an earlier 
 
OV THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 29 
 
 part of the speech — "to this doll, this puppet whom 
 they have dressed up with a lion and a unicorn, the 
 attribute of absolute pkrfection ! " Here the indi- 
 vidual who had several times interrupted the speaker, 
 sprung up, in spite of the efforts of persons about him to 
 keep him down, and cried out, as far as his words could 
 be collected, " You cowardly liar, our dear good little 
 Queen," when he was immediately saluted with a cry of 
 " Turn him out," and soon made his exit from the meeting. 
 
 Order beiflg restored, the Count continued ; " Gentle- 
 men, I could wish you would have suffered this emissary 
 of a foreign potentate (immense cheering), who is in- 
 sidiously aiming at forming a political party among us, 
 to have heard to the end that black catalogue of charges 
 against his Sovereign, which as yet I have barely com- 
 menced. Gentlemen, I was saying that the Queen of 
 England challenges the divine attribute of absolute 
 PEiirECTioN ! but, as if this were not enough, this writer 
 continues, ' The King, moreover, is not only incapable of 
 doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong ! ! he can 
 never do an improper thing; in him is no folly or 
 WEAKNESS ! ! ! ' " (Shudders and cheers from the vast as- 
 semblage, which lasted alternately some minutes.) At 
 the same time a respectably dressed gentleman below 
 the platform, begged permission to look at the book, it 
 was immediately handed to him ; after looking at the 
 passages, he was observed to inspect carefully the title- 
 page and binding ; he then returned it without a word. 
 
 The Count in resuming his speech, observed that he 
 courted and challenged investigation, he should be happy 
 to answer any question, and he hoped soon to publish by 
 subscription a translation of the work, from which he 
 had been quoting. Then, resuming the subject, where 
 
30 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 he had left it, he made some most forcible and impressive 
 reflections on the miserable state of those multitudes, 
 who, in spite of their skill in the mechanical arts and 
 their poUtical energy, were in the leading strings of so 
 foul a superstition. The passage he had quoted was the 
 first and mildest of a series of blasphemies so prodigious, 
 that he really feared to proceed, not only from disgust 
 at the necessity of uttering them, but lest he should be 
 taxing the faith of his hearers beyond what appeared 
 reasonable limits. Next then, he drew attention to 
 the point, that the English Sovereign distinctly claimed, 
 according to the same infamous work, to be the ^"^ fount 
 of justice ;" and, that there might be no mistake in the 
 matter, the author declared, " that she is never bound in 
 justice to do any tJiingT What then is her method of 
 acting I Unwilling as he was to defile his lips with so 
 profane an indecency, he must tell them that this abomi- 
 nable writer coolly declared that the Queen, a woman, 
 only did acts of reparation and restitution as a matter of 
 grace I He was not a theologian, he had spent his life 
 in the field, but he knew enough of his religion to be 
 able to say that grace was a word especially proper to 
 the appointment and decrees of Divine Sovereignty. All 
 his hearers knew perfectly well, that nature was one 
 thing, grace another ; and yet here was a poor child of 
 clay claiming to be the fount, not only of justice, but 
 of grace. She was making herself a first cause of, 
 not merely natural, but spiritual excellence, and doing 
 nothing more or less than simply emancipating herself 
 from her Maker. The Queen, it seemed, never obeyed 
 the law on compulsion, according to Blackstone ; that 
 is, her Maker could not compel her. This was no mere 
 deduction of his own, as directly would be seen. Let it 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 31 
 
 be observed, the Apostle called the predicted Antichrist 
 " the wicked one," or as it might be more correctly trans- 
 lated, "the lawless," because he was to be the proud 
 despiser of all law ; now, wonderful to say, this was the 
 very assumption of the British Parliament. " The power 
 of Parliament," said Sir Edward Coke, "is so tran- 
 scendent and absolute that it cannot be confined within 
 any bounds ! ! It has sovereign and uncontrollable 
 authority ! " Moreover, the Judges had declared that 
 " it is so high and mighty in its nature that it may make 
 law, and that which is law it may make no law !" 
 Here verily was the mouth speaking great things, but 
 there was more behind, which, but for the atrocious 
 sentiments he had already admitted into his mouth, he 
 really should not have the courage, the endurance to 
 utter. It was sickening to the soul, and intellect, and 
 feelings of a Russ, to form the words on his tongue, 
 and the ideas in his imagination. He would say what 
 must be said as quickly as he could, and without com- 
 ment. The gallant speaker then delivered the following 
 passage from Blackstone's volume, in a very distinct and 
 articulate whisper, " Some have not scrupled to call its 
 power— the OMNIPOTENCE of Parliament !" No one 
 can conceive the thrilling effect of these few words ; they 
 were heard all over the immense assemblage : every man 
 turned pale, a dead silence followed ; one might have 
 heard a pin drop. A pause of some minutes followed. 
 
 The speaker continued, evidently labouring under in- 
 tense emotion : — " Have you not heard enough, my dear 
 compatriots, of this hideous system of John Bullism ! was 
 I wrong in using the words fiendish and atheistical when 
 I entered upon this subject ? and need I proceed further 
 with impure details, which cannot really add to the 
 
32 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 monstrous bearing of the passages I have already read to 
 you ? If the Queen ' cannot do wrong,' if she ' cannot even 
 think wrong,' if she is ' absolute perfection,' if she has 
 'no folly, no weakness,' if she is the 'fount of justice,' if 
 she is ' the fount of grace,' if she is simply ' above 
 law,' if she is ' omnipotent,' what wonder that the law- 
 yers of JohnbuUism should also call her ' sacred ? ' 
 What wonder that they should speak of her as 
 'majesty?' what wonder that they should speak of her 
 as a 'superior being?' Here, again, I am using the 
 words of the book I hold in my hand. ' The people' 
 (my blood runs cold while I repeat them) ' are led to 
 consider their Sovereign in the light of a superiou 
 BEING.' ' Every one is under him,' says Bracton, 
 'and he is under no one.' Accordingly the law-books 
 call him ' Vicarius Dei in terra,' ' the Vicar of God on 
 earth ;' a most astonishing fulfilment, you observe, of 
 the prophecy, for Antichrist is a Greek word which 
 means ' Vicar of Christ.' What wonder, under these 
 circumstances, that Queen Elizabeth, assuming the attri- 
 bute of the Creator, once said to one of her Bishops ; 
 ' Proud Prelate, / made you, and I can wnmake you ! ' 
 What wonder that James the First had the brazen 
 assurance to say that, ' As it is Atheism and blasphemy 
 in a creature to dispute the Deity, so it is presumption 
 and sedition in a subject to dispute a King in the height 
 of his power.' Moreover, his subjects called him the 
 'breath of their nostrils;' and my Lord Clarendon, the 
 present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in his celebrated 
 History of the Rebellion, declares that the same haughty 
 monarch actually, on one occasion, called himself ' a 
 god ;' and in his great legal digest, commonly called the 
 ' Constitutions of Clarendon,' he gives us the whole 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHUECH. 33 
 
 account of the same king's banishing the Archbishop, 
 St. Thomas of Canterbury, for refusing to do him 
 homage. Lord Bacon, too, went nearly as far when he 
 called him ' Deaster quidam' ' some sort of little god.' 
 Alexander Pope, too, calls Queen Anne a goddess ; and 
 Addison, with a servility only equalled by his profane- 
 ness, cries out, 'Thee, goddess, thee Britannia's isle 
 adores.' Nay, even at this very time, when public 
 attention has been drawn to the subject, Queen Victoria 
 causes herself to be represented on her coins as the god- 
 dess of the seas, with a pagan trident in her hand. 
 
 " Gentlemen, can it surprise you to be told, after such 
 an exposition of the blasphemies of England, that, as- 
 tonishing to say. Queen Victoria is distinctly pointed out 
 in the Book of Revelation as having the number of 
 the beast ? You may recollect that number is 666 ; now 
 she came to the throne in the year '37, at which date 
 she was eighteen years old. Multiply then 37 by 18 
 and you have the very number 666, which is the mystical 
 emblem of the lawless King ! ! ! 
 
 " No wonder, then, with such monstrous pretensions, and 
 such awful auguries, that Johnbullism is, in act and deed, 
 as savage and profligate, as in profession it is saintly and 
 innocent. Its annals are marked with blood and corrup- 
 tion. The historian Hallam, though one of the ultra- 
 bullist party, in his Constitutional History, admits, that 
 the English tribunals are ' disgraced by the brutal man- 
 ners and iniquitous partiality of the bench.' 'The 
 general behaviour of the bench,' he says elsewhere, 
 ' has covered it with infamy.' Soon after, he tells us 
 that the dominant faction inflicted on the High Church 
 Clergy "the disgrace and remorse of perjury."' The 
 English Kings have been the curse and shame 
 
34< PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 of human nature. Richard the First boasted that the 
 evil spirit was the father of his family ; of Henry the 
 Second, St. Bernard said, ' From the devil he came, and 
 to the devil he will go ;' William the Second was killed 
 by the enemy of man, to whom he had sold himself, while 
 hunting in one of his forests ; Henry the First died of 
 eating lampreys ; John died of eating peaches ; Clarence, 
 a king's brother, was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine ; 
 Eichard the Third put to death his Sovereign, his Sove- 
 reign's son, his two brothers, his wife, two nephews, and 
 half a dozen friends ; Henry the Eighth successively 
 married and murdered no less than six hundred women. 
 I quote the words of the ' Edinburgh Review,' that, 
 according to HoUinshed, no less than 70,000 persons 
 died under the hand of the executioner in his reign. 
 Sir John Fortescue tells us that in his day there were 
 more persons executed for robbery in England in one 
 year than in France in seven. Four hundred persons a 
 year were executed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
 Even so late as the last century, in spite of the continued 
 protests of foreign nations, in the course of seven years 
 there were 428 capital convictions in London alone. 
 Burning of children, too, is a favourite punishment with 
 John Bull, as may be seen in this same Blackstone, who 
 notices the burning of a girl of thirteen given by Sir 
 Matthew Hale. The valets always assassinate their 
 masters ; lovers uniformly strangle their sweethearts ; 
 the farmers and the farmers' wives universally beat their 
 apprentices to death ; and their lawyers in the inns of 
 court strip and starve their servants, as has appeared 
 from remarkable investigations in the law courts during 
 the last year. Husbands sell their wives by public auc- 
 tion with a rope round their necks. An intelligent 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35 
 
 Frenchman, M. Pellet, who visited London in 1815, 
 deposes that he saw a number of sculls on each side of 
 the river Thames, and he was told they were found 
 especially thick at the landing-places among the water- 
 men. But why multiply instances, when the names of 
 those two-legged tigers. Rush, Thistlewood, Thurtell, the 
 Mannings, Colonel Kirke, Claverhouse, Simon de ISIont- 
 fort, StrafiFord, the Duke of Cumberland, Warren Hast- 
 ings, and Judge Jeffreys, are household words all over 
 the earth ? " Johnbullism, through a space of 800 years, 
 is semper idem, unchangeable in evil. One hundred and 
 sixty offences are punishable with death. It is death to 
 live with gipsies for a month ; and Lord Hale mentions 
 thirteen persons as having, in his day, suffered death upon 
 it at one assize. It is death to steal a sheep, death to 
 rob a warren, death to steal a letter, death to steal a 
 handkerchief, death to cut down a cherry-tree. And, 
 after all, the excesses of Johnbullism at home are mere 
 child's-play to the oceans of blood it has shed abroad. 
 It has been the origin of all the wars which have deso- 
 lated Europe ; it has fomented national jealousy, and the 
 antipathy of castes in every part of the world ; it has 
 plunged flourishing states into the abyss of revolution. 
 The Crusades, the Sicilian Vespers, the wars of the Re- 
 formation, the thirty years' war, the war of succession, 
 the seven years' war, the American war, the French 
 Revolution, all are simply owing to John Bull ideas; 
 and, to take one definite instance, in the course of the 
 last war the deaths of two millions of the human race 
 lie at his door ; for the Whigs themselves, from first to 
 last, and down to this day, admit and proclaim, without 
 any hesitation or limitation, that that war was simply 
 and entirely the work of Johnbullism, and needed not, 
 
 d2 
 
36 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 and would not have been, but for its influence, and its 
 alone. 
 
 " Such is that ' absolute perfection, without folly and 
 without weakness,' which, revelling in the blood of man, 
 is still seeking out her victims, and scenting blood all 
 over the earth. It is that woman Jezebel, who fulfils 
 the prophetic vision, and incurs the prophetic denuncia- 
 tion. And, strange to say, a prophet of her own has not 
 scrupled to apply to her that very appellation. Dead to 
 good and evil, the children of Jezebel glory in the name ; 
 and ten years have not passed since, by a sort of infatua- 
 tion, one of the very highest Tories in the land, a minis- 
 ter, too, of the established religion, hailed the blood- 
 stained Monarchy under the very title of the mystical 
 sorceress. Jezebel surely is her name, and Jezebel is 
 her nature ; for, drunk with the spiritual wine-cup of 
 wrath, and given over to believe a lie, at length she has 
 ascended to heights which savour rather of madness than 
 of pride ; she babbles absurdities, and she thirsts for im- 
 possibilities. Gentlemen, I am speaking the words of 
 sober seriousness ; I can prove what I say to the letter ; 
 the extravagance is not in me, but in the object of my 
 denunciation. Once more I appeal to the awful volume 
 I hold in my hands. I appeal to it, I open it, I cast it 
 from me. Listen, then, once again ; it is a fact ; Jeze- 
 bel has declared her own omnipresence. ' A consequence 
 of the royal prerogatives,' says the antichristian author, 
 'is the legal ubiquity of the King!' 'His Majesty 
 is always present in all his courts : his judges are the 
 mirror by which the King's image is reflected ;' and 
 further, ' From this ubiquity^ (you see he is far from 
 shrinking from the word), ' from this ubiquity it follows 
 that the Sovereign can never be nonsuit ! ! ' Gentle- 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 37 
 
 men, the sun would set before I told you one hundredth 
 part of the enormity of this child of Moloch and Belial. 
 Inebriated with the cup of insanity, and flung upon the 
 stream of recklessness, she dashes down the cataract of 
 nonsense, and whirls amid the pools of confusion. Like 
 the Roman Emperor, she actually has declared herself 
 immortal ! she has declared her eternity ! Again, I am 
 obliged to say it, these are no words of mine ; the tre- 
 mendous sentiment confronts me in black and crimson 
 characters in this diabolical book. ' In the law,' says 
 Blackstone, 'the Sovereign is s&\d never to die!'' Again, 
 with still more hideous expressiveness, ' The law ascribes 
 to the Sovereign an absolute IMMORTALITY! !' 
 ' The King never dies.' 
 
 " And now, gentlemen, your destiny is in your own 
 hands. If you are willing to succumb to a power which 
 has never been contented with what she was, but has 
 been for centuries extending her conquests in both 
 hemispheres, then the humble individual who has ad- 
 dressed you will submit to the necessary consequence ; 
 will resume his military dress, and return to the Cauca- 
 sus ; but if, on the other hand, as I believe, you are 
 resolved to resist unflinchingly this flood of satanical 
 imposture and foul ambition, and force it back into the 
 ocean ; if, not from hatred of the English, — far from it, 
 — from hm to them (for a distinction must ever be drawn 
 between the nation and its dominant Johnbullism) ; if, 
 I say, from love to them as brothers, from a generous 
 determination to fight their battles, from an intimate 
 consciousness that they are in their secret hearts Bus- 
 sians, that they are champing the bit of their iron lot, 
 and are longing for you as their deliverers ; if from these 
 
38 PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 lofty notions, as well as from a burning patriotism, you 
 will form the high resolve to annihilate this dishonoiir of 
 humanity ; if you loathe its sophisms, ' De minimis non 
 curat lex," and ' Malitia supplet aetatem,' and ' Tres 
 faciunt collegium,' and ' Impotentia excusat legem,' and 
 ' Possession is nine points of the law,' and ' The greater 
 the truth, the greater the libel,' — principles which sap 
 the very foundations of morals ; if you wage war to the 
 knife with its blighting superstitions of primogeniture, 
 gavelkind, mortmain, and contingent remainders ; if you 
 detest, abhor, and abjure the tortuous maxims and per- 
 fidious provisions of its habeas corpus, quare expedit, and 
 qui tarn (hear, hear) ; if you scorn the mummeries of its 
 wigs, and bands, and coifs, and ermine (vehement cheer- 
 ing) ; if you trample and spit upon its accursed fee 
 simple and fee tail, villanage, and free soccage, fiefs, 
 heriots, seizins, feuds (a burst of cheers, the whole meet- 
 ing in commotion) ; its shares, its premiums, its post- 
 obits, its percentages, its tariffs, its broad and narrow 
 gauge." — Here the cheers became frantic, and drowned 
 the speaker's voice, and a most extraordinary scene of 
 enthusiasm followed. One half the meeting was seen 
 embracing the other half; till, as if by the force of a 
 sudden resolution, they all poured out of the square, and 
 proceeded to break the windows of all the British resi- 
 dents. They then formed into procession, and directing 
 their course to the great square before the Kremlin, they 
 dragged through the mud, and then solemnly burnt, an 
 effigy of John BuUism, which had been provided before- 
 hand by the managing committee, a lion and unicorn, 
 and a Queen Victoria. These being fully consumed, 
 they dispersed quietly ; and by ten o'clock at night the 
 
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 39 
 
 streets were profoundly quiet, and the silver moon looked 
 down in untroubled lustre on the city of the Czars. 
 
 Now, my Brothers of the Oratory, I protest to you my 
 full conviction that I have not caricatured this parallel at 
 all. Were I, indeed, skilled in legal matters, I could 
 have made it far more natural, plausible, and complete ; 
 but, as for its extravagance, I say deliberately, and have 
 means of knowing what I say, having once been a Pro- 
 testant, and oeing now a Catholic, — knowing what is said 
 and thought of Catholics, on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, knowing what they really are, — I deliberately assert 
 that no absurdities contained in the above sketch can 
 equal, nay, that no conceivable absurdities can surpass, 
 the absurdities which are firmly believed of Catholics by 
 sensible, kind-hearted, well-intentioned Protestants. Such 
 is the consequence of having looked at things all on one 
 side, and shutting the eyes to the other. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THAUITION THE SUSTAIMNG POWER OF THE 
 PROTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 Considering, what is as undeniable a fact as that there 
 is a country called France, or an ocean called the 
 Atlantic, the actual extent, the renown, and the mani- 
 fold influence of the Catholic religion, — considering that 
 it surpasses in territory and in population any other 
 Christian communion, nay surpasses them all put toge- 
 ther, — considering that it is the religion of two hundred 
 millions of souls, that it is found in every quarter of the 
 globe, that it penetrates into all classes of the social 
 body, that it is received by entire nations, that it is so 
 multiform in its institutions, and so exuberant in its 
 developments, and so fresh in its resources, as any 
 tolerable knowledge of it will be sure to bring home to 
 our minds ; — that it has been the creed of men the most 
 profound and the most refined, and the source of works 
 the most beneficial, the most arduous, and the most 
 beautiful ; — and, moreover, considering that, thus ubi- 
 quitous, thus commanding, thus intellectual, thus ener- 
 
42 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWEB 
 
 getic, thus efficient, it has remained one and the same 
 for centuries, — considering that all this must be owned 
 by its most virulent enemies, explain it how they will ; — 
 surely it is a phenomenon the most astounding, that a 
 nation like our own should so manage to hide this fact 
 from their minds, to intercept their own vision of it, as 
 habitually to scorn, and ridicule, and abhor the pro- 
 fessors of that religion, as being, from the nature of the 
 case, ignorant, unreasoning, superstitious, base, and 
 grovelling. It is familiar to an Englishman to wonder 
 and to pity the recluse and the devotee who surround 
 themselves with a high inclosure, and ignore what is on 
 the other side of it ; but was there ever such an in- 
 stance of self-sufficient, dense, and ridiculous bigotry, as 
 that which rises up and walls in the minds of our fellow- 
 countrymen from all knowledge of one of the most re- 
 markable phenomena which the history of the world has 
 seen ! This broad fact of Catholicism, as real as the 
 continent of America, or the Milky Way, which they 
 cannot deny. Englishmen will not entertain ; they shut 
 their eyes, they thrust their heads into the sand, and 
 try to get rid of a great vision, n great reality, under 
 the name of Popery. They drop a thousand years 
 from the world's chronicle, and, having steeped them 
 thoroughly in sin and idolatry, would fain drown them in 
 oblivion. Whether for philosophic remark or for histo- 
 rical research, they will not recognize, what infidels re- 
 cognize as well as Catholics, the vastness, the grandeur, 
 the splendour, the loveliness of the manifestations of this 
 time-honoured ecclesiastical confederation. Catholicism 
 is for fifteen hundred years as much a fact, and as great 
 a one (to put it on the lowest ground) as the imperial 
 sway of Great Britain for a hundred ; how can it then 
 
OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 43 
 
 be imbecile or extravagant to believe in it and to join it, 
 even granting it were an error! But this island, as 
 far as religion is concerned, really must be called one 
 large convent, or rather workhouse ; the old pictures 
 hang on the walls : the world-wide church is chalked up 
 on every side as a wivern or a griffin ; no gleam of 
 light finds its way in from without ; the thick atmo- 
 sphere refracts and distorts such straggling rays as enter 
 in. Why, it is not even a camera ohscura ; cut off from 
 Christendom though it be, at least it might have a true 
 picture of that Christendom cast in miniature upon its 
 floor ; but in this inquisitive age, when the Alps are 
 crested, and seas fathomed, and mines ransacked, and 
 sands sifted,' and rocks cracked into specimens, and 
 beasts caught and catalogued, as little is known by Eng- 
 lishmen of the religious sentiments, the religious usages, 
 the religious notions, the religious ideas of two hundred 
 millions of Christians, poured to and fro, among them 
 and around them, as if, I will not say, they were Tartars, 
 or Patagonians, but as if they inhabited the moon. 
 Verily, were the Catholic Church in the moon, they 
 would gaze on her with more patience and deUneate her 
 with more accuracy, than they do now. 
 
 This phenomenon is what I in part brought before 
 you in my last Lecture ; I said we were thought dupes 
 and rogues, because we were not known; because our 
 countrymen would not be at the pains, or could not stand 
 the shock, of realizing that there are two sides to every 
 question, and that in this particular question, perhaps, 
 they had taken the false side. And this evening I am 
 proceeding to the inquiry how, in a century of light, 
 when we have rewritten our grammars, and revolution- 
 ized our chronology, all this can possibly come to pass ; 
 
 e2 
 
44 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 how it is, the old family picture of the Man and the Lion 
 keeps its place, though all the rest of John BulPs furni- 
 ture has been condemned and has been replaced. Alas ! 
 that he should be inspecting the silks, and the china, and 
 the jewelry of East and West, but refuse to bestow a 
 like impartial examination on the various forms of Chris- 
 tianity ! 
 
 Now, if I must give the main and proximate cause of 
 this remarkable state of mind, I must simply say that 
 Englishmen go by that very mode of information in its 
 worst shape, which they are so fond of objecting to 
 Catholics ; they go by tradition, immemorial unau- 
 thenticated tradition. I have no wish to make a 
 rhetorical point, or to dress up a polemical argu- 
 ment. I wish you to investigate the matter philoso- 
 phically, and to come to results, which, not you only, 
 Brothers of the Oratory, who are Catholics, but all sen- 
 sible men will perceive to be just and true. I say, then. 
 Englishmen entertain their present monstrous notions of 
 us mainly because those notions are received on infor- 
 mation, not authenticated, but immemorial. This it is 
 that makes them entertain those notions : they talk 
 much of free inquiry, but towards us, they do not dream 
 of practising it ; they have been taught what they hold, 
 in the nursery, in the school-room, in the lecture-class, 
 from the pulpit, in the newspaper, in society. Each 
 man teaches the other : " How do i/ou know it ?" " Be- 
 cause he told me ;" " And how does he know it ? " 
 " Because / told him ,•" or, at very best advantage, " We 
 both know it because it was so said when we were young ; 
 because no one ever said the contrary ; because I recol-. 
 lect what a noise, when I was young, the Catholic Be- 
 lief Bill made : because my father and the old clergyman 
 
OK THE PROTESTAMT VIEW. 45 
 
 said so, and Lord Eldon, and George the Third ; and 
 there was Mr. Pitt obliged to give up office, and Lord 
 George Gordon, long before that, made a riot, and the 
 Catholic Chapels were burned down all over the country." 
 Well, these are your grounds for knowing it ; and how 
 did those energetic Protestants whom you have men- 
 tioned, know it themselves ? Why, they were told by 
 others before them, and those others by others again a 
 great time^ back ; and there the telling and teaching is 
 lost in fog : and this is mainly what has to be said for 
 the Anti-Catholic notions in question. Now this is to 
 believe on tradition. 
 
 Take notice, my Brothers, I am not reprobating the 
 proper use of tradition ; it has its proper place and its 
 true service. By tradition is meant, what has ever been 
 said, as far as we know, though we do not know how it 
 came to be said, and for that very reason think it true, 
 because else it would not be said. Now tradition is of 
 great and legitimate use as an initial means of gaining 
 notions about historical and other facts ; it is the way 
 in which things first come to us ; it is natural and neces- 
 sary to trust it ; it is an informant we make use of daily. 
 Life is not long enough for proving every thing ; we are 
 obliged to take a great many things upon the credit of 
 others. Moreover, tradition is really a ground in reason, 
 an argument for believing, to a certain point ; but then, 
 observe, we do not commonly think it right and safe, on 
 the score of mere vague testimony, to keep our eyes 
 and ears so very close to every other evidence, every 
 other means of proof, and to be so furiously certain and 
 ■so energetically positive that we know all about the 
 matter in question. No, we open our senses wide to 
 what may be said on the other side. We make use of 
 
46 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 tradition, but we are not content with it : it is enough to 
 begin with, not enough to finish upon. 
 
 Tradition then being information, not authenticated, 
 but immemorial, is a prima facie evidence of the facts 
 which it witnesses. It is sufficient to make us take a 
 thing for granted, in default of real proof ; it is sufficient 
 for our having an opinion about it ; it is sufficient often 
 to make us feel it to be safest to act in a certain way 
 under circumstances ; it is not sufficient in reason to 
 make us sure, much less to make us angry with those 
 who take a different view of the matter. It is not suffi- 
 cient to warrant us to dispense with proof the other way, 
 if it be offered to us. Supposing, for instance, there was 
 a general belief or impression in England, running up 
 beyond the memory of man, though unsupported by any 
 distinct evidence, that the composer TaUis was the author 
 of the Protestant Hundredth Psalm tune, or that Charles 
 the Second was poisoned, or that Bishop Butler of Dur- 
 ham died a Catholic, I consider we certainly should have 
 acquiesced in the tradition, taken it for granted, and made 
 it our own, as long as it was our only means of forming 
 an opinion on the respective points in question. We 
 should have thought the fact to be such, while there was 
 nothing to set against it. Nor would any other course 
 have been reasonable. But, supposing, in contravention 
 of these traditions, a manuscript of the Psalm tune in 
 question was found in some German library, in the hand- 
 writing of Luther ; or supposing a statement existed 
 purporting to be drawn up by Charles's medical attend- 
 ants, accounting for his death and attributing it, with all 
 appearance of truth, to some natural complaint ; or 
 again, supposing his death was imputed to a very un- 
 likely person. Bishop Ken or Mr. Evelyn ; or supposing 
 
OF THE PllOTESTANT VIEW. 47 
 
 Butler's Chaplain had left an account of his last hours, 
 from which it was demonstrable that up to the last day 
 of his hfe he was a Protestant ; should we passionately 
 reject, or superciliously make light of this separate evi- 
 dence, because we were content with our tradition ? or 
 if we were tempted to do so, could we possibly defend our 
 conduct in reason, or approve it to another ? Surely it 
 would be as extravagant to refuse the presumptions or 
 the evidence offered us in the second place, as to refuse 
 the tradition in the first. Thus a tradition, being an 
 anonymous informant, is of force, only under the pro- 
 viso that it cannot be plausibly disputed. 
 
 I am speaking of a single or solitary tradition ; for if 
 there be two or three distinct traditions, all saying the 
 same thing, then it is a very different matter : then, as in 
 the case of two or three independent witnesses in a ju- 
 dicial proceeding, there is at once a cumulation of evi- 
 dence, and its joint effect is very great. Thus, supposing, 
 besides the current local belief in England, there was a 
 tradition, in some out of the way district in Ireland, to 
 the effect that a certain family had gained its estates in 
 reward for the share which its ancestor had in the assas- 
 sination of Charles the Second, we should certainly con- 
 sider it at least a singular coincidence ; for it would be a 
 second tradition, and, if proved to be distinct and inde- 
 pendent, would quite alter the influence of the first upon 
 our minds, just as two witnesses at a trial produce an 
 effect on judge and jury, simply different from what either 
 of them would produce by himself. And in this way a 
 multiplication of traditions may make a wqnderfhlly 
 strong proof, strong enough even for a person to die for, 
 ratherlhaii consent to deny the fact attested ; and, there- 
 fore, strong enough in reason for him to be very positive 
 
48 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 upon, very much excited, very angry, and very deter- 
 mined. But when such strong feeHng and pertinacity of 
 purpose are created by a mere single and solitary tra- 
 dition, I cannot call that state of mind conviction, but 
 prejudice. 
 
 Yet this, I must maintain, is the sort of ground on 
 which Protestants are so certain, that the Catholic Church 
 is a simple monster of iniquity. If you asked the first 
 person you met why he believed that our religion was so 
 baneful and odious, he would not say : " I have had good 
 proofs of it ;" or, "I know Catholics too well to doubt it;" 
 or,- " I am well read in history, and I can vouch for it ;" 
 or, " I have lived such a long time in Catholic countries, 
 I ought to know ;" — (of course I do not mean that no 
 one would make such a reply, but I mean that it would 
 not be the reply of the mass of men : far from it.) No, 
 single out a man from the multitude, and he would say 
 something of this sort : "I am sure it is ;" he will look 
 significant, and say, " You will find it a hard job to make 
 me think otherwise ;" or he will look wise, and say, " I 
 can make a pretty good guess how things go on among 
 you ;" or he will be angry, and cry out, " Those fellows, 
 the priests, I would not believe them, though they swore 
 themselves black ;" or he will speak loudly, and overbear 
 and drown all remonstrance, " It is too notorious for 
 proof; every one knows it; every book says it; it is a 
 foregone conclusion. It is rather too much in the nine- 
 teenth century to be told to begin history again, and to 
 have to reverse our elementary facts." That is, in other 
 words, the multitude of men hate Catholicism mainly on 
 tradition, there being few indeed who have made fact and 
 argument the primary or the supplemental grounds of 
 their aversion to it. And, observe, they hate it on a 
 
OF THE PHOTESTAISIT VIEW. 49 
 
 single isolated tradition, not a complex conclusive tradi- 
 tion, not the united tradition of many places. It is true, 
 indeed, that Holland, and Geneva, and Prussia, each has its 
 own tradition against the Catholic Church ; but our popu- 
 lation do in no sense believe from any judgment they form 
 on those united British and foreign traditions, but from 
 the tradition of one nation alone; which, though certainly it 
 comprises millions of souls, nevertheless is so intimately 
 one by the continual intercourse and mutual communica- 
 tion of part with part, that it cannot with any fairness 
 be considered to contain a number of separate testimo- 
 nies, but one only. Yet this meagre evidence, I say, ^ 
 suffices to produce in the national mind an enthusiastic, 1 
 undoubting, and energetic persuasion that we torture \ 
 heretics, immure nuns, sell licences to sin, and are plot- | 
 ting against kings and governments ; all, I say, because | 
 this was said of Catholics when they were boys. It is - 
 the old heirloom, the family picture, which is at once 
 their informant and their proof. 
 
 Nor is this phenomenon, remarkable as it is, without 
 its parallel in former passages of the world's history. We 
 have a notable instance in holy writ to which I hope I 
 may allude without risking a theological discussion. We 
 read there of certain parties animated with extreme reli- 
 gious bitterness, simply on the incentive, and for the 
 defence, of traditions which were absolutely worthless. 
 The popular party in Judea, at the date of the Christian ■ 
 era, were the dupes of a teaching, professing indeed the ; 
 authority of their forefathers, or what they called " the ; 
 tradition of the elders ;" but in reahty nothing more or \ 
 less than the " commandment and tradition of men ;" of ' 
 fallible men, nay, not only deceivable, but actually de- 
 ceived. This was the fatal flaw in their argument ; the 
 
50 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWEK 
 
 tradition might have heen kept ever so accurately and 
 religiously, it might with full certainty have been derived 
 from the foregoing generation, and have existed beyond 
 the furthest memory ; but this proved nothing while it 
 was traceable back to man, not to a divine informant, as 
 its ultimate resolution or first origin. The stream can- 
 not rise higher than its source ; if the wellspring of the 
 tradition be human, not divine, what profit its fidelity I 
 Such as is the primary authority, so will be the con- 
 tinuous, the latest derivation. And this, accordingly, was 
 the judgment pronounced in the instance, to which I have 
 alluded, on both the doctrine and its upholders. " In 
 vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the com- 
 mandments of men.'''' As is the origin, so is the tradition; 
 when the origin is true, the tradition will be true ; when 
 the origin is false, the tradition will be false. There can 
 most surely be true traditions, that is, traditiohs from true 
 sources ; but such traditions, though they really be true, 
 do not profess to prove themselves ; they come accom- 
 panied by other arguments ; the true traditions of divine 
 revelation are proved to be true, by miracle, by prophecy, 
 by the test of cumulative and collateral evidences, which 
 directly avouch and warrant them. Such were not the 
 traditions of the Pharisees, — they professed to speak for 
 themselves, they bore witness to themselves, they were 
 their own evidence ; and, as might have been expected, 
 they were not trustworthy ; they were mere frauds ; they 
 came indeed down the stream of time, but that was no 
 recommendation ; it only put the fraud up higher ; it 
 might make it venerable, it could not make it true. 
 
 Yet it is remarkable, I say, how positive and fanatical 
 the Jewish people was in its maintenance of these lies. 
 It was irritated, nay, maddened, at hearing them de- 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 51 
 
 nounced, rose up fiercely against their denouncers, and 
 thought they did God service in putting them to death. 
 It is plain then that a popular feeling is not necessarily 
 logical, because it is strong. 
 
 Now of course a great number of persons will not 
 easily allow the fact, that the English animosity against 
 Catholicism is founded on nothing more argumentative 
 than tradition ; but, whether I can prove my point or not, i 
 I think I have already shown that tradition, even thoughj 
 not an argumentative, is, at least, quite a sufficient ex 
 
 planation of the feeling. I am not assigning a triflin, 
 and inadequate cause to so great an effect. If the Jews 
 could be led to put to death the Founder of our religion 
 and His disciples on tradition, there is nothing ridiculous 
 in saying that the British scorn and hatred of Catholi- 
 cism may be created by tradition also. The great ques- 
 tion is, the matter of fact, is tradition the cause ? I say 
 it is ; and in saying so, observe, I am speaking of the 
 multitude, not dwelling on exceptions, however numerous 
 in themselves ; for doubtless there are a number of men, 
 men of thought and reading, who oppose Catholicism, 
 not merely on tradition, but on better arguments : but, I 
 repeat, I am speaking of the great mass of Protestants. 
 Again, bear in mind, I am speaking of what really is the 
 fact, not of what the mass of Protestants will con/ess. 
 Of course no man will admit, nor, if he can help it, own 
 even to himself, that he is taking his views of the Catholic 
 Church from Bishop Newton, or buckling on his sword 
 against her preachers, merely because Lord George Gor- 
 don did the like ; on the contrary, he will sharply retort, 
 " I never heard of Bishop Newton or of Lord George 
 Gordon, I don't know their names ;" but the simple 
 question which we have to determine is the real matter 
 
52 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWEK 
 
 of fact, and not whether the persons who are the subjects 
 of our investigation will themselves admit it. To this 
 point, then, the matter of fact, — Do Protestants go by 
 tradition ? on which I have said something already, I shall 
 now proceed to direct your attention. 
 
 How then stands the matter of fact ? Do the people 
 of this country receive their notion of the Catholic 
 Church in the way of argument and examination, as they 
 would decide in favour of railroads over other modes of 
 conveyance, or on plans of parish relief, or police regula- 
 tions, and the like ; or does it come to them mainly as a 
 tradition which they have inherited, and which they will 
 not question, though they have in their hands abundant 
 reasons for questioning it ? I answer, without a doubt, 
 it comes to them as a tradition ; the fact is patent and 
 palpable ; the tradition is before our eyes, unmistakeable ; 
 it is huge, vast, various, engrossing ; it has a monopoly 
 of the English mind, it brooks no rival, and it takes 
 summary measures with rebellion. 
 
 When King Henry began a new religion, when Eliza- 
 beth brought it into shape, when her successors completed 
 and confirmed it, they were all of them too wise, and too 
 much in earnest, not to clench their work. They pro- 
 vided for its continuance after them. They, or at least 
 the influences which ruled them, knew well enough, that 
 Protestantism, left to itself, could not stand. It had 
 not that internal consistency in its make, which would 
 support it against outward foes, or secure it against in- 
 ternal disorders. And the event has justified their fore- 
 sight ; whether you look at Lutheranism or Calvinism, 
 you will find neither of those forms of religion has been 
 able to resist the action of thought and reason upon it 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 53 
 
 during a course of years ; both have changed and come 
 to nought. Luther began his rehgion in Germany, Cal- 
 vin in Geneva; Calvinism is now all but extinct in 
 Geneva, and Lutheranism in Germany. It could not be 
 otherwise ; such an issue was predicted by CathoHcs, as 
 well as instinctively felt by the Reformers, at the time 
 that Protestantism started. Give it rope enough, and 
 any one could prophesy its end; so its patrons deter- 
 mined that rope it should not have, but that private 
 judgment shfluld come to a close with their own use of it. 
 There was enough of private judgment they thought, 
 when they themselves had done with it. So they forcibly 
 shut-to the door which they had opened, and imposed on 
 the populations they had reformed an artificial tradition of 
 their own, instead of the liberty of inquiry and disputation. 
 They worked their own particular persuasion into the poli- 
 tical framework of things, and made it a constitutional or 
 national principle ; in other words, they established it. 
 
 Now you may say that Catholicism has often been 
 established also ; true, but Catholicism does not depend 
 on its establishment for its existence ; it can do without 
 it, and often dispenses with it to an advantage. A 
 Catholic nation, as a matter of course, establishes 
 Catholicism, because it is a Catholic nation ; but in such 
 a case Catholicism comes first, and establishment comes 
 second ; the establishment is the spontaneous act of the 
 people ; it is a national movement, the Catholic people 
 does it, and not the Catholic Church. It is but the 
 accident of a particular state of things, the result of the 
 fervour of the people, it is the will of the masses ; but I 
 repeat, it is not necessary for Catholicism. Not neces- 
 sary, I maintain, and Ireland is my proof of it ; there 
 Cathohcism has been, not only not established, it has 
 
54 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 [been persecuted for three hundred years, and at this 
 moment it is more vigorous than ever ; whereas, I defy 
 you to bring any instance of a nation remaining Lutheran 
 'or Oalvinist for even a hundred years, under similarly 
 i unpromising circumstances. Where is the country in 
 the whole world, where Protestantism has thriven under 
 persecution, as Catholicism has thriven in Ireland ? You 
 might say, indeed, that such an occurrence is at least 
 conceivable, for this reason, that persecution binds a 
 body together ; but I do not think that even persecution 
 would, for any course of years, bind Protestants together 
 in one body ; for the very principle of private judgment 
 is a principle of disunion, and that principle goes on act- 
 ing in weal and in woe, in triumph and in disappointment, 
 and its history gives instances of this. But I am speak- 
 ing, not of what is supposable under certain circum- 
 stances, but of what has been the fact, and I say, looking 
 at the subject historically, Protestantism cannot last 
 without an establishment, though Catholicism can ; and 
 next, I say that that establishment of Protestantism is 
 not the work of the people, is not a development of 
 their faith, is not carried by acclamation, but is an act 
 of calculating heads, of State pohcy, of kingcraft ; the 
 work of certain princes, statesmen, bishops, in order to 
 make, if possible, that national, which was not national 
 before it, and without it never would be national; and 
 therefore it is not a matter of the greater or less ex- 
 pediency, sometimes advisable, sometimes not, but it is 
 always necessary, always imperative, if Protestantism is 
 to be kept alive. Establishmentism is the very life of 
 Protestantism ; or; in other words. Protestantism comes 
 in upon 'the nation. Protestantism is maintained, not in 
 the way of reason and truth, not by appeals to facts, but 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 55 
 
 by tradition, and by a compulsory tradition ; and this, in 
 other words, is an establishment. 
 
 Now this establishment of Protestantism was compa- 
 ratively an easy undertaking in England, without the 
 population knowing much what Protestantism meant, 
 and I will tell you why ; there are certain peculiarities 
 of the English character, which were singularly favour- 
 able to the royal purpose. As I have just said, the 
 legitimate instruments for deciding on the truth of a 
 religion ard these two, fact and reason, or in other 
 words, the way of history and the way of science ; and 
 to both the one and the other of these, the English mind 
 is naturally indisposed. Theologians proceed in the way 
 of reasoning ; they view Catholic truth as a whole, as 
 one great system, of which part grows out of part, and 
 doctrine corresponds to doctrine. This system they 
 carry out into its fulness, and define in its details, by 
 patient processes of reason ; and they learn to prove and 
 defend it by means of frequent disputations and logical 
 development. Now all such abstract investigations and 
 controversial exercises are distasteful to an Englishman ; 
 they suit the Germans, and still more the French, the 
 Italians, and the Spaniards, but as to ourselves we break 
 away from them as dry, uncertain, theoretical, and 
 unreal. The other means of attaining religious truth is 
 the way of history ; when, namely, from the review of 
 past times and foreign countries, the student determines 
 what was really taught by the Apostles in the beginning. 
 Now an Englishman, as is notorious, takes comparatively 
 little interest in the manners, customs, opinions, or 
 doings of foreign countries. Surrounded by the sea, he 
 is occupied with himself; his attention is concentrated 
 in himself; and he looks abroad only with reference to 
 
56 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 himself. We are a home people ; we like a house to 
 ourselves, and we call it our castle ; we look at what is 
 immediately before us ; we are eminently practical ; we 
 care little for the past ; we resign ourselves to existing 
 circumstances ; we are neither eclectics nor antiquarians ; 
 we live in the present. Foreign politics excite us very 
 little ; the Minister of Foreign Affairs may order about 
 our fleets, or sign protocols, at his good pleasure ; pro- 
 vided he does nothing to cripple trade, or to raise the 
 price of wheat or cotton. Much less do we care to know 
 how they worship, or what they believe, in Germany or 
 in Spain ; rather, we are apt to despise their whole 
 apparatus of religion, whatever it is, as odd and out- 
 landish ; and as to past times, English divines have 
 attempted as little for ecclesiastical history, as they have 
 attempted for theological science. 
 
 Now you see how admirably this temper of English- 
 men fits in with the exigencies of Protestantism ; for 
 two of the very characteristics of Protestantism are, its 
 want of past history, and its want of fixed teaching. I 
 do not say that no Protestants have investigated or 
 argued ; that no Protestants have made appeals to primi- 
 tive Christianity ; such an assertion would be absurd ; it 
 was a rule of the game, as it may be called ; they were 
 obliged to say what they held, and to prove it, they were 
 obliged to recur to ecclesiastical histoiry ; — certainly ; but 
 they have done so, because they could not help it ; they 
 did it for the moment ; they did it for a purpose ; they 
 did so as an argumentum ad hominem ; but they did so 
 as little as they could, and they soon left off doing so. 
 Now especially, the Latitudinarians profess to ignore doc- 
 trine, and the Evangelicals to ignore history. In truth, 
 philosophy and history do not come natural to Pro- 
 
or THK PROTESTANT VIKW. 57 
 
 testantism ; it cannot bear either ; it does not reason 
 out any point ; it does not survey steadily any course of 
 facts. It dips into reason, it dips into history, but it 
 breathes freer when it emerges again. Observe, then ; — 
 the very exercises of the intellect, by which religious 
 truth is attained, are just those which the Englishman is 
 too impatient, and Protestantism too shallow to abide ; 
 the natural disposition of the one most happily jumps 
 with the needs of the other. And this was the first 
 singular advantage of Protestantism in England : Catho- 
 lics reasoned profoundly upon doctrine ; Catholics in- 
 vestigated rigidly other times and places ; in vain, — they 
 had not found the way to gain the Englishman, whereas 
 their antagonist had found a weapon of its own, far more 
 to the purpose of the contest than argument or fact. 
 
 That weapon is, what is so characteristic of our peo- 
 ple, loyalty to the Sovereign. If there is one passion 
 more than another, which distinguishes the manly and 
 generous heart of the Englishman, it is that of personal 
 attachment. He lives in the present, in contrast to the 
 absent and the past. He ignores foreigners at a dis- 
 tance ; but when they come to him, if they come recom- 
 mended by their antecedents, and make an appeal to his 
 eyes and his ears, he almost worships them. We all 
 recollect with what enthusiasm the populace received 
 Marshal Soult on his visit to London a few years ago ; 
 it was a warm and hearty feeling elicited by the sight of 
 a brave enemy and a skilful commander, and it took his 
 own countrymen altogether by surprise. The reception 
 given to Louis Philippe, who was far from popular among 
 us, was of a similarly hospitable character ; nay. Napo- 
 leon himself, who had been the object of our bitterest 
 hatred, on his appearance as a prisoner off the British 
 
 F 
 
58 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWEK 
 
 coast, was visited with an interest, respect, and almost 
 sympathy, which I consider {mutatis mutandis) would not 
 at all have been shown towards Wellington or Blucher, 
 had they been prisoners in France. Again, I suppose 
 the political principles of the Emperor Nicholas are as 
 cordially hated in England, as his religious principles are 
 in disrepute in Eome ; yet even he, on his successive 
 visits to the two places, encountered a far less flattering 
 reception from the Roman populace than from the peo- 
 ple of England. Who so unpopular thirty years ago, as 
 that magnanimous man. Lord Londonderry ? yet when 
 he appeared at George the Fourth's coronation, the sight 
 of his noble figure and bearing drew shouts of applause 
 from the multitude, who thought they hated him. George 
 himself, worthless as he seems to have been, for how 
 many years had he been an object of popular admiration ! 
 till his wife, a more urgent candidate for the eye of 
 pity and sympathy, supplanted him. Charles the Second, 
 the most profligate of monarchs, lived in the hearts of 
 his people, till the day of his death. It is the way with 
 Englishmen. A saint in rags would be despised; in 
 broadcloth, or in silk, he would be thought something 
 '; more than ordinary. St. Francis of Assisi, bareheaded 
 and barefooted, would be hooted ; St. Francis Xavier, 
 dressed up like a Mandarin, with an umbrella over his head, 
 would inspire wonder and delight. A Turk, a Parsee, a 
 Chinese, a Bonze, nay, I will say, a chimpanzee, a hippo- 
 potamus, has only to show himself in order to be the 
 cynosure of innumerable eyes, and the idol of his hour. 
 Nay, even more, — I will say a bold thing, — but I am not 
 at all sure, that, except at seasons of excitement like the 
 present, the Pope himself, however he may be abused 
 behind his back, would not be received with cheers, and 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 59 
 
 run after by admiring crowds, if he visited this country, 
 independent of the shadow of Peter which attends him, 
 winning favour and attracting hearts, when he showed 
 himself in real flesh and blood, by the majesty of his 
 presence and the prestige of his name. Such, I say, is 
 the Englishman : with a heart for many objects, with an 
 innate veneration for merit, talents, rank, wealth, sci- 
 ence, not in the abstract, however, but as embodied in a 
 visible form ; and it is the consciousness of this charac- 
 teristic whfch renders statesmen at this moment, of 
 whatever cast of politics, so afraid of the appearance of 
 Cardinals and a hierarchy, in the midst of the people 
 they have to govern. 
 
 These antagonist peculiarities of the Enghsh character 
 which I have been describing, lay clear and distinct 
 before the sagacious intellects, which were the ruling 
 spirits of the English Reformation. They had to deal 
 with a people who would be sure to revolt from the 
 unnatural speculations of Calvin, and who would see 
 nothing attractive in the dreamy and sensual doctrines of 
 Luther. The emptiness of a ceremonial, and the affecta- 
 tion of a priesthood were no bribe to its business-like 
 habits and its love of the tangible. Definite dogma, 
 intelligible articles, formularies which would construe, a 
 consistent ritual, an historical ancestry, would have been 
 thrown away on those who were not sensitive of the 
 connexion of faith and reason. Another way was to be 
 pursued with our countrymen to make Protestantism 
 live; and that was to embody it in the person of its 
 Sovereign. English Protestantism is the religion of the 
 throne : it is represented, realized, taught, transmitted 
 in the succession of monarchs and an hereditary aris- 
 tocracy. It is a religion grafted upon loyalty ; and its 
 
 f2 
 
60 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 strength is not in argument, not in fact, not in the 
 unanswerable controversiaHst, not in an apostolical suc- 
 cession, not in sanction of Scripture, but in a royal road 
 to faith, in backing up a King whom men see, against a 
 Pope they do not see. The devolution of its crown is 
 the tradition of its creed ; and to doubt its truth is to 
 be disloyal towards its Sovereign. Kings are an English- 
 man's saints and doctors ; he likes somebody or some- 
 thing, at which he can cry " huzzah," and throw up his 
 hat. Bluff king Hal, glorious Bess, the Royal Martyr, the 
 Merry Monarch, the pious and immortal William, the 
 good King George, royal personages very different from 
 each other, — nevertheless, as being royal, none of them 
 come amiss, but all are the objects of his devotion, and 
 the resolution of his Christianity. 
 
 It was plain then what had to be done in order to 
 perpetuate Protestantism in a country such as this. 
 Convoke the legislature, pass some sweeping ecclesias- 
 tical enactments, exalt the Crown above the Law and the 
 Gospel, down with the Cross and up with the lion and 
 dog, toss all priests out of the country as traitors ; let 
 Protestantism be the passport to office and authority, 
 force the King to be a Protestant, make his court Pro- 
 testant, bind Houses of Parliament to be Protestant, 
 clap a Protestant oath on judges, barristers-at-law, offi- 
 cers in army and navy, members of the universities, 
 national clergy ; establish this stringent tradition in 
 every function and department of the State, surround it 
 with the lustre of rank, wealth, station, name, and 
 talent ; and this people so impatient of inquiry, so care- 
 less of abstract truth, so apathetic to historical fact, so 
 contemptuous of foreign ideas, will ex animo swear to the 
 truth of a religion which indulges their natural turn of 
 
01- THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 61 
 
 mind, and involves no severe thought or tedious appHca- 
 tion. The Sovereign is the source and the centre, as of 
 civil, so of ecclesiastical arrangements; truth shall be 
 synonymous with order and good government; — what 
 can be simpler than such a teaching? Puritans may 
 struggle against it, and temporarily prevail; sceptics 
 may ridicule it, object, expose, and refute ; readers of 
 the Fathers may strive to soften and embellish it with 
 the colours of antiquity ; but strong in the constitution 
 of the law, and congenial to the heart of the people, the 
 royal tradition will be a match for all its rivals, and in 
 the long run will extinguish the very hope of competi- 
 tion. 
 
 So counselled the Ahithophels of the day ; it was de- 
 vised, it was done. Then was the inauguration of the 
 great picture of the Lion and the Man. The Virgin 
 Queen rose in her strength ; she held her court, she 
 showed herself to her people ; she gathered round her 
 peer and squire, alderman and burgess, army and navy, 
 lawyer and divine, student and artisan. She made an 
 appeal to the chivalrous and the loyal, and forthwith all 
 that was noble, powerful, dignified, splendid, and intel- 
 lectual, touched the hilt of their swords, and spread their 
 garments in the way for her to tread upon. And first of 
 all she addressed herself to the Law ; and that, not only 
 because it was the proper foundation of a national struc- 
 ture, but also inasmuch as from the nature of the case, 
 it was her surest and most faithful ally. The Law is a 
 science, and therefore takes for granted afterwards, what- 
 ever it has once determined ; hence it followed, that once 
 Protestant, it would be always Protestant ; it could be 
 depended on ; let Protestantism be recognized as a prin- 
 ciple of the Constitution, and every decision to the end 
 
62 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWEB 
 
 of time would but illustrate Protestant doctrines and 
 consolidate Protestant interests. In the eye of the Law 
 precedent is the measure of truth, and order the proof of 
 reasonableness, and reception the test of orthodoxy. It 
 moves forward by a majestic tradition faithful to its 
 principles, regardless of theory and speculation, and 
 therefore eminently fitted to be the vehicle of English 
 Protestantism such as we have described it, and to co- 
 operate with the monarchical principle in its consolida- 
 tion. Moreover, a number of delicate questions which 
 had been contested in previous centuries, and had hitherto 
 been involved in contradictory precedents, now received 
 once for all a Protestant solution. There had been pro- 
 longed disputes between the Pontificate and the Regale, 
 the dispute about Investitures, of Rufus with St. Anselm, 
 of Henry the Second with St. Thomas, of Henry of Win- 
 chester with St. Edmund ; and the eighth Harry had set- 
 tled it in his own way, when, on Cardinal Fisher's refusing 
 to acknowledge his spiritual power, he had, without hesita- 
 tion, proceeded to cut off his head; — the Law with its Pro- 
 testant bias, could now give dignity and form to what up 
 to this time, to say the least, were ex parte proceedings. 
 It was decided once for all, what was the rule and what the ■ 
 exception; the courts gave judgment that the saints 
 were to be all in the wrong ; the kings were to be all in 
 the right ; whatever the crown had claimed was to be its 
 due, whatever the Pope claimed was to be a usurpation. 
 What could be more simple and conclusive? the most 
 sacred power in the order of nature, " whose voice is 
 the harmony of the world," to whom "all things in 
 earth do homage,'" the hereditary wisdom and the col- 
 lective intelligence of a mighty nation in Parliament 
 assembled, the venerable judges of the land, were retained 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 63 
 
 in the interests of a party ; their ripe experience, their 
 profound thought, their subtle penetration, their well- 
 regulated prudence were committed for good and all to 
 the politics of a crisis. 
 
 So much for the Law ; but this was only one of those 
 great functions of the nation which became the instru- 
 ment of the Protestant tradition. Elizabeth had an in- 
 fluence with her, other and even greater than the autho- 
 rity of the Law. She was the Queen of fashion and of 
 opinion. The principles of Protestantism rapidly became 
 the standard generally, to which genius, taste, philo- 
 sophy, learning, and investigation were constrained and 
 bribed to submit. They are her legacy to the nation, 
 and have been taken for granted ever since, as starting 
 points in all discussion and all undertakings. In every 
 circle, and in every rank of the community, in the court, 
 in public meetings, in private society, in literary assem- 
 blages, in the family party, it is always assumed that 
 Catholicism is absurd. No one can take part in the 
 business of the great world, no one can speak and 
 debate, no one can present himself before his consti- 
 tuents, no one can write a book, without the necessity of 
 professing that Protestant ideas are self-evident, and 
 that the religion of Alfred, St. Edward, Stephen Lang- 
 ton and Friar Bacon, is a bygone dream. No one can 
 be a Catholic, without apologizing for it. And what is 
 in vogue in the upper classes, is ever, as we know, am- 
 bitiously aped in the inferior. The religious observances 
 of the court become a reigning fashion throughout the 
 social fabric, as certainly as its language or mode of 
 dress ; and, as an aspirant for distinction advances from 
 a lower grade of society to an upper, he necessarily 
 abandons his vulgar sect, whatever it is, for the national 
 
64 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 Protestantism. All other ways of thought are as fright- 
 ful as the fashions of last year ; the present is the true 
 and the divine ; the past is dark because its sun has 
 set, and ignorant because it is dumb, and living dogs 
 are worth more than dead lions. As to Catholicism, the 
 utmost liberality which can be extended towards it, is to 
 call it pretty poetry, bearable in a tragedy, intolerable in 
 fact; the utmost charity towards its professors is to 
 confess that they may be better than their creed, — per- 
 haps believe it, and are only dupes, — perhaps doubt it, and 
 are only cowards. Protestantism sets the tone to every 
 thing; and to have the patronage of the wealthy, the 
 esteem of the cultivated, and the applause of the many. 
 Catholics must get its phrases by heart. It is the pro- 
 fession of a gentleman ; Catholicism of underbred per- 
 sons, of the vulgar-minded, the uncouth, and the ill-con- 
 nected. We all can understand how the man of fashion, 
 the profligate, the spendthrift, have their own circles, to 
 which none but men of their own stamp and their own 
 opinions are admitted ; how to hate religion and religious 
 men, to scoff at principle, and to laugh at heaven and hell, 
 and to do all this with decorum and good breeding, are the 
 necessary title for admittance ; and how, in consequence, 
 men at length begin to believe what they so incessantly 
 hear said, and so incessantly say by rote themselves, to 
 suspect that, after all, virtue, as it is called, is nothing 
 else than hypocrisy grafted on licentiousness ; and that 
 purity and simplicity, and earnestness and probity, are 
 but the dreams of the young and the theoretical : — it is 
 by a similar policy, and by a similar process, that the 
 fathers and patrons of the English Reformation have 
 given a substance, a momentum, and a permanence to 
 their tradition, and have fastened on us Catholics, first 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VILW. 65 
 
 the imputation, then the repute of ignorance, bigotry, 
 and superstition. Let the Protestant paint up Popery, 
 and the profligate will take it for virtue. 
 
 And now I will mention a distinct vehicle of the Pro- 
 testant Tradition in England, which was an instance of 
 good fortune, greater than its originators could pos- 
 sibly have anticipated or contrived. Protestantism be- 
 came, not only the tradition of law and of good society, 
 but the tradition of literature also. There is no English 
 literature before the age of Elizabeth; but with the latter 
 years of her reign begins that succession of great authors 
 which continues to flow on down to this day. So it was, 
 that about the commencement of the sixteenth century 
 learning revived ; on the taking of Constantinople by the 
 Turks the men of letters of the imperial city, and, what 
 was of more consequence, its libraries, became the property 
 of the West. Schools were opened for the cultivation of 
 studies and pursuits, which make Greece as renowned 
 among the nations in the gifts of intellect, as Judea has 
 been in the gifts of grace. The various perfections of 
 the Greek language, the treasures of Greek thought, the 
 genius and taste of Greek art, after the sleep of ages 
 burst upon the European mind. It was like the warmth, 
 the cheerfulness, and the hues of spring succeeding to the 
 pure and sublime, but fantastic forms of winter frost- 
 work. The barbarism, the sternness, the untowardness 
 of the high and noble mediaeval school, eyed with 
 astonishment, and melted beneath, the radiance of a 
 genius unrivalled in the intellectual firmament. A world 
 of ideas, transcendent in beauty and endless in fertility, 
 flooded the imagination of the scholar and the poet. 
 The fine arts underwent a classical development, and the 
 vernacular tongues caught the refinement and the ele- 
 
66 TKAEITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 gance of the age of Pericles and Alexander. The revi- 
 val began in Catholic Italy ; it advanced into Catholic 
 France; at length it showed itself in Protestant England. 
 A voice came forth from the grave of the old world, as 
 articulate and keen as that of a living teacher ; and it 
 thrilled into the heart of the people to whom it came, 
 and it taught them to respond to it in their own tongue, — 
 and that teaching was coincident with the first preaching 
 of Protestantism. It was surely a most lucky accident 
 for the young religion, that, while the English language 
 was coming to the birth with its special attributes of 
 nerve, simplicity, and vigour, at its very first breathings 
 Protestantism was at hand to form it upon its own theo- 
 logical patois, and to educate it as the mouth-piece of its 
 tradition. So, however, it was to be ; and soon, 
 
 " As in this bad world below 
 Noblest things find vilest using," 
 
 the new religion employed the new language for its pur- 
 poses, in a great undertaking, the translation of its own 
 Bible ; a work which, by the purity of its diction, and 
 the strength and harmony of its style, has deservedly 
 become the very model of good English, and the standard 
 of the language to all future times. The same age, which 
 saw this great literary achievement, gave birth to some 
 of the greatest masters of thought and composition in 
 the most various departments of authorship. Shake- 
 speare, Spenser, Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, and Hooker are 
 its own ; and they were, withal, more or less the pane- 
 gyrists of Elizabeth and her religion, and moreover, at 
 least the majority of them, adherents of her creed, be- 
 cause already clients of her throne. The Mother of 
 the Reformation is, in the verses of Shakespeare, " a fair 
 vestal throned by the west ;" in the poem of Spenser 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 67 
 
 she is the Faery Queen, Gloriana, and the fair huntress, 
 Uelphebe, while the niihtant Christian is rescued from the 
 seductions of Popery, Duessa, by Una, the True Church, 
 or Protestant religion. The works of these celebrated 
 men have been but the beginning of a long series of crea- 
 tions of the highest order of Hterary merit, of which Pro- 
 testantism is the intellectual basis, and Protestant insti- 
 tutions the informing object. What was wanting to lead 
 the national mind a willing captive to the pretensions of 
 Protestantism, beyond the fascination of genius so mani- 
 fold and so various ? What need of controversy to refute 
 the claims of Catholicism ! what need of closeness of rea- 
 soning, or research into facts, when under a Queen''s 
 smile this vast and continuous tradition had been unrolled 
 before the eyes of men, illuminate with the most dazzling 
 colours, and musical with the most subduing strains ? 
 Certainly the lions' artists, even had they had the fairest 
 play, could have set up no rival exhibition as original and 
 as exuberant as this. 
 
 Nor was it court poets alone, as time went on, who 
 swelled the torrent of the Protestant Tradition. Milton 
 from the middle class, and Bunyan from among the 
 populace, exerted an influence superior to Shakespeare 
 himself, whose great mind did not condescend to the 
 direct inculcation of a private or a sectarian creed. Their 
 phrases, their sentiments are the household words of the 
 nation, they have become its interpreters of Scripture, 
 and, I may say, its prophets, — such is the magical elo- 
 quence of their compositions ; so much so, that I really 
 shall not be far from the mark in saying of them, nay of 
 Shakespeare too, that the ordinary run of men find it 
 very difiicult to determine, in respect to the proverbs, 
 instances, maxims, and half-sentences which are in the 
 
68 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 nation's mouth, which, and how much, is from the Bible, 
 and how much from the authors I have mentioned. 
 There is a saying, " Give me the framing of a nation's 
 proverbs, and I shall have my own way with it ;" this has 
 been strikingly fulfilled in the Protestantism of England. 
 What, indeed, could possibly stand against the rush and 
 vehemence of such a tradition, which has grown fuller 
 and fuller, and more and more impetuous, with every 
 successive quarter of a century? Clarendon and the 
 statesmen, Locke and philosophy, Addison and the 
 essayists, Hume, Robertson, and the historians ; Cowper 
 and the minor poets ; the reviews and magazines of the 
 present era, all proceed upon the hypothesis, which they 
 think too self-evident for proof, that Protestantism is 
 synonymous with good sense, and Catholicism with weak- 
 ness of mind, fanaticism, or some unaccountable persua- 
 sion or fancy. Verse and prose, grave and gay, the 
 scientific and the practical, history and fable, all is ani- 
 mated spontaneously, or imperiously subdued, by the 
 spirit of Henry and Elizabeth. I say, "imperiously 
 subdued," because the tradition of Protestantism is 
 strong enough, not only to recommend, but to force, its 
 reception on each successive generation of authors. It 
 compels when it cannot persuade. There is Alexander 
 Pope, a Catholic, and who would discover it from the 
 run of his poems? There is Samuel Johnson, born a 
 Protestant, yearning for the Catholic Church, and burst- 
 ing out into fitful defences of portions of her doctrine 
 and discipline, yet professing to the last that very Pro- 
 testantism which could neither command his affections, 
 nor cure his infirmities. And, in our own time, there 
 was Walter Scott ashamed of his own Catholic tenden- 
 cies, and cowering before the jealous frown of the tyrant 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 69 
 
 tradition. There was Wordsworth, obHged to do penance 
 for Catholic sonnets by anti-Catholic complements to 
 them. Scott must plead antiquarianism in extenuation 
 of his prevarication ; Wordsworth must plead Panthe- 
 ism ; and Burke, again, political necessity. Liberalism, 
 scepticism, infidelity, these must be the venial errors, 
 under plea of which a writer escapes reprobation for the 
 enormity of feeling tenderly toward the religion of his 
 fathers, and of his neighbours around him. It labours 
 under a proscription of three centuries, and it is outlawed 
 by immemorial custom. 
 
 No wonder then that Protestantism, being the religion 
 of our literature, is become the Tradition of civil inter- 
 course and political life ; no wonder that its assumptions 
 are among the elements of knowledge, unchangeable as 
 the moods of logic, or the idioms of language, or the in- 
 junctions of good taste, or the proprieties of good manners. 
 Elizabeth's reign is "golden," Mary is "bloody," the 
 Church of England is " pure and apostolical," the Re- 
 formers are "judicious," the Prayer Book is "incom- 
 parable" or " beautiful," the Thirty-nine Articles are 
 "moderate," "Pope" and "pagan" go together, and 
 "the Pope, the devil, and the Pretender." The anti- 
 Catholic rancour is carried into your marts of commerce ; 
 London is burned down, and forthwith your greatest; 
 architect is instructed to set up a tall pillar to perpetuate 
 the lie, that the Papists were the incendiaries. Take 
 your controversy with you when you sit down to cards, 
 and let the taunting name of Pope Joan be the title of 
 your game. Run a horse the coming year, and among 
 your Sorcerers, Lamplighters, Malibrans, and Priams, 
 you will find Crucifix, a striking, perhaps a lucky name 
 for your beast ; it is but the emblem of an extinct super- 
 
70 TRADITION THE SUSTAlNINfi POWER 
 
 stition. Dress up for some fancy ball, or morris dance, and 
 let the Grand Turk jump about on one side of you, and 
 the Pope with cross, and beads, and triple crown upon the 
 other. Go to the stage of the mountebank, and teach 
 him, when he displays his sleight of hand, to give eiFect 
 to his tricks by the most sacred words of the Catholic 
 ritual. Into your very vocabulary let Protestantism 
 enter ; let priest, and mass, and mass-priest, and mass- 
 house have an offensive savour on your palate ; let monk 
 be a word of reproach ; let Jesuitism and Jesuitical, in 
 their very first intention, stand for what is dishonourable 
 and vile. What chance has a Catholic against so mul- 
 titudinous, so elementary a tradition I Here is the tra- 
 dition of the Court, and of the Law, and of Society, 
 and Literature, strong in themselves, and acting on each 
 other, and acting on a willing people, and the willing 
 people acting on them, till the whole edifice stands self- 
 supported, reminding one of some vast arch, (as at 
 times may be seen,) from which the supports have crum- 
 bled away by age, but which endures still, and supports 
 the huge mass of brick-work which lies above it, by the 
 simple cohesion of parts which that same age has effected. 
 My Brothers of the Oratory, you see what I meant when 
 I spoke of the tradition of the Pharisees, and said that 
 it might be powerful in influence, though it was argu- 
 mentatively weak ; you see why it is that the fair form 
 of Catholicism, as it exists in the east, west, and south, 
 never crosses the retina of a Protestanfs imagination ; 
 it is the incubus of this tradition which cumbers the 
 land, and opposes an inpregnable barrier between us and 
 each individual Protestant whom we happen to address. 
 Whoever he is, he thinks he knows all about our reli- 
 gion, before speaking to us ; nay, perhaps he knows it 
 
OF THK PROTESTANT VIEW. 71 
 
 much better than we know it ourselves. And now, if 
 I said no more, I have said abundantly sufficient for the 
 point I have had in view ; and yet there is one portion 
 of the subject still behind, which is almost more to my 
 purpose than anything which I have hitherto mentioned. 
 Protestantism is also the Tradition of the Anglican 
 Clergy ; and in speaking of them with reference to it, 
 as I am going to speak, Brothers of the Oratory, do not 
 suppose me to be forgetful either of their private worth, 
 or their civil* importance. As the other functions of the 
 constitution subserve the temporal welfare of the com- 
 munity, so does the established clergy minister to it with 
 a special fidelity. But I am all along speaking of Kings, 
 Lords, Commons, Law, Literature, and so also of the 
 Clergy, not simply as parts of the body politic, but as 
 organs of Protestantism ; and, as I have pointed out the 
 office which other political ranks and departments fulfil 
 in its propagation, so am I now to speak of the duties of 
 the Religious Establishment. I say, then, that its espe- 
 cial duty, as a religious body, is not to inculcate any 
 particular theological system, but to watch over the anti- 
 Catholic tradition, to preserve it from rust and decay, to 
 keep it bright, and keen, and ready for action on any 
 emergency or peril. It is the way with human nature to 
 start with vigour, and then to flag ; years tell upon the 
 toughest frames ; time introduces changes ; prejudices are 
 worn away ; asperities are softened ; views open ; errors 
 are corrected ; opponents are better understood ; the 
 mind wearies of warfare. The Protestant tradition, left 
 to itself, would in the course of time languish and de- 
 cline ; laws would become obsolete, the etiquette and 
 usages of society would alter, literature would be en- 
 livened with new views, and the old Truth might return 
 
72 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 with the freshness of novelty. It is the special mission 
 of the established clergy by word and writing to guard 
 against this tendency of the public mind. In this mainly 
 consists its teaching ; I repeat, not in the shreds of 
 Catholic doctrine which it professes, not in proofs of the 
 divinity of any creed whatever, not in separating opinion 
 from faith, not in instructing in the details of morals, but 
 mainly in furbishing up the old-fashioned weapons of 
 centuries back ; in cataloguing and classing the texts 
 which are to batter us, and the objections which are to 
 explode among us, and the insinuations and the slanders 
 which are to mow us down. The Establishment is the 
 keeper in ordinary of those national types and blocks, 
 from which Popery is ever to be printed off, — of the tra- 
 ditional view of every Catholic doctrine, the traditional 
 account of every ecclesiastical event, the traditional lives 
 of Popes and Bishops, abbots and monks, saints and 
 confessors, the traditional fictions, sophisms, calumnies, 
 mockeries, sarcasms, and invectives with which Catholics 
 are to be assailed. 
 
 This, I say, is the special charge laid upon the 
 Establishment. Unitarians, Sabellians, Utilitarians, Me- 
 thodists, Calvinists, Swedenborgians, Irvingites, Free- 
 thinkers, all these it can tolerate in its very bosom ; no 
 form of opinion comes amiss ; but Rome it cannot abide. 
 It agrees to differ with its children on a thousand points, 
 one is sacred — that her Majesty the Queen is " the 
 Mother and Mistress of all churches ;" on one dogma it 
 may rest without any mistake, that " the Bishop of Rome 
 hath no jurisdiction in this realm." Here is sunshine 
 amid the darkness, sense amid confusion, an intelligible 
 strain amid a Babel of sounds ; whatever befalls, here is 
 sure footing ; it is " No peace with Rome," " Down with 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 73 
 
 the Pope," and " The Church in danger." Never has the 
 Establishment failed in the use of these important and 
 effective watchwords ; many are its shortcomings, but it 
 is without reproach in the execution of its charge. 
 Heresy, and scepticism, and infidelity, and fanaticism 
 may challenge it in vain; but fling upon the gale the 
 faintest whisper of Catholicism, and it recognizes by in- 
 stinct the presence of its connatural foe. Forthwith, as 
 during the last year, the atmosphere is tremulous with 
 agitation, and discharges its vibrations far and wide. A 
 movement is in birth, which has no natural crisis or reso- 
 lution. Spontaneously the bells of the steeples begin to 
 sound. Not by an act of volition, but by a sort of me- 
 chanical impulse, bishop and dean, archdeacon and canon, 
 rector and curate, one after another, each on his high 
 tower, off they set, swinging and booming, tolling and 
 chiming, with nervous intenseness, and thickening emo- 
 tion, and deepening volume, the old dingdong which has 
 scared town and country this weary time ; tolling and 
 chiming away, jingling and clamouring, and ringing the 
 changes on their poor half-dozen notes, all about " the 
 Popish aggression V' " insolent and insidious," " insidious 
 and insolent," " insolent and atrocious," " atrocious and 
 insolent," " atrocious, insolent, and ungrateful," " un- 
 grateful, insolent, and atrocious," " foul and offensive," 
 " pestilent and horrid," " subtle and unholy," " auda- 
 cious and revolting," " contemptible and shameless," 
 "malignant," "frightful," "mad," 'meretricious," bobs, 
 (I think the ringers call them,) bobs, and bobs royal, 
 and triple-bob-majors and grandsires, — to the extent of 
 
 ' Vide au amusing and cogent argument, entitled "The Anglican 
 Bishops versus the Catholic Hierarchy." Toovey, 1851. 
 
 G 
 
74 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 their compass and the full ring of their metal, in honour of 
 Queen Bess, and to the confusion of the Pope and the 
 princes of the Church. 
 
 So it is now, so it was twenty years ago, nay, so it has 
 been in all years as they came, even the least controver- 
 sial. If there was no call for a contest, at least there 
 was the opportunity of a triumph. Who could want 
 matter for a sermon, when his thoughts would not flow, 
 for convenient digression, or effective peroration ! Did 
 a preacher wish for an illustration of heathen superstition 
 or Jewish bigotry, or an instance of hypocrisy, igno- 
 rance, or spiritual pride! the Catholics were at hand. 
 The deliverance from Egypt, the golden calf, the fall of 
 Dagon, the sin of Solomon, the cruelties of Jezebel, the 
 worship of Baal, the destruction of the brazen serpent, 
 the finding of the law, the captivity in Babylon, Nebu- 
 chodonosor''s image, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, 
 and Zealots, mint, anise, and cummin, brazen pots and 
 vessels, all in their respective places and ways, would 
 give opportunity to a few grave words of allusion to the 
 " monstrous errors " or the " childish absurdities " of the 
 " Romish faith." Does any one wish an example of pride ? 
 there stands Wolsey ; of barbarity ? there is the Duke 
 of Alva ; of rebellion ? there is Becket ; of ambition ? 
 there is Hildebrand ; of profligacy ! there is Csesar 
 Borgia ; of superstition ? there is Louis the Eleventh ; of 
 fanaticism! there are the Crusaders. Saints and sin- 
 ners, monks and laymen, the devout and the worldly, 
 provided they be but Catholics, are heaped together in 
 one indiscriminate mass, to be drawn forth for exposure 
 according to the need. 
 
 The consequence is natural ; — tell a person of ordinary 
 intelligence. Churchman or Dissenter, that the vulgar 
 
OF THE PROTESTAXT VIEW. 75 
 
 allegations against us are but slanders, simple lies, or exag- 
 gerations, or misrepresentations ; or, as far as they are 
 true, admitting of defence or justification, and not to the 
 point ; and he will laugh in your face at your simplicity, 
 or lift up hands and eyes at your unparalleled effrontery. 
 The utmost concession he will make is to allow the pos- 
 sibility of incidental and immaterial error in the accusa- 
 tions which are brought against us ; but the substance 
 of the traditional view he believes, as firmly as he does 
 the Grospel, and, if you refuse to admit it, he will say it 
 is just what is to be expected of a Catholic, to lie and 
 deceive. To tell him at his time of life, that Catholics 
 do not rate sin at a fixed price, that they may not get 
 absolution for a sin in prospect, that priests can live in 
 purity, that nuns do not murder each other, that the 
 laity do not make images their God, that Catholics 
 would not burn Protestants if they could ! Why, all 
 this is as perfectly clear to him, as the sun at noonday ; 
 he is ready to leave the matter to the first person he 
 happens to meet ; every one will tell us just the same ; 
 only let us try ; he never knew there was any doubt at 
 all about it : he is surprised, he thought we granted it. 
 When he was young, he has heard it said again and 
 again ; to his certain knowledge it has uniformly been 
 said the last forty, fifty, sixty years, and no one ever 
 denied it ; it is so in all the books he ever looked into ; 
 what is the world coming to ? What is true, if this is 
 not ? so Catholics are to be whitewashed ; what next ? 
 
 And so he proceeds in detail ; — the Papists not wor- 
 ship the Virgin Mary ! why they call her " Deipara," 
 which means " equal to God." 
 
 The Pope not the man of sin ! Why, it is a fact, that 
 G 2 
 
76 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER 
 
 the Eomanists distinctly maintain that "the Pope is 
 God, and God is the Pope." 
 
 The Pope's teaching not a doctrine of devils ! Here 
 is a plain proof of it; Cardinal Bellarmine expressly 
 " maintains that, if the Pope commanded us to practise 
 vice or shun virtue, we are obliged to do so, under pain 
 of eternal damnation.'" 
 
 Not a Pope Joan ! why, she was " John the Eighth, 
 her real name was Gilberta, she took the name of John 
 English, delivered public lectures at Rome, and was at 
 length unanimously elected Pope." 
 
 What ! Councils infaUible ! Open your eyes, my 
 brother, and judge for yourself ; " fifteen hundred public 
 women followed the train of the Fathers of Constance." 
 
 Jesuits ! here are at least twenty thousand in Eng- 
 land ; and, horrible to say, a number of them in each of 
 the Protestant Universities ; and doubtless a great many 
 at Oscott. 
 
 Beauty and sanctity of the Popish festivals ! do you 
 not know that the Purification " is the very feast that 
 was celebrated by the ancient Pagan Romans in honour 
 of the goddess Proserpina ?" 
 
 The Papists not corrupters of the Scriptures ! look 
 into their Bibles, and you will find they read the prophecy 
 in Genesis, " 8he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt 
 lie in wait for her heel." 
 
 Popery preach Christ ! no ; " Popery," as has been 
 well said, " is the religion of priestcraft ; from the begin- 
 ning to the end it is nothing but priest, priest, priest ^" 
 
 ' Yid. Stephen's Spirit of the Church of Rome ; Edgar's Variations ; 
 Cramp's Text-Book of Popery, &c. ; the books I happen to have at 
 hand. 
 
OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 77 
 
 I shall both weary and offend you, my Brothers, if I 
 proceed. Even absurdity becomes tiresome after a time, 
 and slanders cast on holy things and persons, when dwelt 
 on, are too painful for a Catholic's ears ; yet it was 
 necessary for my subject, to give instances of the popu- 
 lar views of us and our creed, as they are formed by the 
 operation of the Tradition of Elizabeth. 
 
 Here I am reminded of another sort of tradition, 
 started by a very different monarch, which in the event 
 
 » 
 
 was handled very differently. It is often told how 
 Charles the Second once sent a grave message to the 
 Eoyal Society. That scientific body was founded in his 
 reign, and the witty king, as became his well-known 
 character, could not help practising a jest upon it. He 
 proposed a question for its deliberation ; he asked it, as 
 I dare say you have often heard, to tell him how it was 
 that a live fish weighed less heavily in water than after 
 it was dead. The Society, as it was in duty bound, 
 applied itself to solve the phenomenon, and various were 
 the theories to which it gave occasion. At last it oc- 
 curred to its members to determine the fact, before 
 deciding on any of them ; when, on making the experi- 
 ment, to their astonishment they found, that the hypo- 
 thesis was a mere invention of their royal master's, 
 because the dead fish was not heavier in water than the 
 living. 
 
 Well would it be, if Englishmen in like manner, in- 
 stead of taking their knowledge of us at a royal hand, 
 would judge about us for themselves, before they hunted 
 for our hkeness in the book of Daniel, St. Paul's Epistles, 
 and the Apocalypse. They then would be the first to 
 smile at their own extravagances ; but, alas ! as yet, 
 there are no signs of such ordinary prudence. Sensible 
 
78 TRADITION THE SUSTAINING POWER, &C. 
 
 in other matters, they lose all self-command when the 
 name of Catholicism is sounded in their ears. They trust 
 the voice of Henry or Elizabeth, with its thousand 
 echoes, more than their own eyes, and their own expe- 
 rience ; and they are zealous in echoing it themselves to 
 the generation which is to follow them. Each in his 
 turn, as his reason opens, is indoctrinated in the popular 
 misconception. At this very time, in consequence of 
 the clamour which has been raised against us, children 
 in the streets, of four and five years old, are learning and 
 using against us terms of abuse, which will be their trar 
 dition, all through their lives, till they are grey-headed, 
 and have, in turn, to teach it to their grandchildren. 
 They totter out, and lift their tiny hands, and raise their 
 thin voices, in protest against those whom they are just 
 able to understand are very wicked and very dangerous ; 
 and they run away in terror when they catch our eye. 
 Nor will the growth of reason set them right ; the longer 
 they live, and the more they converse with men, the 
 more will they hate us. The Maker of all, and only 
 He, can shiver in pieces this vast enchanted palace, in 
 which our lot is cast ; may He do it in His time ! 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 FABLK THE BASIS OF THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 It was my aim, Brothers of the Oratory, in my pre- 
 ceding Lecture, to investigate, as far as time and place 
 allowed, how it was that the one-sided view of the great 
 religious controversy, which commenced between Rome 
 and England three centuries since, has been so success- 
 fully maintained in this country. Many things have 
 changed among us during that long period ; but the 
 hatred and the jealousy entertained by the population to- 
 wards the Catholic Faith, and the scorn and pity which 
 is felt at the sight of its adherents, have not passed 
 away, have not been mitigated. In that long period, 
 society has undergone various alterations, public opinion 
 has received a developrhent new in the history of the 
 world, and many remarkable revolutions in national prin- 
 ciple have followed. The received views on the causes 
 and the punishment of crime, on the end of Government, 
 on the mutual relations of town and country, on inter- 
 national interests, and on many other great pohtical 
 
80 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 questions have sustained, to say the least, great modifi- 
 cations ; sciences, unknown before, bearing upon the eco- 
 nomy of social hfe, have come into being ; medicine has 
 been the subject of new doctrines, which have had their 
 influence on various civil and municipal arrangements ; 
 how is it then, that the feeling against Catholicism has 
 remained substantially what it was in the days of 
 Charles the Second or of George the Third ? How is 
 it that Protestantism has retained its ascendancy, and 
 that Catholic arguments and Cathohc principles are at 
 once misconstrued and ignored? And what increases 
 the wonder is, that it has happened otherwise externally 
 to our own island ; there is scarcely a country besides, 
 where Oathohcism at least is not respected, even if it is 
 not studied ; and what is more observable still, scarcely 
 a country besides, once Protestant, in which Protest- 
 antism even exists at present, — if by Protestantism is 
 understood the religion of Luther and Calvin. The phe- 
 nomenon, great in itself, becomes greater, by its seeming 
 to be all but peculiar to the British population. 
 
 And this latter consideration is important also, as it 
 anticipates a solution of the difiBculty which the Pro- 
 testant, were he able, would eagerly adopt. He would 
 be eager to reply, if he could, that the Protestant spirit 
 has survived in the land amid so many changes in poli- 
 tical and social science, because certain political theories 
 were false, but Protestantism is true : but if this is the 
 case, why has it not kept its ground and made its way in 
 other countries also l What cause can be assigned for 
 its decay and almost extinction in those other countries, 
 in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and New England, di- 
 verse from each other in situation, in government, in 
 language, and in character, where once it flourished? 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 8] 
 
 Evidently it must be a cause peculiar to England ; those 
 foreign countries must have something in common 
 with each other which they have not in common with 
 us. Now what is peculiar to our country is an esta- 
 blished tradition of Protestantism ; what those other 
 countries have in common with each other, is the absence 
 of such tradition. Fact and argument have had fair 
 play in other countries; they have not had fair play 
 here : the religious establishment has forbidden them 
 fair play. But fact and argument are the tests of truth 
 and error ; Protestantism then has had an adventitious 
 advantage in this country, in consequence of which it has 
 not been tried, (as in the course of years otherwise it 
 would have been tried, and has been tried elsewhere,) on its 
 own merits. Instead then of concluding that it is true, 
 because it has continued here during three centuries 
 substantially the same, I should rather conclude that 
 it is false, because it has not been able during that 
 period to continue the same abroad. To the standing, 
 compulsory Tradition existing here, I ascribe its con- 
 tinuance here ; to fact and reason, operating freely else- 
 where, I ascribe its disappearance elsewhere. 
 
 This view of the subject is confirmed to us, when we 
 consider, on the one hand the character of our country- 
 men, on the other the character of those instruments 
 and methods by which the Tradition of Protestantism is 
 perpetuated among them. It has been perpetuated, 
 directly or indirectly, by the sanction of an oath, im- 
 posed on all those several sources of authority and in- 
 fluence, from which principles, doctrines, and opinions 
 are accustomed to flow. There is an established Tra- 
 dition of law, and of the clergy, and of the court, and of 
 the Universities, and of literature, and of good society ; 
 
 h2 
 
82 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 and all these act upon a people, peculiarly susceptible qf 
 the claims of personal merit, of embodied authority, of 
 constituted order, of rank, and of reputation in the 
 world, and little sensitive in comparison of abstract 
 argument, logical sequence, moral fitness, historical re- 
 sults, or foreign transactions. 
 
 This was the point at which I stopped last week ; now 
 I shall continue my investigation, and I shall introduce 
 what I have to say by means of an objection. 
 
 It may be objected, then, to the conclusions at which 
 I have arrived, that I on my part have simply ignored 
 the fact of the innumerable multitude of independent 
 testimonies, which every one of the divines, the scholars, 
 the lawyers, the men of letters, the statesmen, the men 
 of the world, who have made the last three centuries 
 glorious in Britain, has borne in his turn, in favour of 
 Protestantism and to the disadvantage of the Catholic 
 Religion. 
 
 Bacon and Hooker, Taylor and Chillingworth, Hamp- 
 den, Clarendon, and Falkland, Russell, Somers, and 
 Walpole, Hobbes and Locke, Burnet and Addison, 
 Hume and Robertson, Warburton and Horsley, Pitt and 
 Fox, Walter Scott and Hallam, and a multitude of other 
 illustrious names, nay, the whole host of educated men, 
 are all separate authorities; each speaks for himself; 
 they do not copy, the one from the other: there are 
 among them men of extensive reading, profound phi- 
 losophy, intimate knowledge of the world : they are all 
 men of intelligence, and at least able to give an opinion. 
 It is absurd to say otherwise. This simple conside- 
 ration, it may be said, overthrows from its foundation 
 the argument drawn out in my last week's Lecture, about 
 the traditional character of Protestantism in England. 
 
OF THK PROTESTANT VIEW. 83 
 
 Indeed my argument turns against myself : for I allowed 
 on that occasion that a number of distinct testimonies, 
 conspiring together into one view or representation, was 
 a real and sound reason, nay, among the strongest of 
 conceivable reasons, in its behalf: now this is just the 
 state of the case as regards the argument for Pro- 
 testantism, as drawn from the common consent of the 
 English court, clergy, bar, literature, and general 
 society. 
 
 This is what will be said ; and I reply as follows : — I 
 do not deny that there are great names on the side of 
 Protestantism, which require to be considered by them- 
 selves. Minds, which certainly are superior to the influ- 
 ences of party, the prejudices of education, the sugges- 
 tions of self-interest, the seductions of place and position, 
 and tyranny of public opinion. And again, there are 
 Protestant arguments, clear and broad, which remain, 
 whether Protestantism is received, or whether it is not. 
 I allow all this : but now I am considering, not the Pro- 
 testantism of the few, but of the many : those great men, 
 and those philosophical arguments, whatever be their 
 weight, have no influence with the many. Crowds do not 
 assemble in Exeter Hall, mobs do not burn the Pope, 
 from reverence for Lord Bacon, Locke, or Butler, or for 
 any thing those gifted men have recorded. I am treating 
 of the unpopularity of Catholicism now and here, as it 
 exists, in the year 1851, and in London, or in Edinburgh, 
 or in Birmingham, or in Bristol, or in Manchester, or in 
 Glasgow : among the gentlemen and yeomen of York- 
 shire, Devonshire, and Kent ; in the Inns of Court, and 
 in the schools and colleges of the land ; and, I say, this 
 Tradition does not flow from the mouth of the half-dozen 
 wise, or philosophic, or learned men who can be sum- 
 
84 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 moned in its support, but is a tradition of nursery stories, 
 school stories, public-house stories, club-house stories, 
 drawing-room stories, platform stories, pulpit stories ; a 
 tradition of newspapers, magazines, reviews, pamphlets, 
 romances, novels, poems, and light literature of all kind, 
 literature of the day ; a tradition of selections from the 
 English classics, bits of poetry, passages of history, ser- 
 mons, chance essays, extracts from books of travel, 
 anonymous anecdotes, lectures on prophecy, statements 
 and arguments of polemical writers, made up into small 
 octavoes for class-books, and into pretty miniatures for 
 presents ; a tradition floating in the air ; which we found 
 in being when we first came to years of reason ; which has 
 been borne in upon us by all we saw, heard, or read, in 
 high life, in parliament, in law courts, in general society ; 
 which our fathers told us had ever been in their day ; a 
 tradition, therefore, truly universal and immemorial, and 
 good as far as a tradition can be good, but after all, not 
 more than a tradition is worth. I mean, requiring some 
 ultimate authority to make it trustworthy. Trace up, 
 then, the tradition to its very first startings, its roots and 
 its sources, if you are to form a judgment, whether it is 
 more than a tradition. It may be a good tradition, and 
 yet after all good for nothing. What profit, though 
 ninety-nine Knks of a chain be sound, if the topmost is 
 broken ? Now I do not hesitate to assert, that this Pro- 
 testant Tradition, on which English faith hangs, is wanting 
 in the first link. Fierce as are its advocates, and high 
 as is its sanction, yet, whenever we can pursue it through 
 the mist of immemorial reception in which it commonly 
 ends, and arrive at its beginnings, forthwith we find a 
 flaw in the argument. Either facts are not forthcoming, 
 or they are not sufficient for the purpose: sometimes 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 85 
 
 they turn out to be imaginations or inventions, sometimes 
 exaggerations, sometimes misconceptions ; sometiiing or 
 other comes to Hght which blunts their efficiency, and 
 throws suspicion on the rest. Testimonies which were 
 quoted as independent, turn out to be the same, or to be 
 contradictory of each other, or to be too improbable to 
 be true, or to have no good authority at all : so that our 
 enemies find they cannot do better after all, than fall 
 back on the general reception of the Tradition itself, as a 
 reason for receiving it ; and they find it prudent to con- 
 vict Catholics of all manner of crimes, on the ground of 
 their being notoriously accused of them. 
 
 Hard measure, scanty justice! It is a principle of 
 English law, that no one should bring a charge against 
 another without being under the obligation of supporting 
 it. Where should we be, any one of us, who would be 
 safe, if any person who chose might, at any moment he 
 would, impute to us what he pleased, bring us into court, 
 call no witnesses, and obtain our conviction on his simple 
 assertion ? Why, at very least, an accuser is bound to 
 make oath of the truth of what he says ; and that is but 
 the first step of an investigation, not the termination of 
 the process. And he must swear to a fact, not to an 
 opinion, not to a surmise, not to what he has heard 
 others say, but to what he has witnessed or knows. Nay, 
 even though there be reasons for being sure of the guilt 
 of the accused, it is a maxim of our law not to make him 
 criminate himself, but to aim at convicting him by other 
 means and other men. It seems a plain dictate of com- 
 mon equity, that an accuser should have something to 
 say for himself, before he can put the accused on his 
 defence. 
 
 This righteous rule is simply set aside in the treatment 
 
86 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 of Catholics and their religion. Instead of the onus pro- 
 handi, as it is called, the burden of proof, lying with the 
 accuser, it is simply thrown upon the accused. Any one 
 may get up of a sudden, and may say what he will to our 
 prejudice, without producing any warrant at all for the 
 truth of his charge. He is not called upon to establish 
 his respectability, or to state his opportunities or methods 
 of knowing ; he need not give presumptive proof of his 
 allegation; he need not give his authorities; he need 
 only accuse ; and upon this the Protestant public turns 
 round to the poor Catholic, and asks what he has to say 
 in his defence, as if he had yet any thing to defend. There 
 is a saying, that " a fool can ask more questions than a 
 hundred wise men can answer :" and a bigot or a fanatic 
 may be quite as successful. If a man presented himself 
 this moment and said to me, " You robbed a person in 
 the street of his pocket-book some ten years ago," what 
 could I possibly say, except simply, " I did not?" How 
 could I prove it was false, when I had not been informed 
 of the town, or the year, or the date, or the person on 
 whom the pretended offence was committed 2 Well, 
 supposing my accuser went on to particulars, and said 
 that I committed the crime in Birmingham, in the month 
 of June, in the year ] 840, and in the instance of a person 
 of the name of Smith. This, of course, would be some- 
 thing, but no one would say even then it was enough, 
 that is, supposing I had to reply to him on the spot. At 
 the very moment I might not be able to say where I was 
 on the specified day, and so I could only repeat as em- 
 phatically as I was able, that the charge was utterly 
 untrue. 
 
 Next, supposing me to ask his reasons for saying it, 
 how he knew it was I ? did he see me ? or was he told by 
 
OF THE PROTESTAXT VIEW. 87 
 
 an eye-witness? and supposing he were to decline to 
 give me any information whatever, but contented himself 
 with saying "that I was shuflBing and evasive, for the 
 thing was quite notorious." And, next, supposing I 
 suddenly recollected that, up to the year 1845, I had 
 never once been in Birmingham in the course of my life ; 
 yet, on my stating this, the accuser were to cry out that 
 I should not escape, in spite of my attempt to throw 
 dust in his eyes ; for he had a score of witnesses to prove 
 the fact, and that, as to the exact year, it was a mere 
 point of detail, on which any one might be mistaken. And 
 supposing, on this unsupported allegation, a magistrate, 
 without witnesses brought, or oath administered, or 
 plausibility in the narrative, in spite of the accuser's 
 character, which was none of the best, in spite of the 
 vagueness of his testimony, were to send me to the house 
 of correction, — 1 conceive public opinion would say I was 
 shamefully treated. 
 
 But further, supposing when I was safely lodged in 
 prison, some anonymous writer, in some third-rate news- 
 paper, were boldly to assert that all priests were in the 
 practice of stealing pocket-books from passengers in the 
 streets ; and in proof thereof were to appeal to the noto- 
 rious case of a priest in Birmingham who had been 
 convicted of the offence, and moreover to the case of 
 another, given in detail in some manuscript or other, 
 contained somewhere or other in the royal library of 
 Munich, and occurring some time or other between the 
 seventh and the seventeenth centuries; and supposing, 
 upon this anonymous letter, petitions were got up and 
 signed numerously, and dispatched to the Imperial 
 Parliament, with the object of sending all priests to the 
 treadmill for a period not exceeding six months, as 
 
88 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 reputed thieves, whenever they were found walking in the 
 public thoroughfares ; — would this answer an English- 
 man's ideas of fairness or of humanity ! 
 
 Now I put it to the experience, — I put it to the 
 conscience of the Protestant world, — whether such is not 
 the justice which it deals out to Catholics, as a matter of 
 course. No evidence against us is too little ; no inflic- 
 tion too great. Statement without proof, though inad- 
 missible in every other case, is all fair when we are con- 
 cerned. A Protestant is at liberty to bring a charge 
 against us, and challenge us to refute, not any proof he 
 brings, for he brings none, — but his simple assumption 
 or assertion. And, perhaps, we accept his challenge, 
 and then we find we have to deal with matters so vague 
 or so minute, so general or so particular, that we are at 
 our wits'' end to know how to grapple with them. For 
 instance, " Every twentieth man you meet is a Jesuit in 
 disguise;" or, " Nunneries are, for the most part, prisons." 
 How is it possible to meet such sweeping charges ? The 
 utmost we can do, in the nature of things, is to show that 
 this particular man, or that, is not a Jesuit ; or that 
 this or that particular nunnery is not a prison ; but who 
 said he was ? — who said it was ? What our Protestant 
 accuser asserted was, that every twentieth man was a 
 Jesuit, and most nunneries were prisons. How is this 
 refuted by clearing this or that person or nunnery of the 
 charge ? Thus, if the accuser is not to be called on to 
 give proofs of what he says, we are simply helpless, and 
 must sit down meekly under the imputation. 
 
 At another time, however, a definite fact is stated, and 
 we are referred to the authority on which it is put forward. 
 What is the authority 2 Albertus Magnus, perhaps, or 
 Gerson, or Baronius, with a silence about volume and 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 89 
 
 page ; their works consisting of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, 
 or thirty folios, printed in double columns. How are 
 we possibly to find the needle in this stack of hay ? Or, 
 by a refinement of unfairness, perhaps a wrong volume or 
 page is carelessly given ; and when we cannot find there 
 the statement which our opponent has made, we are left 
 in an unpleasant doubt whether our ill success is to be 
 ascribed to our eyes or to his pen. 
 
 Sometimes, again, the crime charged on us is brought 
 out with stich startling vividness and circumstantial 
 finish, as seem to carry their own evidence with them, 
 and to dispense, in the eyes of the public, with the 
 references which in fairness should attend it. The scene 
 is laid in some fortress of the savage Apennine, or in 
 secluded Languedoc, or in remote Poland, or the high 
 table-land of Mexico, oi' it is a legend about some priest 
 of a small village of Oalabria, called Buonavalle, in the 
 fourteenth century ; or about a monk of the monastery 
 of S. Spirito, in S. Filippo d'Argiro, in the time of 
 Charlemagne. Or the story runs, that Don Felix Ma- 
 latesta de Guadalope, a Benedictine monk of Andalusia, 
 and father confessor to the Prince of the Asturias, who 
 died in 1821, left behind him his confessions in manu- 
 script, which were carried off" by the French, with other 
 valuable documents, from his convent, which they pillaged 
 in their retreat from the field of Salamanca ; and that, 
 in these confessions, he frankly avows that he had killed 
 three of his monastic brothers of whom he was jealous, 
 had poisoned half-a-dozen women, and sent off in boxes 
 and hampers to Cadiz and Barcelona thirty-five infants ; 
 moreover, that he felt no misgivings about these abomin- 
 able deeds, because, as he observes with great naivete, 
 he had every day, for many years, burnt a candle to the 
 
90 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 Blessed Virgin ; had cursed periodically all heretics, 
 especially the royal family of England; had burned a 
 student of Ooimbra for asserting the earth went round the 
 sun ; had worn about him, day and night, a relic of St. 
 Diego ; and had provided that five hundred masses should 
 be said for the repose of his soul within eight days after 
 his decease. 
 
 Tales such as this, the like of which it is very easy to 
 point out in print, are suitably contrived to answer the 
 purpose which brings them into being. A Catholic, who, 
 in default of testimony offered in their behalf, volunteers 
 to refute them on their internal evidence, and sets about 
 (so to say) cross-examining them, finds himself at once 
 in an untold labyrinth of embarrassments. First he in- 
 quires, is there a village in Calabria of the name of Buo- 
 navalle ? is there a convent S. Spirito in the Sicilian town 
 specified ? did it exist in the time of Charlemagne ? who 
 were the successive confessors of the Prince of the Asturias 
 during the first twenty years of this century 2 what has 
 Andalusia to do with Salamanca? when was the last 
 Auto da fe in Spain ? did the French pillage any con- 
 vent whatever in the neighbourhood of Salamanca about 
 the year 1812 ? — questions sufficient for a school exami- 
 nation. He goes to his maps, gazetteers, guide books, 
 travels, histories ; — soon a perplexity arises about the 
 dates : are his editions recent enough for his purpose 2 
 do their historical notices go far enough hack 9 Well, 
 after a great deal of trouble, after writing about to 
 friends, consulting libraries, and comparing statements, 
 let us suppose him to prove most conclusively the utter 
 absurdity of the slanderous story, and to bring out a 
 lucid, powerful, and unanswerable reply : who cares for 
 it by that time ? who cares for the story itself 2 it has 
 
OP' THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 91 
 
 done its work ; time stops for no man ; it has created or 
 deepened the impression in the minds of its hearers that 
 a monk commits murder or adultery as readily as he eats 
 his dinner. Men forget the process by which they re- 
 ceived it, but there it is, clear and indelible. Or sup- 
 posing they recollect the particular slander ever so well, 
 still they have no taste or stomach for entering into a 
 long controversy about it ; their mind is already made 
 up ; they have formed their views ; their informant may 
 indeed have* been misinformed in some of his details ; it 
 can be nothing more. Who can impose on them the 
 perplexity and whirl of going through a bout of contro- 
 versy, where " one says," and " the other says," and " he 
 says that he says that he does not say or ought not to 
 say, what he does say or ought to say ?" It demands an 
 effort and strain of attention which they have no sort of 
 purpose of bestowing. The Catholic cannot get a fair 
 hearing; his book remains awhile in the shop windows, 
 and then is taken down again. So true is this, from the 
 nature of the human mind, that even though my present 
 audience is well disposed, not hostile, to Catholicism, I 
 should think it imprudent to enter into any minute in- 
 vestigation of this or that popular calumny, from my con- 
 viction that I should be detailing matters, which, except 
 in the case of the very few, would engross without in- 
 teresting, and weary without making an impression. 
 
 Yet I think I may be able, or at least I will try, 
 without taxing your patience to the utmost, to bring be- 
 fore you two or three actual specimens of the mode in 
 which the accusation against Cathohcs is conducted; 
 which may serve to give you some insight into the value 
 of the Tradition which kings, lords, and commons are so 
 zealous in upholding. The mighty Tradition flows on, 
 
92 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 replenished and refreshed continually by rivulets which, 
 issuing from new fountain heads, make their way, in 
 faithful and unfaihng succession, into the main stream. 
 I am going to put my finger on three of these small 
 fountain heads of the Tradition,— which, as I have al- 
 ready complained, are not commonly accessible ; — they 
 shall not be springs of a vulgar quality, but they shall 
 represent the intelligence, the respectabihty, and the 
 strong sense of English society. The first shall be a 
 specimen of the Tradition of Literature, the second of 
 the Tradition of Wealth, and the third of the Tradition 
 of Grentlemen. 
 
 I. The first, which has to do with names well known 
 in the aristocracy of talent and learning, will be some- 
 what tedious, do what I will; and I shall introduce it 
 with a story. It is related by the learned Dr. Bentley, 
 in his controversy with Boyle, about a century and a half 
 ago, on some point of historical criticism. In the course 
 of that controversy, his opponent happened to spell 
 wrongly the name of a Greek town ; and, when he was 
 set right, he made answer that it was the custom of our 
 English writers so to spell it, and he proceeded to quote 
 as many as five of them in proof of his assertion. On 
 this Bentley observes : " An admirable reason, and worthy 
 to be his own ; as if the most palpable error, that shall 
 happen to obtain and meet with reception, must there- 
 fore never be mended." After this, the " slashing" critic 
 goes on to allude to the instance of an unlearned English 
 priest, truly or not I know not, "who for thirty years 
 together" (perhaps it was on taking the first ablution in 
 the mass) " had always said, ' Quod ore mumpsimus,' 
 instead of ' Quod ore sumpsimus,' " and when, says 
 
OF THK PROTESTANT VIEW. 93 
 
 Bentley, " a learned man told him of his blunder, ' I'll 
 not change, says he, my old Mumpsimus for your new 
 Sumpsimus.' " Now this happily applies to the subject 
 which I am going to illustrate, as you will presently see. 
 
 I need not remind you how much is said among Pro- 
 testants of the gross ignorance and superstition of the 
 middle age ; indeed, we Catholics of the present date 
 are considered its legitimate and veritable heirs. On 
 this subject, one of the best read, most dispassionate, 
 and deservedly esteemed writers of the present day, who, 
 if any one, might be supposed, in historical matters, an 
 original authority, in his " View of the State of Europe 
 during the Middle Ages," writes as follows : — 
 
 " In the very best view that can be taken of monas- 
 teries," he says, after allowing that many might be 
 above reproach, " their existence is deeply injurious to the 
 general morals of a nation. They withdraw men of pure 
 conduct and conscientious principle from the exercise of 
 social duties, and leave the common mass of human vice 
 more unmixed. Such men are always inclined to form 
 schemes of ascetic perfection, which can only be fulfilled 
 in retirement ; but, in the strict rules of monastic life, 
 and under the influence of a grovelling superstition, their 
 virtue lost all its usefulness. They fell implicitly into 
 the snares of crafty priests, who made submission to the 
 Church, not only the condition, but the measure of all 
 praise." Now comes the passage to which I am di- 
 recting your attention. Observe, he is going on to his 
 •proof oi what he has asserted. " He is a good Christian, 
 says Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, who comes 
 frequently to church, who presents an oblation that it 
 may be offered to God on the altar ; who does not taste 
 the fruits of his land till he has consecrated a part of 
 
94 I'ABLE THE BASIS 
 
 them to 'God ; who can repeat the Creed or the Lord's 
 Prayer. Eedeem your souls from punishment, while it 
 is in your power ; offer presents and tithes to Churches, 
 light candles in holy places, as much as you can afford, 
 come more frequently to church, implore the protection 
 of the saints ; for, if you observe these things, you may 
 come with security -at the day of judgment to say, 
 ' Give unto us, Lord, for we have given unto Thee !' " 
 The author then continues, " With such a definition of 
 the Christian character, it is not surprising that Any fraud 
 and injustice became honourable, when it contributed to 
 the riches of the clergy and glory of their order'." 
 
 Now observe, first, he quotes St. Eligius, or Eloi, in 
 order to show that Catholics were at that time taught 
 that true Christianity consisted, not in the absence of 
 fraud and injustice, or, again, of immorality, hatred, or 
 strife, — but in merely coming to church, paying tithes, 
 burning candles, and praying to the saints. But, ob- 
 serve next, he does not quote from St. Eligius' own work, 
 or refer to it on his own authority, but, well-read man as 
 he is, still he simply relies on the authority of two other 
 writers, and (what many well-read men would have 
 omitted to do), he candidly confesses it. He refers to 
 Dr. Robertson, the Scotch historian, and the celebrated 
 German historian and critic, Mosheim. I do not see, 
 then, that much blame attaches to this writer for pub- 
 lishing what you will see presently is a most slanderous 
 representation, beyond, indeed, his taking for granted the 
 Protestant Tradition, his exercising faith in it as true, his 
 not doubting the fidelity of the two authors in question, 
 and, therefore, in a word, his saying, " Mumpsimus," and 
 passing it on. 
 
 ' Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 353. 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 95 
 
 Next we come to Dr. Robertson, the historian of 
 Scotland, Charles the Fifth, and America, the friend of 
 Hume, Adam Smith, Gibbon, and a host of literati of the 
 latter part of last century. In his history of the reign of 
 the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who hved at the time of 
 the Reformation, after observing that " the Christian 
 religion degenerated, during those ages of darkness, into 
 an illiberal superstition ;" that " the barbarous nations, 
 instead of aspiring to sanctity and virtue, imagined that 
 they satisfied every obligation of duty by a scrupulous 
 observance of external ceremonies^'' Dr. Robertson anno- 
 tates as follows : " all the religious maxims and practices 
 of the dark ages are a proof of this. I shall produce one 
 remarkable testimony in confirmation of it, from an author 
 canonized by the Church of Rome, St. Eloy, or Eligius." 
 And then he proceeds to quote, nearly in the same words 
 as Mr. Hallam, though omitting some clauses and 
 adding others, a translation from the passage which 
 Mosheim sets down in his history, as if the original 
 text of the saint's. And then he adds the remark of 
 Dr. Maclaine, Mosheim's English translator, whom he 
 is pleased to call " learned and judicious," and whose 
 remark he calls a " very proper reflection." This remark 
 is as follows: " We see here," says Maclaine, "a large 
 and ample description of the character of a good Chris- 
 tian, in which there is not the least mention of the love of 
 God, resignation to his will, obedience to his laws, or of 
 justice, benevolence, and charity towards men." Here, 
 then, we trace our " JNlumpsimus" a step higher ; from 
 Hallam to Robertson, from Robertson to the " learned 
 and judicious" Maclaine. 
 
 Robertson and Maclaine were Scotchmen; but the 
 Tradition was not idle the while in the south either. 
 
 I 
 
96 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 There was a certain learned Mr. White, well known, 
 somewhat later than Robertson, in the University of 
 Oxford. He was Professor of Arabic in that seat of 
 learning, and happened one year to preach a set of 
 Lectures which added most considerably to his reputation. 
 I should not have noticed the circumstances attending 
 them, did they not throw Hght on the measure of 
 authority due to the divines, scholars, historians, states- 
 men, lawyers, and polite writers, who are the doctors of 
 the Protestant Tradition. The Lectures in question, 
 which are delivered at Oxford yearly, on some theological 
 subject, are the appointment of the governors of the 
 place ; who, feeling the responsibility attached to this 
 exercise of patronage, anxiously look about for the 
 safest, or the most brilliant, or the most rising, or the 
 most distinguished of their members, to whom to commit 
 the guardianship of Protestantism, and the fair fame of 
 the University. Some such person Mr. White was 
 considered; and, on his appointment, he selected for 
 his lectures a subject of great interest, — the rise and 
 genius of Mahomet and his religion. Of learning he had 
 enough ; eloquence, perhaps, he wanted ; yet what must 
 have surprised his audience, when the time came for his 
 exhibition, was the special elegance, splendour, and 
 vivacity which showed themselves in his style. His 
 periods, far from savouring of the austereness of an 
 Oriental scholar, displayed the imagery, the antithesis, 
 the flow, and the harmony of a finished rhetorician. 
 The historian Gibbon, no mean judge of composition, 
 goes out of his way to speak of his Lectures as " a 
 volume of controversy" more "elegant and ingenious" 
 than any Mahomedan pulpit was likely to have produced, 
 had Oxford become Mahomedan instead of Protestant ; 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 97 
 
 and is pleased to observe that the writer " sustains the 
 part of a lively and eloquent advocate," while he " some- 
 times rises to the merit of an historian and a philo- 
 sopher." Such were the Lectures delivered, and such 
 was the reputation in consequence obtained by the Arabic 
 Professor : however, after a time, it came to light that a 
 great portion of the volume, at least many of its finest 
 passages, were the writing of another. Indeed he was 
 obliged to confess that he employed in the work, and 
 actually paid for it, a country curate in Devonshire 
 (who, I think, had once been a dissenting preacher), 
 whom he supplied with the raw material of thought, and 
 who returned it back to him in a dress suitable to the 
 audience to whom it was to be presented. This was the 
 man, who was getting credit for what was not his own, 
 who, in treating of Mahomet, must make a diversion 
 from his course, — which never comes amiss in a Protes- 
 tant volume, — in order to bring a charge of incapability 
 and pretence against the Catholic Church ; and what 
 should he unluckily choose for the instrument of his 
 attack but the identical passage of St. Eligius, and on 
 that same authority of Mosheim, which had already been 
 adopted by Hallam, Robertson, and Maclaine! Mr. 
 White writes thus : — 
 
 " No representation can convey stronger ideas of the 
 melancholy state of religion in the seventh century, than 
 the description of the character of a good Christian, as 
 drawn at that period by St. Eligius, or Eloi, Bishop of 
 Noyon." And then he quotes the extract, already cited, 
 from the pages of Mosheim. 
 
 And now we are approaching the fountain head of the 
 Tradition, but first I must just allude to one other author 
 of name, who bears the same testimony, to " Mumpsi- 
 
98 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 mus," and simply on the same authority. This is an 
 elegant writer, a divine and an Archdeacon of the 
 Established Church, who in the year 1773, published 
 " Remarks on Ecclesiastical History." In the table of 
 contents prefixed to the third volume, we are referred to 
 "Eligius' sysUm of Religion;" and turning to the page 
 set against that descriptive title, we are told, " In this 
 seventh century, . . . monkery flourished prodigiously, and 
 the monks and Popes were in the firmest union. As to 
 true religion, here is the sum and substance of it, as it is 
 drawn up for us by Eligius, one of the principal saints of 
 that age." And then follows the cut-and-dried passage 
 as given by Mosheim. 
 
 Now, at last, let us proceed to the first father of 
 Mumpsimus, the Lutheran Mosheim himself. His words 
 run thus in his Ecclesiastical History : " During this 
 century (the seventh) true religion lay buried under a 
 senseless mass of superstitions, and was unable to raise her 
 head. The earlier Christians . . . taught that Christ had 
 made expiation for the sins of men by his death and his 
 blood; the latter" (those of the seventh century), "seemed 
 to inculcate that the gates of heaven would be closed 
 against none who should enrich the clergy or the church 
 with their donations. The former were studious to 
 maintain a holy simplicity, and to follow a pure and 
 chaste piety, the latter place the substance of religion in 
 external rites and bodily exercises." And then, in order 
 to illustrate this contrast, which he has drawn out, 
 between the spirituahty of the first Christians and the 
 formality of the Papists, he quotes the famous passage 
 which has been the matter of our investigation. 
 
 Brothers of the Oratory, take your last look at the 
 Protestant Tradition, ere it melts away into thin air 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 99 
 
 from before your eyes. It carries with it a goodly suc- 
 cession of names, Mosheim, Jortin, Maclaine, Robertson, 
 White, and Hallam. It extends from 1755 to the year 
 1833. But in this latter year, when it was now seventy- 
 eight years old, it met with an accident attended with fatal 
 consequences. Some one for the first time, instead of 
 blindly following the traditional statement, thought it 
 worth while first to consult St. Eligius himself. His 
 work is in every good library; but to no one had it 
 occurred to take it from the shelf, till the present Pro- 
 testant Pean of Durham, Dr. Waddington, while he was 
 engaged in publishing an Ecclesiastical History, at the 
 date I have named. At first, indeed, he relied on his 
 Protestant masters ; and, taking Mosheim for his guide, 
 and quoting St. Eligius from his volume, he observes 
 that, as the saint was " a person of influence in his day, 
 we may venture to record what, in his opinion, was the 
 sum and substance of true religion." Then follows the 
 old extract. This is at the 153rd page of Dr. ^Vadding- 
 ton's work ; but, by the time he got to page 298, he had 
 turned to the original, and the truth came out. He 
 found that the received Protestant extract was only 
 a small portion, nay, only sentences picked out here 
 and there, of a very long sermon, — other sentences of 
 which, close by, and in the very midst of those actually 
 quoted, contained all those very matters, the supposed 
 absence of which was the very charge brought against St. 
 Eligius by Mosheim, Maclaine, Eobertson, Jortin, White, 
 and Hallam. They, forsooth, pure Protestants, had been 
 so shocked and scandalized, that there was nothing of moral 
 virtue in the saint's idea of a Christian, nothing of love 
 of God, or of man ; nothing of justice, of truth, of know- 
 ledge, of honesty ; whereas, in matter of fact, there 
 
100 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 turned out to be an abundance of these good things, 
 drawn out in sentences of their own, though certainly not 
 in the other sentences which those authors had ex- 
 tracted. 1 will quote what Dr. Waddington says, on 
 his discovery of his mistake : — 
 
 He says that " the sense, and even the words" of the 
 passage which he had cited, " had been previously re- 
 tailed both by Robertson and Jortin, and the original 
 quoted by Mosheim ;" but that he had since " been led 
 to look more particularly into the life of Ehgius, as it is 
 published in the ' Spicilegium Dacherii ?' " Then, he 
 continues, " he"— that is himself, the Author — " was 
 pleased to discover very excellent precepts and pious ex- 
 hortations scattered among the strange matter" — so he 
 speaks as a Protestant — " with which it abounds. But 
 at the same time it was with great sorrow and some 
 shame, that he ascertained the treachery of his historical 
 conductor," that is, Mosheim. " The expressions cited 
 by Mosheim," he continues, " and cited, too, with a 
 direct reference to the ' Spicilegium,' " in which the 
 Sermon is contained, " were forcibly brought together hy 
 a very unpardonable mutilation of his authority. They 
 are to be found, indeed, in a Sermon preached by the 
 Bishop, but found in the society of so many good and 
 Christian maxims, that it had been charitable entirely to 
 overlook them, as it was certainly unfair to weed them 
 out and heap them together, without notice of the rich 
 harvest that surrounds them." 
 
 He then proceeds to quote some of the exhortations of 
 the Saint to which he alludes, and which Mosheim had 
 omitted. For instance : — " Wherefore, my brethren, 
 love your friends in God, and love your enemies for God, 
 for he who loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law. . . . 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 101 
 
 He is a good Christian who beUeves not in charms or 
 inventions of the devil, but places the whole of his hope in 
 Christ alone ; who receives the stranger with joy, as 
 though he were receiving Christ Himself . . . who gives alms 
 to the poor in proportion to his possessions . . . who has no 
 deceitful balances nor deceitful measures . . . who both lives 
 chastely himself, and teaches his neighbours and his chil- 
 dren to live chastely, and in the fear of God. . . . Behold, ye 
 have heard, my brethren, what sort of people good Chris- 
 tians are . . .'to the end that ye be true Christians, 
 always ponder the precepts of Christ in your mind, and also 
 fulfil them in your practice. . . . Keep peace and charity, 
 recal the contentious to concord, avoid lies, tremble" at 
 perjury, bear no false witness, commit no theft . . . ob- 
 serve the Lord's day ... do as you would be done by . . . 
 visit the infirm . . . seek out those who are in prison." 
 So the holy Bishop proceeds ; and then he adds, " If you 
 observe these things, you may appear boldly at God's tri- 
 bunal in the day of judgment, and say. Give, Lord, as we 
 have given." Scattered about in the midst of these ex- 
 hortations, are the few sentences, excellent also, in spite 
 of Dr. Waddington, though not the whole of Christianity, 
 which the Protestant writers have actually quoted. 
 
 Such is the Sermon upon which Dr. Maclaine makes 
 this (what Robertson calls) "very proper reflection." " We 
 see here a large and ample description of the character of a 
 good Christian, in which there is not the least mention of 
 the love of God, resignation to his will, obedience to his 
 laws, or justice, benevolence, or charity towards men." 
 But as Mosheim and his followers have their opinion of 
 St. Eligius, so, in turn, has Dr. Waddington his opi- 
 nion of Mosheim. " The impression," he says, " which" 
 Mosheim by "stringing together" certain sentences "with 
 
102 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 out any notice of the context, conveys to his readers, is 
 wholly false ; and the calumny thus indirectly cast upon 
 his author is not the less reprehensible, because it falls 
 on one of the obscurest Saints in the Roman calendar. 
 If the very essence of history be truth, and if any deli- 
 berate violation of that be sinful in the profane annalist, 
 still less can it deserve pardon or mercy in the historian 
 of the Church of Christ." 
 
 This, as I have said, took place in 1833 : two years 
 later the exposure was repeated, in a brilliant paper in- 
 serted by Dr. Maitland in an Ecclesiastical Magazine, 
 the Editor drawing the especial attention of his readers 
 to his correspondent's remarks ^. 
 
 However, after all, I could not help expressing to 
 myself, after surveying the whole course of their exposure, 
 my intense misgivings that their efforts would be in vain. 
 I knew enough of the Protestant mind, to be aware how 
 little the falsehood of any one of its traditions is an 
 effectual reason for its relinquishing it ; and I find 
 too truly that I was not mistaken in my anticipation. 
 Mumpsimus still reigns. In a new edition of Mosheim's 
 history, published in 1841, the editor, a recent successor 
 of Mr. White in the Oxford lectures, reprints those 
 precibus legacies, the text of Mosheim, the " very proper 
 reflection" of Maclaine, and the garbled quotation from 
 St. Eligius, for the benefit of the rising generation of 
 divines, without a word of remark, or any thing whatever 
 to show that a falsehood had been uttered, a falsehood tra- 
 ; ditionally perpetuated, a falsehood emphatically exposed, 
 
 2. I have given you, my brothers, a specimen of the 
 
 " I do not add Dr. Lingard as being a Catholic authority. 
 
OF THE rnOTESTANT VIEW. 103 
 
 Tradition of Literature ; now I proceed to the Tradition 
 of Wealth, Respectability, Virtue, and Enlightened Eeli- 
 gion ; for all these, in a country like ours, are supposed 
 to go together, the Tradition of our merchants, traders, 
 and men of business, and of all who have any thing to lose, 
 and are therefore conscientiously attached to the Con- 
 stitution. And I shall select, as the organ of their Tra- 
 dition, a writer, whom they will at once acknowledge to 
 be an unexceptionable representative of their ideas. If 
 there be a periodical of the day which lays claim to 
 knowledge of this globe, and of all that is in it, which is 
 Catholic in its range of subjects, its minute curiosity, 
 and its world-wide correspondence, which has dealings 
 with all the religions of the earth, and ought to have the 
 largeness and liberality of view which such manifold 
 intercourse is calculated to create, it is the " Times" 
 newspaper. No one avows so steady a devotion to the 
 great moral precepts embodied in the Decalogue, or pro- 
 fesses so fine a sense of honour and duty, or is so deeply 
 conscious of his own influence on the community, and of the 
 responsibilities which it involves, or so alive to the truth 
 of the maxim, that, in the general run of things, honesty 
 is the best policy. What noble, manly, disinterested 
 sentiments does he utter ! what upright intention, strong 
 sense, and sturdy resolution, are the staple of his com- 
 position ! what indignation does he manifest at the sight 
 of vice or baseness ! what detestation of trickery ! what so- 
 lemn resolve to uphold the oppressed ! what generous sym- 
 pathy with innocence calumniated ! what rising of heart 
 against tyranny ! what gravity of reprobation ! how, 
 when Catholic and Protestant are in fierce political an- 
 tagonism, he can mourn over breaches of charity, in 
 which he protests the while he has had no share ! with 
 
104 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 what lively sensibility and withering scorn does he en- 
 counter the accusation, made against him by rivals every 
 half-dozen years, of venality or tergiversation ! If any 
 where is to be found the sternness of those who are severe 
 because they are pure — who may securely cast stones, for 
 none can cast at them — who, like the Cherub in the poem, 
 are " faithful found among the faithless" — ^you would say 
 that here at length you had found the incorruptible, the 
 guide in a bad world, who amid the illusions of reason 
 and the sophistries of passion, sees the path of duty on 
 all questions whatever, with a luminousness, a keen- 
 ness, and a certainty special to himself. When, then, I 
 would illustrate the value of the Anti- Catholic Tradition, 
 as existing among the money-making classes of the com- 
 munity, I cannot fix upon a more suitable sample than the 
 statements of this accomplished writer. Accordingly, I 
 refer to his columns ; and towards the end of a leading 
 article, in the course of the last month or six weeks, I find 
 the following sentence : — " It is the practice, as our readers 
 are aware, in Roman Catholic countries, for the clergy to 
 post up a list oiall the crimes to which human frailty can be 
 tempted, placing opposite to them the exact sum of money 
 for which their perpetration will be indulged ^" And 
 what makes this statement the more emphatic, is the 
 circumstance, that within two or three sentences after- 
 wards, — ever mindful, as I have said, of the Tables of 
 the Law, — he takes occasion to refer to the divine pro- 
 hibition, " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
 neighbour.'" 
 
 Such is a specimen of the Tradition, marvellous to say, 
 as it exists among the classes who are well to do in the 
 world. You see, they are so clear on the point, that, 
 
 » June, 1851. 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 105 
 
 for all their mercantile sense of the value of charq^cter, 
 their disgust at false intelligence, their severity with 
 fraud, and their sensitiveness at libel, they have no he- 
 sitation in handing down to the next generation this 
 atrocious imputation, that the Catholic Church gives out 
 that she is commissioned by the Moral Governor of the 
 world to bestow on her children permission to perpetrate 
 any sin whatever, for which they have a fancy, on con- 
 dition of their paying her a price in money for that 
 perpetration, in proportion to the heinousness of the 
 offence. 
 
 Now this accusation is not only so grave in itself, but, 
 miserable to say, is so industriously circulated, that, be- 
 fore using it for the purpose for which I have introduced 
 it, in order to remove all suspicion against us, I am in- 
 duced to go out of my way to enunciate, as briefly and as 
 clearly as I can, what the Catholic Church really does 
 teach upon the subject*. The charge in question then 
 rests on a confusion between the forgiveness of sins and 
 admission to Church communion, two ideas perfectly dis- 
 tinct from each other, both in themselves and in Catholic 
 theology. Every great sin contains in it, as we consider, 
 two separate offences, the offence against God, and the 
 offence against the Church ; just as Protestants would 
 allow that murder is at once a sin against God and our 
 neighbour, a sin in the eyes of God, and a crime in the 
 eyes of the law. And, as human society has the arbi- 
 trary power of assigning punishments to offences against 
 itself, heavy or light, or of overlooking the offence alto- 
 gether, or of remitting the penalty when imposed, so has 
 
 * The subject of Indulgences does not enter into the charge as contained 
 in the extract from the " Times ;" but I purpose to add a word about it 
 at the end of the volume. 
 
106 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 the Church. And as the magistrate often inflicts a fine, 
 under sanction of the law, instead of committing to 
 prison, so does the Church allow of the commutation of 
 her own punishments, which are called censures, into 
 alms to the poor, into offerings for some religious object, 
 or even into the mere paying the expenses of the pro- 
 cess, that is, the costs of the suit. And as the con- 
 nivance or free pardon of the magistrate is no pardon in 
 the sight of heaven of the adulterer or the burglar, nor 
 is supposed to be such, so neither does the offender re- 
 ceive, nor is he promised any forgiveness of his sin, either 
 by the Church's taking off the censure, whether in conse- 
 quence of an almsgiving or otherwise, or by her forbearing, 
 which is the common case, to inflict censure altogether. 
 It is true the Church has the power of forgiving sins 
 also, which I shall speak of directly, but this is by a 
 different instrument, and by a totally different process, 
 as every Catholic knows. 
 
 I repeat, the Catholic who perpetrates any serious 
 sin offends his Maker and offends his ecclesiastical so- 
 ciety ; the injury against his Maker is punished by an 
 ipso facto separation from His favour ; the injury against 
 his society, when it is visited at all, is visited by excom- 
 munication or other spiritual infliction. The successor 
 of St. Peter has the power committed to him of par- 
 doning both offences, the offence against God and the of- 
 fence against the Church ; he is the ultimate source of all 
 jurisdiction whether external or internal, but he commonly 
 restores a man to the visible society of Christians, by an 
 act of his own or of the metropohtan or ordinary, and he 
 reconciles him to God by the agency of the priesthood. 
 Repentance is required on the part of the offender for 
 both restorations ; but the sin is forgiven and its pu- 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 107 
 
 nishment remitted in the sacrament of Penance; and } 
 here, which is the only real pardon, no money is, or ever 1 
 can be paid. The sacrament cannot be bought ; such 
 an act would be a horrible crime ; you know this, my 
 brothers, as I know it myself ; we witness to each other 
 that such is the received teaching among us. It is ut- 
 terly false then to assert that it has ever been held in 
 the Catholic Church that "the perpetration of crime 
 could be indulged" for any sum of money. Neither for 
 sins committed, nor sins to come, has money ever been 
 taken as an equivalent, for one no more than for the 
 other. On the other hand, it is quite true that the in- 
 jury done to the Church, when it has been visited with a 
 censure (which is not a common case), has certainly some- 
 times been compensated by the performance of some good 
 work, and in the number of such works, almsdeeds and 
 religious oiferings are included. I repeat, the Church as 
 little dreams of forgiving the sinner by removing the 
 censure and re-admitting him to public communion, as 
 the magistrate by letting a culprit out of prison. 
 
 And in matter of fact, the two acts, the external re- 
 conciliation and the inward absolution, are not neces- 
 sarily connected together. The Church is composed of 
 bad as well as good, according to the Parable, which 
 prophesied that the net should gather of every kind ; a 
 man then may be re-admitted to visible fellowship on a 
 general profession of repentance, yet when he proceeds 
 to the Sacrament of Penance may be unable to satisfy 
 the priest that his repentance is sincere, and may fail of 
 absolution. Then he would be in the case, alas ! so 
 commonly found in the Church, and ever to be found — 
 viz., allowed to attend mass, to hear sermons, to take 
 part in rites, offices, and processions, and regarded as a 
 
108 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 Christian, yet debarred from the use of the Sacraments, 
 from Penance, Holy Eucharist, and Extreme Unction, 
 getting no benefit from Indulgences, meriting nothing for 
 his salvation, but on the contrary being separate from 
 his God, and lying under His wrath, and a dead branch, 
 though he has offered his alms, and is visibly connected 
 with the trunk. On the other hand, it is quite con- 
 ceivable, that the spiritual reconciliation, that is, the for- 
 giveness of sin, might be bestowed without the external 
 or ecclesiastical restoration. This took place, I think, in 
 the case of the Emperor Napoleon, who, up to the hour 
 of his death, lay under the censures of the Church, and 
 was excommunicate, yet in his last days expressed a desire 
 to be reconciled to God. To the ecclesiastical society 
 perhaps he could not be fully reconciled without sending 
 to Rome ; but it is never too late to be saved ; he con- 
 fessed, and was admitted to communion ; and if his re- 
 pentance was true, he departed with an absolute cer- 
 tainty of heaven, though he had not received that external 
 restoration to the visible body to which offerings and 
 alms have sometimes been attached ^ 
 
 However, in spite of the clear and broad distinction I 
 have been laying down, it is the Tradition of Protes- 
 tantism, immutable and precise, as expressed in the words 
 of its eminent teacher and Doctor I have quoted, that 
 the Catholic Church professes to forgive sins past and to 
 come, on the payment of a price. So it has come down 
 to us, so it will flow on ; and the mighty flood of false- 
 hood is continually fed and kept to the full by fresh and 
 
 ^ I think I recollect an absolutio post mortem, when La Belle Poule 
 was sent out for his remains. I do not forget the passage in the Council, 
 Pie admodum, ne hac ipsa occasione quis pereat, &c. Sess. 14, de Poeu. 
 u. 7- Vid. Ferrari's Biblioth. v. Absol. art. i. 55 — 57. 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. J 09 
 
 fresh testimonies, separate and independent, till scepticism 
 is overcome and opposition is hopeless. And now I am 
 going to give you an account of one of these original 
 authorities as they are considered, who has lately pre- 
 sented himself to the world, in the person of a zealous 
 Protestant clergyman, who once visited Belgium, and on 
 occasion of the late outcry about " Popish Aggression" 
 was moved to give to his brethren the benefit of his 
 ocular witness in behalf of one of the most flagrant abuses 
 and abominations of " that corrupt church." 
 
 His account, given at a public meeting, was to the fol- 
 lowing effect : That in the year 1835, when on a visit to 
 Brussels, he was led to inspect the door of the Cathedral 
 St. Gudule's ; and that there he saw fastened up a cata- 
 logue of sins, with a specification of the prices at which 
 remission of each might severally be obtained. No cir- 
 cumstance, it would appear, called for his giving this 
 information to the world for the long space of sixteen 
 years; and it is a pity for the Protestant cause that 
 another sixteen did not pass before circumstances sug- 
 gested his doing so. Why did he not consign it to some 
 safe volume of controversy, weighty enough for Eng- 
 land, too heavy for the channel, instead of committing it 
 to the wings of the wind and the mercy of reporters ? 
 Then tranquilly and leisurely would the solemn tale have 
 ventured out upon platforms and into pulpits, when con- 
 temporaries were gone, and would have taken its place 
 beside my own Don Felix of Andalusia and similar 
 worthies of Exeter Hall. But the fates willed other- 
 wise ; the accessory was to join the main stream at once, 
 and to its surprise to be tumbled violently into its bed ; 
 the noise drew attention ; curiosity was excited ; the 
 windings of the infant rill were prematurely tracked to 
 
J 10 I'ABLE THE BASIS 
 
 its source : so we can now put our finger on the first 
 welling of its waters, and we can ascertain the com- 
 position of a Protestant tradition. 
 
 On the news of this portentous statement getting to 
 Brussels, it excited a commotion which it could not 
 rouse among the Catholics of England. We are fami- 
 liarized to calumny, and have learned resignation ; the 
 good Belgians were surprised and indignant at what they 
 had thought no sane man would have ventured to ad- 
 vance. Forthwith a Declaration was put forth by the 
 persons especially interested in the Cathedral, catego- 
 rically denying the charge. It is signed by the Dean of 
 Brussels, who is also cur^ of the Cathedral, by his four 
 assistant clergymen, by the Churchwardens, by the judge 
 of the high court of justice, and two other judges, 
 and by others. They observe that they had privately 
 asked the accuser to withdraw his statement ; and 
 on his refusal they make the following terse Declara- 
 tion : 
 
 " The undersigned look upon it as a duty to come for- 
 ward and protest against the allegations of the" clergy- 
 man in question. " They declare, upon their honour, 
 that such a notice as the one spoken of by the said 
 clergyman has never disgraced the entrance, either of the 
 church of St. Gudule, or of any other church of Brus- 
 sels, or of the whole country. They further declare, 
 that they have never even suspected for one instant that 
 permission to sin could, for any possible motive, be 
 granted, nor that any one could ever obtain remission of 
 his sins for money. Such a doctrine they repudiate with 
 indignation, as it is, and always has been, repudiated by 
 the whole of the Catholic Church." This Declaration is 
 signed, "Brussels, April 2, 1851." 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. Ill 
 
 One thing alone was wanting to complete the refuta- 
 tion of the slander ; and that was, to account how its 
 author was betrayed into so extraordinary a misrepre- 
 sentation. No one will accuse a respectable person of 
 wilful and deliberate falsehood : did his eyes or his me- 
 mory deceive him ? or did he really see something on the 
 door, which he wrongly translated and interpreted by his 
 prejudices ? that the latter is the true explanation of the 
 phenomenon, is probable from a piece of information 
 with which a Brussels journal supplies us. I dare say 
 you know that in cathedrals and large churches abroad 
 chairs are used for worship instead of benches ; and they 
 are generally farmed by the beadles or others attached to 
 the church, who let them out to all comers at the price of 
 a small copper coin every time they are used. Now it so 
 happens that on the right-hand door of the transept of this 
 church of St. Gudule there really is affixed a black board, 
 on which there is a catalogue in the French language of 
 the price to be paid, not for sins, but for the use of 
 these chairs. The inscription translated runs as follows : 
 " a chair without cushion, one cent (about a farthing) ; 
 a chair with cushion, two cents. On great festival days ; 
 a chair without cushion, two cents ; a chair with cushion, 
 four cents." This board it may be supposed our anti- 
 Catholic witness mistook for that abominable sin-table, 
 the description of which so deservedly shocked the zea- 
 lous Protestants of Faversham. 
 
 Such is the ultimate resolution, as detected in a par- 
 ticular instance, of that uniform and incontestable Pro- 
 testant Tradition, that we sell sin for money. The expo- 
 sure happened in March and April ; but Protestantism 
 is infallible, and the judgments of its doctors irreversible ; 
 accordingly in the following June, the newspaper I have 
 
1J2 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 mentioned thought it necessary to show that the Tra- 
 dition was not injured by the blow ; so out it came 
 again, " though brayed in a mortar," not at all the worse 
 for the accident, in that emphatic statement which I 
 quoted when I opened the subject, and which I now 
 quote again that I am closing it. " It is the practice," 
 the writer pronounces ex cathedra, " as our readers are 
 aware, in Roman Catholic countries to post up a list of 
 all the crimes to which human frailty can be tempted, 
 placing opposite to them the exact sum of money for 
 which their perpetration will be indulged." 
 
 3. Two of my instances are dispatched, and now I 
 come to my third. There is something so tiresome in 
 passing abruptly from one subject to another, that I need 
 your indulgence, my brothers, in making this third be- 
 ginning ; yet it has been difficult to avoid it, when my 
 very object is to show what extensive subject matters 
 and what different classes of the community are acted 
 on by the Protestant Tradition. Now I am proceeding 
 to the Legislature of the nation, and will give an instance 
 of its operation in a respectable political party. 
 
 Its fountain springs up in this case, as it were, under 
 our very feet, and we shall have no difficulty at all in 
 judging of its quality. Its history is as follows : — 
 Coaches, omnibuses, carriages, and cars, day after day 
 drive up and down the Hagley Road ; passengers lounge 
 to and fro on the footpath ; and close alongside of 
 it are discovered one day the nascent foundations and 
 rudiments of a considerable building. On inquiring, it is 
 found to be intended for a Catholic, nay even for a mo- 
 nastic establishment. This leads to a good deal of talk, 
 especially when the bricks begin to show above the sur- 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 113 
 
 face. Meantime the unsuspecting architect is taking 
 his measurements, and ascertains that the ground is far 
 from lying level ; and then, since there is a prejudice 
 among Catholics in favour of horizontal floors, he comes 
 to the conclusion that the bricks of the basement must 
 rise above the surface higher at one end of the building 
 than at the other ; in fact, that whether he will or no, 
 there must be some construction of the nature of a vault 
 or cellar at the extremity in question, a circumstance 
 not at all inconvenient, considering it also happens to be 
 the kitchen end of the building. Accordingly, he turns 
 his necessity into a gain, and by the excavation of a few 
 feet of earth he forms a number of chambers convenient 
 for various purposes, partly beneath, partly above the 
 line of the ground. While he is thus intent on his 
 work, gossipers, loungers, alarmists, are busy at theirs 
 too. They go round the building, they peep into the 
 underground brickwork, and are curious about the 
 drains" ; they moralize about Popery and its spread ; at 
 
 ° It is true, though the gentleman who has brought the matter before 
 the public has accidentally omitted to mention it, that the Protestant 
 feeling has also been excited by the breadth of the drain, which is consi- 
 dered excessive, and moreover crosses the road. There exists some nervous- 
 ness on the subject in the neighbourhood, as I have been seriously given 
 to understand. There is a remarkable passage, too, in his builder's 
 report, which has never been answered or perhaps construed : " One of 
 the compartments was larger than the rest, and was emdently to be catered 
 in without the building over it." This is not the first time a dwelling of 
 mine has been the object of a mysterious interest. When our cottages 
 at Littlemore were in course of preparation, they were visited on horse- 
 back and on foot by many of the most distinguished residents of the 
 University of Oxford. Heads of houses and canons did not scruple to inves- 
 tigate the building within and without, and some of them went so far as to 
 inspect and theorize upon the most retired portions of the premises. Per- 
 haps some thirty years hence, in some " History of my own times'' specu- 
 lations may be found on the subject, in aid of the Protestant Tradition. 
 
 K 2 
 
114 fahle the basis 
 
 length they trespass upon the inclosure, they dive into 
 the half-finished shell, and they take their fill of seeing 
 what is to be seen, and imagining what is not. Every 
 house is built on an idea ; you do not build a mansion 
 like a public office, or a palace like a prison, or a factory 
 like a shooting box, or a church like a barn. Religious 
 houses in like manner have their own idea ; they have 
 certain indispensable peculiarities of form and internal 
 arrangement. Doubtless there was much in the very 
 idea of an Oratory perplexing to the Protestant intellect, 
 and inconsistent with Protestant notions of comfort and 
 utility. Why should so large a room be here ! why so 
 small a room there 2 why a passage so long and wide, 
 and why so long a wall without a window? the very 
 size of the house needed explanation. Judgments, which 
 had employed themselves on the high subject of a Ca- 
 tholic hierarchy and its need, found no difficulty in 
 dogmatising on bed-rooms and closets. There was 
 much to suggest matter of suspicion, and to predis- 
 pose the trespasser to doubt, whether he had yet got 
 to the bottom of the subject. At length one ques- 
 tion flashed upon his mind ; what can such a house 
 have to do with cellars ? cellars and monks, what can be 
 their mutual relation? monks, to what possible use can 
 they put pits, and holes, and corners, and outhouses, and 
 sheds ? A sensation was created ; it brought other 
 visitors; it spread; it became an impression, a belief; 
 the truth lay bare ; a tradition was born ; a fact was 
 elicited which thenceforth had many witnesses. Those 
 cellars were cells. How obvious when once stated ! and 
 every one who entered the building, every one who 
 passed by, became, I say, in some sort, ocular vouchers 
 for what had often been read of in books, but for many 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 115 
 
 generations had happily been unknown to England, for 
 the incarcerations, the torturings, the starvings, the im- 
 murings, the murderings proper to a monastic esta- 
 blishment. 
 
 Now I am tempted to stop for a while, in order 
 to improve (as the evangelical pulpits call it) this 
 most memorable discovery. I will therefore briefly 
 consider it under the heads of, 1. the accusation ; 
 2. its grounds ; 3. the accusers ; and, 4. the 
 
 ACCUSED. 
 
 First, THE Accusation ; it is this, — that the Catholics, 
 building the house in question, were in the practice of 
 committing murder. This was so strictly the charge, 
 that, had the platform selected for making it been other 
 than it is said to have been, I suppose the speaker might 
 have been indicted for libel. His words were these : " It 
 was not usual for a coroner to hold an inquest., unless 
 where a rumour had got abroad that there was a necessity 
 for one ; and how was a rumour to come from the under- 
 ground cells of the convents f Yes, he repeated, under- 
 ground cells : and he would tell them something about 
 such places. At this moment, in the parish of Edg- 
 baston, within the borough of Birmingham, there was a 
 large convent, of some kind or other, being erected, and 
 the whole of the underground was fitted up with cells ; 
 and what were those cells for ?" 
 
 Secondly. — The Grounds of the Accusation. — 
 They are simple ; behold them, 1. that the house is built 
 level ; 2. that the plot of earth on which it is built is 
 higher at one end than at the other. 
 
 Thirdly. — The Accusers. — This, too, throws Hght 
 upon the character of Protestant traditions. Not weak 
 and ignorant people only, not people at a distance, — but 
 
116 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 educated men, gentlemen well connected, high in posi- 
 tion, men of business, men of character, members of the 
 legislature, men familiar with the locality, men who 
 know the accused by name, — such are the men who 
 deliberately, reiteratedly, in spite of being set right, 
 charge certain persons with pitiless, savage practices ; 
 with beating and imprisoning, with starving, with mur- 
 dering their dependents. 
 
 Fourthly. — The Accused. — I feel ashamed, ray bro- 
 thers, of bringing my own matters before you, when far 
 better persons have suffered worse imputations ; but bear 
 with me. I then am the accused. A gentleman of blame- 
 less character, a county member, with whose near relatives 
 I have been on terms of almost fraternal intimacy 
 for a quarter of a century, who knows me by repute 
 far more familiarly (I suppose) than any one in this 
 room, putting aside my personal friends ; he it is 
 who charges me, and others like me, with delighting in 
 blood, with enjoying the shrieks and groans of agony and 
 despair, with presiding at a banquet of dislocated limbs, 
 quivering muscles, and wild countenances. 0, what a 
 world is this ! Could he look into our eyes and say it ? 
 Would he have the heart to say it, if he recollected of 
 whom he said it ? For who are we ? Have we lived in a 
 corner ? have we come to light suddenly out of the earth ? 
 We have been nourished, for the greater part of our lives, 
 in the bosom of the great schools and universities of 
 Protestant England ; we have been the foster sons of the 
 Edwards and Henries, the Wykehams and Wolseys, of 
 whom Englishmen are wont to make much; we have 
 grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at 
 present all over the country, in those special ranks of 
 society which are the very walk of a member of the 
 
OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 117 
 
 legislature. Our names are better known to the educated 
 classes of the country than those of any others who are 
 not public men. Moreover, if there be men in the 
 whole world who may be said to live in publico, it is the 
 members of a College at one of our Universities ; living, 
 not in private houses, not in families, but in one or two 
 apartments which are open to all the world, at all hours, 
 with nothing, I may say, their own ; with college servants, 
 a common table, — nay, their chairs and their bedding, 
 and their cups* and saucers, down to their coal-scuttle 
 and their carpet brooms, — a sort of common property, 
 and the right of their neighbours. Such is that manner 
 of life, in which nothing, I may say, can be hid ; where 
 no trait of character or peculiarity of conduct but comes 
 to broad day, — such is the life I myself led for above a 
 quarter of a century, under the eyes of numbers who are 
 familiarly known to my accusers ; such is the life which 
 we all have led ever since we have been in Birmingham, 
 with our house open to all comers, and ourselves accessible, 
 I may almost say, at any hour ; and this being so, 
 considering the charge, and the evidence, and the accuser, 
 and the accused, could we Catholics desire a more apposite 
 illustration of the formation and the value of a Protestant 
 Tradition ? 
 
 I set it down for the benefit of time to come; " though 
 for no other cause," as a great author says, " yet for this : 
 that posterity may know we have not loosely, through 
 silence, permitted things to pass away as in a dream, there 
 shall be for men's information extant thus much." One 
 commonly forgets such things, from the trouble and incon- 
 venience of having to remember them ; let one specimen 
 last, of many which have been suffered to perish, of the 
 birth of an Anti-Catholic tradition. The nascent fable 
 
118 FABLE THE BASIS 
 
 has indeed failed, as the tale about the Belgian sin-table^ 
 but it might have thriven : it has been lost by bad, 
 nursing : it ought to have been cherished awhile in those 
 underground receptacles, where first it drew breath, till 
 it could comfortably bear the light ; till its limbs were 
 grown, and its voice was strong, and we on whom it bore 
 had run our course, and gone to our account ; and then 
 it might have raised its head without fear and without 
 reproach, and might have magisterially asserted what 
 there was none to deny. But men are all the creatures 
 of circumstances ; they are hurried on to a ruin which 
 they may see but cannot evade : so has it been with the 
 Edgbaston Tradition. It was spoken on the house-tops 
 when it should have been whispered in closets, and it 
 expired in the effort. Yet it might have been allotted, 
 let us never forget, a happier destiny. It might have 
 smouldered and spread through a portion of our Birming- 
 ham population ; it might have rested obscurely on their 
 memories, and now and then risen upon their tongues : 
 there might have been flitting notions, misgivings, ru- 
 mours, voices, that the horrors of the Inquisition were 
 from time to time renewed in our subterranean cham- 
 bers : and fifty years hence, if some sudden frenzy of the 
 hour roused the Anti-Catholic jealousy still lingering in 
 the place, a mob might have swarmed about our innocent 
 dwelling, to rescue certain legs of mutton and pats of 
 butter from imprisonment, and to hold an inquest over a 
 dozen packing-cases, some old hampers, a knife board, 
 and a range of empty blacking bottles. 
 
 Thus I close my third instance of the sort of evidence 
 commonly adducible for the great Protestant Tradition ; 
 not the least significant circumstance about them all being 
 this, that, though in the case of all three that evidence is 
 
or THE PUOTESTAXT VIEW. l]^ 
 
 disproved, yet in not one of the three is the charge founded 
 on it withdrawn. In spite of Dr. ^Vaddington, Dr. 
 Maitland, and Mr. Rose, the editors of Mosheim still 
 print and publish his slander on St. Eligius ; in defiance 
 of the Brussels protest, and the chair tariff of St. Gudule, 
 the Kent clergyman and the " Times" still bravely main- 
 tain our traffic in sins ; in violence to the common sense 
 of mankind, the rack and the pulley are still affirmed to 
 be busy in the dungeons of Edgbaston ;— for Protestant- 
 ism is the reRgion of Englishmen, and part and parcel 
 of the law of the land. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, I will but state my conviction, 
 which I am sure to have confirmed by every intelligent 
 person who takes the trouble to examine the subject, that 
 such slanders as I have instanced are the real foundation 
 on which the Anti-Catholic feeling mainly rests in Eng- 
 land, and without which it could not long be maintained. 
 Doubtless there are arguments of a different calibre, 
 whatever their worth, which weigh against Catholics 
 with half-a-dozen members of a University, with the 
 speculative church-restorer, with the dilettante divine, 
 with the fastidious scholar, and with some others of a 
 higher character of mind ; whether St. Justin Martyr 
 said this or that ; whether images should be dressed in 
 muslin, or hewed out of stone ; what criticism makes of 
 a passage in the prophets, — questions such as these, and 
 others of a more serious cast, may be conclusive for 
 or against the Church in the study or in the lecture- 
 room, but they have no influence with the many. As i 
 to those charges which do weigh with the people at 
 large, the more they can be examined, the more, I am 
 convinced, will they be found to be untrue. It is by i 
 
120 FABLE THE BASIS OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 ': wholesale, retail, systematic, unscrupulous lying, for I can 
 j use no gentler terms, that the many rivulets are made to 
 I flow for the feeding the great Protestant Tradition, — the 
 Tradition of the Court, the Tradition of the Law, the Tra- 
 1 dition of the Legislature, the Tradition of the Esta- 
 j blishment, the Tradition of Literature, the Tradition of 
 I Domestic Circles, the Tradition of the PoDulace. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL TO THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 I CAN fancy, my Brothers, that some of you may have 
 been startled at a statement I made at the close of my 
 Lecture of Last Week. I then said, that the more 
 fully the imputations which were cast upon us were 
 examined, the more unfounded they would turn out to 
 be ; so that the great Tradition on which we are per- 
 secuted is little short of one vast pretence or fiction. 
 On this you may be led to ask me whether I mean to 
 deny all and every thing which can be advanced to the 
 disadvantage of the Cathohc Church, and whether I 
 recommend you to do the same? but this was not my 
 meaning. Some things which are alleged against us are 
 doubtless true, and we see no harm in them, though 
 Protestants do ; other things are true, yet, as we think, 
 only go to form ingenious objections ; others again are 
 true, and refer to what is really sinful and detestable, as 
 we allow as fully as Protestants can urge : but all these 
 real facts, whatever their worth, taken all together, do 
 
122 TBUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 not go any way towards proving the Protestant Tra- 
 ditionary View of us ; they are vague and unsatisfactory, 
 and, to apply a common phrase, they beat about the 
 bush. If you would have some direct downright proof 
 that Catholicism is what Protestants make it to be, some- 
 thing which will come up to the mark, you must lie ; 
 else you will not get beyond feeble suspicions, which may 
 be right, but may be wrong. Hence Protestants are 
 ! obliged to cut their ninth commandment out of their 
 ■ Decalogue. " Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 i thy neighbour " must go, must disappear ; their position 
 ; requires the sacrifice. The substance, the force, the 
 edge of their Tradition is slander. As soon as ever they 
 disabuse their minds of what is false, and grasp only 
 what is true,— I do not say they at once become Catho- 
 lics ; I do not say they lose their dislike to our religion, 
 or their suspicion of its working ; — but I say this, either 
 they become tolerant towards us, and cease to hate us 
 personally, — or, at least, supposing they cannot shake off 
 old associations, and are prejudiced and hostile as before, 
 still they find they cannot communicate their own feel- 
 ings to others. To Protestantism False Witness is the 
 principle of propagation. There are indeed able men 
 who can make a striking case out of any thing or 
 nothing, as great painters give a meaning and a unity to 
 the commonest bush, and pond, and paling, and stile : 
 genius can do without facts as well as create them ; but 
 I few possess the gift. Taking things as they are, and 
 judging of them by the long run, one may securely say, 
 that the Anti-Cathohc Tradition could not be kept alive, 
 would die of exhaustion, without a continual supply of 
 ! fable. 
 
 I repeat, not every thing which is said to our dis- 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 123 
 
 advantage is without foundation in fact ; but it is not 
 the true that tells against us, but the false. The Tra- 
 dition requires bold painting ; its prominent outline, its 
 glaring colouring, needs to be a fraud. So was it at the 
 time of the Reformation : the multitude would never 
 have been converted by exact reasoning and facts which 
 could be proved ; so its upholders were clever enough to 
 call the Pope Antichrist, and they let the startling accu- 
 sation sink into men's minds. Nothing else would have 
 succeeded ; and they pursue the same tactique now. 
 Nothing else, I say, would have gained for them the 
 battle ; else, why should they have adopted it ? Few 
 persons tell atrocious falsehoods for the sake of telling 
 them. If truth had been sufficient to put down Catho- 
 licism, the Reformers would not have had recourse to 
 fiction. Errors indeed creep in by chance, whatever be 
 the point of inquiry or dispute ; but I am not accusing 
 Protestants merely of incidental or of attendant error, 
 but I mean that falsehood is the very staple of the views 
 which they have been taught to entertain of us. 
 
 I allow, there are true charges which can be brought 
 against us ; certainly, not only do I not deny it, but I 
 hardly could deny it without heresy. I say distinctly, 
 did I take upon me to deny every thing which could be 
 said against us, I should be proving too much, I should 
 startle the Catholic theologian as well as Protestants; ' 
 for what would it be but implying, that the Church 
 contains none within her pale but the just and holy ! 
 This was the heresy of the Novatians and Donatists of 
 old time ; it was the heresy of our Lollards, and others, 
 such as Luther, who maintained that bad men are not 
 members of the Church, that none but the predestinate 
 are her members. But this no Catholic asserts, every 
 
 At 2 
 
124 TllUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 Catholic denies. Every Catholic has ever denied it, 
 up to the very time of the Apostles and their Divine 
 Master ; and He and they deny it ; Christ denies it, St. 
 Paul denies it, the Catholic Church denies it. Our Lord 
 expressly said that the Church was to be like a net, 
 vyhich gathered of every kind, not only of the good, but 
 of the bad too. Such was His Church; it does not 
 prove then that we are not His Church, because we are 
 liJce His Church ; rather, our being like the Primitive 
 Church, is a reason for concluding that we are one with 
 it. We cannot make His Church better than He made 
 her ; we must be content with her, as He made her, or 
 not pretend to follow Him. He said, " Many are called, 
 few are chosen ;" they come, but they fall away. They 
 are not indeed sinning at the very time when they are 
 brought into His family, at the time they are new born ; 
 but, as children grow up, and converts live on, the time 
 too frequently comes, when they fall under the power of 
 one kind of temptation or other, and fall away, either 
 for a while, or for good. Thus, not indeed by the divine 
 wish and intention, but by the divine permission, and 
 man's perverseness, there is a vast load of moral evil 
 existing in the Church ; an enemy has sown weeds there, 
 and those weeds remain among the wheat till the har- 
 vest. And this evil in the Church is not found only in 
 the laity, but among the clergy too ; there have been 
 bad priests, bad bishops, bad monks, bad nuns, and bad 
 Popes. If this then is the charge made against us, that 
 we do not all live up to our calling, but that Catholics, 
 lay and clerical, may, if so be, be proved worldly, re- 
 vengeful, licentious, slothful, cruel, nay, may be unbe- 
 lievers, we grant it at once. We not only grant it, but 
 we zealously maintain it. " In a great house," says St. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 125 
 
 Paul, " there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but 
 also of wood and of earth ; and some indeed unto 
 honour, but some unto dishonour." There are, alas, 
 plenty of children of the Church, who by their bad lives 
 insult and disgrace their Mother. 
 
 The Church, it is true, has been promised many great 
 things, but she has not been promised the souls of all her 
 children. She is promised truth in religious teaching, 
 she is promised duration to the end of the world ; she is 
 made the means of grace, she is unchangeable in Creed 
 and in structure ; she will ever cover the earth ; — but 
 her children are not infallible separately, any more than 
 they are immortal ; not indefectible, any more than they 
 are in many places at once. Therefore, if Protestants . 
 would form arguments which really would tell against 
 us, they must show, not that individuals are immoral or 
 profane, but that the Church teaches, or enjoins, or re- 
 commends, what is immoral or profane ; rewards, en- 
 courages, or at least does not warn and discountenance 
 the sinner ; or promulgates rules, and enforces practices ' 
 which directly lead to sin ; and this indeed they try to 
 do, but they find the task not near so pleasant as the short 
 and easy method of strong round thoroughgoing state- 
 ments, which are not true. 
 
 We do not then feel as a difficulty, on the contrary, 
 we teach as a doctrine, that there are scandals in the 
 Church. " It must needs be, that scandals come ; 
 nevertheless, woe to that man by whom the scandal 
 cometh." There are, to all appearance, multitudes of 
 Catholics who have passed out of the world unrepentant, 
 and are lost ; there are multitudes living in sin, and out 
 of grace; priests may and do fall, in this or that 
 country, at this or that time, though they are exceptions 
 
126 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEttUAL 
 
 to the rule ; or there may be parties or knots of eccle- 
 siastics, who take a low view of their duty, or adopt 
 dangerous doctrines ; or they may be covetous, or un- 
 feeling, as other men, and use their power tyrannically, 
 or for selfish, secular ends. There may be a declension 
 and deterioration of the priesthood of a whole country. 
 There may be secret unbelievers, both among clergy and 
 laity; or those who are tending in their imaginations 
 and their reasonings to grievous error or heresy. There 
 may be great disorders in some particular monastery or 
 nunnery ; or a love of ease and slothful habits ; and a 
 mere formality in devotion, in particular orders of Reli- 
 gious, at particular seasons. There may be self-indul- 
 gence, pride, ambition, political profligacy in certain 
 Bishops in particular states of society, as, for instance, 
 when the Church has been long established and abounds 
 in wealth. And there have been Popes before now, who 
 to the letter have fulfilled the awful description of the 
 unfaithful servant and steward, who began " to strike 
 the men servants and maid servants, and to eat and 
 drink and be drunk." All this may be granted, but 
 before the admission can avail as an argument against 
 the Catholic Church, one thing has to be examined, 
 whether on the whole her influence and her action is on 
 the side of what is wrong, or rather (as is the case) 
 simply powerful on the side of good ; one thing has to 
 be proved, that the scandals within her pale have been 
 caused by her principles, her teaching, her injunctions, 
 or, which pretty nearly comes to the same thing, that 
 they do not exist, and as grievously, (Catholics would say, 
 they exist far more grievously) external to her. 
 
 Now here is the flaw in the argument. For instance, 
 it is plausibly objected that disorders not only sometimes 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 127 
 
 do, but must, occur, where Priests are bound to celibacy. 
 Even the candid Protestant will be apt to urge against 
 us, " You must not argue from the case of the few, from 
 persons of high principle and high education ; but taking 
 the run of men, you must allow that the vow will not be 
 kept by numbers of those who have got themselves to 
 take it." Now, I will not reply, as I well might do, by 
 pointing out the caution which the Church observes in 
 the selection of her priests ; how it is her rule to train 
 them carefully for many years beforehand, with this one 
 thought in view, that priests they are to be ; how she 
 tries them during their training ; how she takes one and 
 rejects another, not with any reflection on those who are 
 rejected, but simply because she finds they are not called 
 to this particular state of life ; how, when she has 
 selected a man, a hundred provisions and checks in de- 
 tail are thrown around his person, which are to be his 
 safeguard in his arduous calling ; lastly, how, when he is 
 once called to his high ministry, he has, unless he be 
 wonderfully wanting to himself, the power of divine grace 
 abundantly poured upon him, without which all human 
 means are useless, but which can do, and constantly does, 
 miracles, as the experience, not of priest merely, but of 
 every one who has been converted from a life of sin will 
 abundantly testify : — I might enlarge on considerations 
 such as these, but I put them aside, because I wish to 
 address myself to the question of fact. 
 
 When, then, we come to the matter of fact, whether 
 celibacy has been and «s, in comparison of the marriage 
 vow, so dangerous to a clerical body, I answer that I 
 am very sceptical indeed that in matter of fact a married 
 clergy is adorned, in any special and singular way, with 
 the grace of purity ; and this is just the very thing 
 
128 TKUE TESTIMONY UNEftUAI, 
 
 which Protestants take for granted. What is the use 
 of speaking against our discipline, till they have proved 
 their own to be better ? Now I deny that they succeed 
 with their rule of matrimony, better than we do with 
 our rule of celibacy ; and I deny it on no private grounds, 
 or secret means of information, or knowledge of past 
 years. I have lived in one place all my days, and know 
 very few married clergymen, and those of such excellence 
 and consistency of life, that I should feel it to be as 
 absurd to suspect them of any the slightest impropriety in 
 their conduct, as to suspect the Catholic priests with whom 
 I am well acquainted ; and this is saying a great deal. 
 When I speak of a married ministry, I speak of it, not from 
 any knowledge I possess, more than another ; but I must 
 avow that the public prints and the conversation of the 
 world, by many shocking instances, which of course are 
 only specimens of many others, heavier or lighter, which 
 do not come before the world, bring home to me the fact, 
 that a Protestant rector or a dissenting preacher is not 
 necessarily kept from the sins I am speaking of, because 
 he happens to be married : and when he offends, whether 
 in a grave way or less seriously, still in all cases he has 
 by matrimony but exchanged a bad sin for a worse, and 
 has become an adulterer instead of being a seducer. 
 Matrimony only does this for him, that his purity is less 
 protected and less suspected. I am very sceptical then 
 of the perfect correctness of Protestant ministers, whe- 
 ther in the Establishment or in Dissent. I repeat, I 
 know perfectly well, that there are a great number of 
 high-minded men among the Anglican clergy who would 
 as lief think of murder, as of trespassing by the faintest 
 act of indecorum upon the reverence which is due from 
 them to others; nor am I denying, what, though of 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 129 
 
 course I cannot deny it on any knowledge of mine, yet I ' 
 wish to deny with all my heart, that the majority of 
 Wesleyan and dissenting ministers lead lives beyond all . 
 reproach ; but still, allowing all this, the terrible in- 
 stances of human frailty, of which one reads and hears 
 in Protestant bodies, are quite enough to show that the 
 married state is no sort of warrant for moral correctness, 
 no preventive, whether of scandalous offences, or much 
 less of minor forms of the same general sin. Purity is 
 not a virtue which comes as a matter of course to the 
 married any more than to the single, though of course 
 there is great difference between man and man ; and 
 though it is impossible to bring the matter fairly to an 
 issue, yet for that very reason I have as much a right to 
 my opinion as another to his, when I state my deliberate 
 conviction that there are, to say the least, as many 
 offences against the marriage vow among Protestant 
 ministers, as there are against the vow of celibacy among 
 Catholic Priests. I may go very much further than this 
 in my own view of the matter, and think, as I do, that the 
 Priest's vow is generally the occasion of virtues which a 
 married clergy does not contemplate even in idea ; but I 
 am on the defensive, and only insist on so much as is 
 necessary for my purpose. 
 
 But if matrimony does not prevent cases of immorality 
 among Protestant ministers, it is not celibacy which 
 causes them among Catholic Priests. It is not what 
 the Catholic Church imposes, but what human nature 
 prompts, which leads any portion of her ecclesiastics into 
 sin. Human nature will break out, like some wild and 
 raging element, under any system ; it bursts out under 
 the Protestant system ; it bursts out under the Catholic ; 
 passion will carry away the married clergyman as well as 
 
130 TRUE TESTIMOKY UNESUAL 
 
 the unmarried Priest. On the other hand, there are 
 numbers to whom there would be, not greater, but less, 
 trial in the vow of cehbacy, than in the vow of marriage '. 
 Till, then, you can prove that celibacy causes what 
 matrimony certainly does not prevent, you do nothing at 
 all. This is the language of common sense. It is the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, not celibacy which is the 
 ruin of those who fall. Slothful priests ! why, where was 
 any religion whatever, established and endowed, in which 
 Bishops, Canons, and wealthy rectors were not exposed 
 to the temptation of pride and sensuality ? The wealth 
 is in fault, not the rules of the Church. Preachers have 
 denounced the evil and ecclesiastical authorities have 
 repressed it, far more vigorously within the Catholic pale, 
 than in the English Establishment, or the Wesleyan 
 connexion. Covetous priests ! shame on them ! but has 
 covetousness been more rife in Cardinals or Abbots, than 
 in the Protestant Bench, English or Irish I Party spirit, 
 and political faction ! has not party, religious and poli- 
 tical, burnt as fiercely in High-church Rectors and 
 radical preachers, as in Catholic ecclesiastics ? And so 
 again, to take an extreme case, — be there infidels among 
 the multitudes of the Catholic clergy : yet among the An- 
 ghean are there really none, are there few, who disbelieve 
 their own Baptismal service, repudiate their own Abso- 
 lution of the sick, and condemn the very form of words 
 under which they themselves were ordained ? Again, are 
 there not numbers who doubt about every part of their 
 system, about their Church, its authority, its truth, its 
 articles, its creeds ; deny its Protestantism, yet without 
 being sure of its Catholicity, and therefore never dare 
 
 ' As so many persona prefer Tetotalism to the Temperance prin- 
 ciple. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 131 
 
 commit themselves to a plain assertion, as not knowing 
 whither it will carry them ? Once more, are there not 
 in the Establishment those, who hold that all systems of 
 doctrine whatever are founded in a mistake, and who 
 deny or are fast denying that there is any revealed truth 
 in the world at all 2 Yet none of these parties, what- 
 ever they doubt, or deny, or disbelieve, see their way 
 to leave the position in which they find themselves at 
 present, or to sacrifice their wealth or credit to their 
 opinions. Why then do you throw in my teeth that > 
 Wolsey was proud, or Ximenes cruel, or Bonner trim- 
 ming, or this Abbot sensual, or that convent in disorder ; 
 that this priest should never have been a priest, and that 
 nun was forced into religion by her father, as if there 
 were none of these evils in Protestant England, as if 
 there were no pride in the House of Lords now, no 
 time-serving in the House of Commons, no servility in 
 fashionable preachers, no selfishness in the old, no pro- 
 fligacy in the young, no tyranny or cajolery in match- 
 making, no cruelty in Union workhouses, no immorality 
 in factories ? If grievous sin is found in holy places, the 
 Church cannot hinder it, while man is man : prove that 
 she encourages it, prove that she does not repress it, 
 prove that her action, be it greater or less, is not, as far 
 as it goes, beneficial ; — then and not till then will you 
 have established a point against her. 
 
 For myself, my Brothers of the Oratory, I never 
 should have been surprised, if in the course of the last 
 nine months of persecution, some scandal in this or that 
 part of our English Church, had been brought to light 
 and circulated through the country to our great pre- 
 judice. Not that I speak from any knowledge or sus- 
 picion of my own, but merely judging antecedently and 
 
132 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 on the chance of things. And, had such a case in fact 
 been producible, it would, in the judgment of dispas- 
 sionate minds, have gone for nothing at all, unless there 
 is to be no covetous Judas, no heretical Nicolas, no 
 ambitious Diotrephes, no world-loving Denias in the 
 Church of these latter days. Fraud in a priest, disorder 
 in a convent, would have proved just as much and just as 
 little against Catholicism, as corruption in Parliament, 
 peculation, in the public offices, or bribery at elections 
 tells against the British Constitution. Providentially no 
 such calamity has occurred ; but oh, what would not our 
 enemies have paid for only one real and live sin in holy 
 places to mock us withal ! Oh, light to the eyes and joy 
 to the heart, and music to the ear ! Oh, sweet tidings 
 to writers of pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines ; to 
 preachers and declaimers, who have now a weary while 
 been longing, and panting, and praying for some good 
 fat scandal, one, only just one, well-supported instance 
 of tyranny, or barbarity, or fraud, or immorality, to 
 batten upon and revel in ! What price would have 
 been too much for so dear a fact, as that one of our 
 Bishops or one of o.ur religious houses had been guilty of 
 some covetous aim, or some unworthy manoeuvre ! Their 
 fierce and unblushing effort to fix such charges where 
 they were impossible, shows how many eyes were fas- 
 tened on us all over the country, and how deep and 
 fervent was the aspiration that at least some among us 
 might turn out to be a brute or a villain. To and fro 
 the Spirit of false witness sped. She dropped upon the 
 floor of the Parliament House in the form of a gentle- 
 man of Warkwickshire, and told how a nun had escaped 
 thereabouts from a convent window, which in conse- 
 quence had ever since been crossed with iron bars : but it 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 133 
 
 turned out that the window had been attempted by 
 thieves, and the bars had been put up to protect the 
 Blessed Sacrament from them. Then she flitted to 
 Nottingham, and in the guise of a town newspaper's 
 correspondent, repeated the tale with the concordant 
 witness, as she gave out, of a whole neighbourhood, who 
 had seen the poor captive atop of the wall, and then 
 wandering about the fields like a mad thing: but the 
 pditor in London discovered the untruth, and unsaid in 
 his own paper the slander he had incautiously admitted. 
 Next she forced her way into a Nunnery near London, 
 and she assured the Protestant world that then and 
 there an infant had suddenly appeared among the sister- 
 hood ; but the two newspapers who were the organs of 
 her nialice, had to retract the calumny in open court, 
 and to ask pardon to escape a prosecution. 
 
 Tales, I say, such as these showed the animus of the 
 fabricators : but what, after all, would they have really 
 gained, had their- imputations been ever so true ? Though 
 one bad priest be found here or there, or one convent be 
 in disorder, or there be this or that abuse of spiritual 
 power, or a school of ecclesiastics give birth to a heresy, 
 or a diocese be neglected, nay, though a whole hierarchy 
 be in declension or decay, this would not suffice for the 
 argument of Protestantism. And Protestantism itself 
 plainly confesses it. Yes, tjje Protestant tradition must 
 be fed with facts more wholesale, more stimulating, 
 than any I have enumerated, if it is to keep its hold 
 on the multitude. Isolated instances of crime, or wide- 
 spread tepidity, or imperfections in administration, or 
 antiquated legislation, such imputations are but milk- 
 and-water ingredients in a theme so thrilling as that of 
 
134 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAI. 
 
 Holy Church being a sorceress and the child of per- 
 dition. Facts that are possible, and that sometimes 
 occur, do but irritate, by suggesting suspicions which 
 they are not sufficient to substantiate. Falsehood, that 
 is decent and respectable, is unequal to the occasion. 
 Mosheim and Eobertson, Jortin and White, raise hopes 
 to disappoint them. The popular demand is for the 
 prodigious, the enormous, the abominable, the diabolical, 
 the impossible. It must be shown that all priests are 
 monsters of hypocrisy, that all nunneries are dens of 
 infamy, that all Bishops are the embodied plenitude of 
 savageness and perfidy. We must have a cornucopia of 
 mummery, blasphemy, and licentiousness ; of knives, and 
 ropes, and faggots, and fetters, and pulleys, and racks, if 
 the great Protestant Tradition is to be kept alive in the 
 hearts of the population. The great point in view is to 
 burn into their imagination, by a keen and peremptory 
 process, a sentiment of undying hostility to Catholicism ; 
 and nothing will suffice for this enterprise but imposture, 
 inOts purest derivation, from him whom Scripture em- 
 phatically calls the father of lies, and whose ordinary 
 names, when translated, are the accuser and the slanderer. 
 This I shall prove as well as assert ; and I shall do so 
 in the following way. You know, my Brothers of the 
 Oratory, that from time to time persons come before the 
 Protestant public, with pretqpsions of all others the most 
 favouraTjle for proving its charges against us, as having 
 once belonged to our Communion, and having left it from 
 conviction. If these Protestants would know what the 
 persons really are like whom they are reprobating, if 
 they would determine our internal state, and build their 
 argument on a true foundation, and accommodate their 
 
TO THE PROTKSTANT VIEW. 135 
 
 judgment of us to facts, here is the best of opportunities 
 for their purpose. The single point to ascertain is the 
 trustworthiness of the informants : that being attained, 
 the testimony they give is definitive ; but if it is dis- 
 proved, the evidence is worthless. 
 
 Now I am going to mention to you the names of two 
 persons, utterly unlike each other in all things except in 
 their both coming forward as converts from Catholicism ; 
 both putting on paper their personal experience of the 
 religion they had left ; both addressing themselves espe- 
 cially to the exposure of the rule of celibacy, whether in 
 the priesthood or in convents ; and moreover, both on 
 their first appearance having met with great encourage- 
 ment from Protestants, and obtained an extensive pa- 
 tronage for the statements they respectively put forward. 
 One was a man, the other a woman ; the one a gentleman, 
 a person of very superior education and great abilities, 
 who lived among us, and might be interrogated and 
 cross-examined at any time : the woman, on the other 
 hand, had no education, no character, no principle, and, 
 as the event made manifest, deserved no credit whatever. 
 Whatever the one said was true, as often as he spoke to 
 facts he had witnessed, and was not putting out opinions 
 or generalizing on evidence ; whatever the other said 
 was, or was likely to be, false. Thus the two were con- 
 trasted.: yet the truth spoken against us by the man of 
 character is forgotten, and the falsehood spoken against 
 us by the unworthy woman, lives. If this can be shown, 
 do you need a clearer proof, that falsehood, not truth, is 
 the essence of the Protestant Tradition ? 
 
 The Kev. Joseph Blanco White, who is one of the two 
 persons I speak of, was a man of great talent, various 
 
136 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEaUAL 
 
 erudition, and many most attractive points of character. 
 Twenty-five years ago, when he was about my present 
 age, I became acquainted with him at Oxford, and I 
 lived for some years on terms of familiarity with him. I 
 admired him for the simplicity and openness of his cha- 
 racter, the warmth of his affections, the range of his 
 information, his power of conversation, and an intellect 
 refined, elegant, and accomplished. I loved him from 
 witnessing the constant sufferings, bodily and mental, of 
 which he was the prey, and for his expatriation on ac- 
 count of his religion. At that time, not having the 
 slightest doubt that Catholicism was an error, I found in 
 his relinquishment of great ecclesiastical preferment in 
 his native country for the sake of principle, a claim on 
 my admiration and sympathy. He was certainly most 
 bitter-minded and prejudiced against every thing in and 
 connected with the Catholic Church ; it was nearly the 
 only subject on which he could not brook opposition: 
 but this did not interfere with the confidence I placed in 
 his honour and truth ; for, though he might give ex- 
 pression to a host of opinions in which it was impossible 
 to acquiesce, and was most precipitate and unfair in his 
 inferences and inductions, and might be credulous of 
 facts on the authority of others, yet, as to his personal 
 testimony, viewed as distinct from his judgments and sus- 
 picions, it never for an instant came into my mind to 
 doubt it. He had become an infidel before he left Spain. 
 While at Oxford he was a believer in Christianity : after 
 leaving it he fell into infidelity again ; and he died, I may 
 say, without any fixed belief at all, either in a God or in 
 the souFs immortality. 
 
 About the period of my acquaintance with him, he 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 137 
 
 wrote various works against the Catholic Church, which 
 in a great measure are repetitions of each other, throw- 
 ing the same mass of testimonies, such as they are, into 
 different shapes, according to the occasion. And since 
 his death, many years after, his Life has been published, 
 repeating what is substantially the same evidence. 
 Among these publications one was written for the lower 
 classes ; it was entitled, " The Poor Man's Preservative 
 against Popery;" and, if I mistake not, was put upon 
 the Catalogue *of Books and Tracts of the great Church 
 of England Society, the Society for Promoting Chris- 
 tian Knowledge. No work could be sent into the world 
 with greater advantages ; published under the patronage 
 of all the dignitaries of the Establishment, put into the 
 hands of the whole body of the Clergy for distribution, 
 at a low price, written in an animated style, addressed 
 to the traditionary hatred of the Catholic Church exist- 
 ing among us, which is an introduction to any book, 
 whatever its intrinsic value ; and laden with a freight of 
 accusations against her, which, as far as their matter 
 was concerned, and the writer's testimony extended, 
 were true as well as grave. 
 
 When I began collecting materials for this Lecture, 
 not being able to lay my hand upon the publication at 
 home, I sent for a copy to the Christian Knowledge 
 dep6t in this town, and, to my surprise, I was told it was 
 no longer in print. I repeated the application to the 
 Society's office in London, and received the same reply. 
 Now certainly there are reasons why a Society connected 
 with the National Church should wish to withdraw the 
 work of a writer, who ended, not only with hating the 
 Papacy, but with despising the Establishment ; yet, 
 considering his facts were so trustworthy, and his evi- 
 
]S8 TKUE TESTIMONY UNEaUAL 
 
 dence so important, the Society hardly would have with- 
 drawn it, if there had been any good reason for con- 
 tinuing it in print. Such a reason certainly would have 
 been its popularity ; I cannot conceive how persons, with 
 the strong feelings against the Catholic religion enter- 
 tained by the members of that Society, having given 
 their solemn approbation, not only to the principle of a 
 certain attack upon it, but to the attack itself; and 
 being confident that the facts related are true, could 
 allow themselves in conscience to withdraw it, on account 
 of subsequent religious changes in the writer, supposing 
 it actually to enjoy a sufficient popularity, and to be 
 doing good service against Catholicism ; and therefore I 
 conclude, since it was withdrawn, that, in spite of the 
 forced circulation which the Society gave it, it had not 
 made any great impression on the mass of men, or even 
 interested the Established Clergy in its favour. But 
 any how, it never was known, in matter of fact, as far as 
 I can make out, to the population at large, for instance, 
 to the masses of a town such as this, whatever considera- 
 tion it may have enjoyed in the circles of the Establish- 
 ment. Here then is a solemn testimony delivered against 
 Catholics, of which the basis of facts is true, which never- 
 theless has no popularity to show, is sustained at first by 
 a forced sale, and then is abandoned by its very patrons : 
 and now let us consider the character of the facts of 
 which it consists. 
 
 They are such as the writer himself was very far from 
 thinking a hght imputation on the Church he had aban- 
 doned. He considered he had inflicted on Catholicism a 
 most formidable blow, in giving his simple evidence 
 against it ; and it must be allowed that some of his facts 
 are of a very grave nature. He was the partner and the 
 
TO THE PllOTESTANT VIEW. 139 
 
 witness of a most melancholy phenomenon. About a 
 hundred and fifty years ago a school of infidehty arose in 
 Protestant England ; the infamous Voltaire came over 
 here from France, and on his return took back with him 
 its arguments, and propagated them among his own 
 countrymen. The evil spread ; at length it attacked the 
 French Catholic Clergy, and during the last century 
 there was a portion of them, I do not say a large por- 
 tion, but an influential, who fraternised with the infidel, 
 still holding their places and preferments in the Church. 
 At the end of the century, about the time of the first 
 sanguinary French Revolution, the pestilence spread into 
 Spain ; a knot of the Spanish Clergy became infidels, 
 and, as a consequence, abandoned themselves to a licen- 
 tious life. Blanco White was one of these, and, amid 
 the political troubles in his country during the first years 
 of this century, he managed to escape to England, where 
 he died in the year 1841. 
 
 Now there was one circumstance which gave a par- 
 ticularly shocking character to the infidelity of these 
 Spanish ecclesiastics, while it made it more intense. 
 In France the infidel party was not afraid to profess 
 itself infidel ; and such members of the clerical body as 
 were abandoned enough to join it, did so openly ; fre- 
 quented its brilliant meetings, and hved shamelessly, like 
 men of fashion and votaries of sin. It was otherwise in 
 Spain ; the people would not have borne this ; pubhc 
 opinion was all on the side of the Catholic religion ; such 
 as doubted or disbelieved were obhged to keep it to 
 themselves, and thus, if they were ecclesiastics, to become 
 the most awful of hypocrites. There can be hypocrites 
 in the Church, as there may be hypocrites in any reli- 
 gion ; but here you see what a hypocrite is in the Catho- 
 
 N 2 
 
140 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAI, 
 
 lie Church, as seen in fact ; not a person who takes up a 
 religious profession, in order to gratify some bad end, 
 but, for the most part, one who has learned to disbelieve 
 what he professes, after he has begun to profess it^ 
 However, such a person is, on any explanation, an object 
 of horror; and in Spain it was increased by the im- 
 patience, irritation, and fever of mind, which the con- 
 straint they lay under occasioned to these unhappy men. 
 Their feelings, shut up within their breasts, became fierce 
 and sullen ; oppressed by the weight of the popular sen- 
 timent, they turned round in revenge upon its object, 
 and they hated Catholicism the more, because their 
 countrymen were Catholics'. They became a sort of 
 secret society, spoke to each other only in secret places, 
 held intercourse by signs, and plunged into licentious- 
 ness, even as a relief to the miserable conflicts which 
 raged within them. 
 
 Earth could not show, imagination could not picture, 
 Satan could not create, a more horrible spectacle. You 
 will say, how was it possible ? how could men, who had, 
 I will not merely say, given themselves to God, but who 
 had tasted the joys and the rewards of such devotion, 
 how could they have the heart thus to change ? Why, 
 the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, men who 
 have sold themselves to the world, and have gained their 
 full price from it, even they look back with tears to 
 
 ^ E.g. Mr. Blanco White says of one of the Spanish Ecclesiastics 
 whnm he introduces, " He was . . . one of those, who, having originally 
 taken their posts in the foremost ranks of asceticisna, with the most sincere 
 desire of improvement for himself and others, are afterwards involved in 
 guilt by strong temptation, and reduced to secret moral degradation, by 
 want of courage to throw off the mask of sanctity.'' Life, vol. i. p. 121. 
 
 ' I think I have heard him say that he had lost the knowledge of the 
 Spanish tongue, not having the heart to keep it up. 
 
TO THE PllOTESTANT VIEW. 141 
 
 those days of innocence and peace, which once were 
 theirs, and which are irrecoverably gone. Napoleon said 
 that the day of his first communion was the happiest 
 day of his hfe. Such men actually part company with 
 the very presence of religion, go forward their own way, 
 and leave it in the distance. Their regret is directed to 
 what, not merely is past, but is away. But these priests 
 were in the very bosom of the Church ; they served her 
 altars, they were in the centre of her blessings; how 
 could they forget Jerusalem who dwelt within her ? how 
 could they be so thankless towards her sweetness and 
 her brightness, and so cruel towards themselves? how 
 could one who had realized that the Strong and Mighty, 
 and the Gracious, was present on the Altar, who had 
 worshipped there that Saviour's tender Heart, and re- 
 joiced in the assurance of His love, how could he go on 
 year after year (horrible !), performing the same rites, 
 holding his Lord in his hands, dispensing Him to His 
 people, yet thinking it all an idle empty show, a vain 
 superstition, a detestable idolatry, a blasphemous fraud, 
 and cursing the while the necessity which compelled his 
 taking part in it ? Why, in the case of one, who ever 
 had known the power of religion, it is incomprehensible ; 
 but, as regards the melancholy instance we are contem- 
 plating, it would really seem, if you may take his own 
 recollection of his early self in evidence of the fact, that 
 he never had discovered what religion was. Most chil- 
 dren are open to religious feelings. Catholic children of 
 course more than others ; some, indeed, might complain, 
 that, as they advance to boyhood, religion becomes irk- 
 some and wearisome to them, but I doubt whether this 
 is true of Catholic youth, till they begin to sin. True, 
 alas, it is, that the nearer and more urgent excitement 
 
142 TEUE TESTIMONY 0NEa0AI- 
 
 of guilty thoughts, does render the satisfactions and con- 
 solations of Paradise insipid and uninviting; but even 
 then their reason tells them that the fault is with 
 themselves, not with religion ; and that after all heaven 
 is not only better, but pleasanter, sweeter, more glorious, 
 more satisfying than any thing on earth. Yet, from some 
 strange, mysterious cause, this common law was not ful- 
 filled in this hapless Spanish boy; he never found comfort 
 in religion, not in childhood, more than in manhood, or 
 in old age. In his very first years, as in his last, it was a 
 yoke and nothing more ; a task without a recompense. 
 
 Thus he tells us, he " entertains a most painful recol- 
 lection" of the " perpetual round of devotional practices" 
 in which he was compelled to live. He " absolutely 
 dreaded the approach of Sunday. Early on the morning 
 of that formidable day, when he was only eight years old, 
 he was made to go with his father to the Dominican con- 
 vent *," always for mass, and every other week for confes- 
 sion. He did not get his breakfast for two hours, then 
 he had to stand or kneel in the Cathedral, I suppose at 
 High Mass, for two hours longer. Well, the second two 
 hours probably was, as he says, a considerable trial for 
 him. Again, from three to five he was in another church, 
 I suppose for Vespers and Benediction. Then his father 
 and he took a walk, and in the evening his father visited 
 the sick in a hospital, and took his son with him. Per- 
 haps his father's treatment of him, if we are to trust his 
 recollection and impression of it, might be injudicious ; 
 he was lively, curious, and clever, and his father, who 
 was a truly good, pious man, probably did not recollect 
 that the habits of the old are not suitable in all respects to 
 children. Mr. Blanco White complains, moreover, that he 
 
 ' P. 11. 
 
TO THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 143 
 
 had no companions to play with, and no books to read ; 
 still, it is very strange indeed, that he never took pleasure 
 in Mass and Benediction ; he calls his Sunday employ- 
 ments a "cruel discipline";" he describes his hearing 
 Mass as "looking on while the priest went through it*;" 
 speaking of a season of recreation granted to him, he 
 mentions his religious duties as the drawbacks " on the 
 accession of daily pleasures " he had obtained. However, 
 " mass, though a nuisance, was over in half an hour ; 
 confession, a "more serious annoyance, was only a weekly 
 task';" and, as if to prove, what I observed above, that 
 no sinful excitement had at this time thrown religion 
 into the shade, he adds, " my life was too happy in inno- 
 cent amusement, to be exposed to any thing that might 
 be the subject of painful accusation." No : it was some 
 radical defect of mind. In like manner, saying office was 
 to him never any thing else than a " most burdensome 
 practice'." "Another devotional task, scarcely less 
 burdensome," was, what, my Brothers, do you think? 
 " Mental Prayer," or " Meditation ;" of which he gives 
 a detailed and true description. He adds, " soon after I 
 was ordained a priest. ... I myself was several times 
 the leader of this mystical farce'." In his boyhood and 
 youth he had to read half an hour and to meditate on 
 his knees another half; this, for such a boy, might be 
 excessive ; but hear how he comments upon it : " To feel 
 indignant, at this distance of time, may be absurd ; but 
 it is with difficulty that I can check myself when I re- 
 member what I have suffered in the cause of religion. 
 Alas ! my sufferings from that source are still more bitter 
 in my old age \" 
 
 5 P. 12. f' P. 26. ' P. 32. * P. 27. » P. 29. 
 
 ' P. 29. He goes on to say that he prefers to the vague word 
 
144 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 That a person, then, who never knew what OathoHcism 
 had to give, should abandon it, does not seem very sur- 
 prising ; the only wonder is how he ever came to be a 
 priest . If we take his own account of himself, it is 
 evident he had no vocation at all; he explains the matter, 
 however, very simply, as far as his own share in it is con- 
 cerned, by telling us, that he chose the ecclesiastical state 
 in order to avoid what he felt to be more irksome, a 
 counting-house. " I had proposed to be sent to the 
 navy, because at that time the Spanish midshipmen re- 
 ceived a scientific education. I could not indeed endure 
 the idea of being doomed to a life of ignorance. This 
 was easily perceived and (probably with the approbation 
 of the divines consulted on this subject) no alternative 
 was left me. I was told I must return to the odious 
 counting-house, from which I had taken refuge in the 
 Church. I yielded, and in yielding, mistook the happi- 
 ness of drying up my mother's tears, for a reviving taste 
 for the clerical profession ^." 
 
 No wonder, under such circumstances, that Mr. Blanco 
 White became an unbeliever ; no wonder that his friends 
 and associates became unbelievers too, if their history 
 resembled his. It was the case of active, inquisitive 
 minds, unfurnished with that clear view of divine things 
 which divine grace imparts, and prayer obtains. The 
 only question which concerns us here is, Were there many 
 such ecclesiastics in the Spanish Church ? If so, it cer- 
 tainly is a very grave fact ; if not so, it is most melancholy 
 certainly, but not an argument, as I can see, against Catho- 
 licism, for there are bad men in every place and every 
 
 " religion," the use of "true Christianity,'' but this he gave up at 
 last. 
 ' P. 52. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 14o 
 
 system. Now it is just here that his testimony fails ; 
 there is nothing that I can find in his works to prove that 
 the dreadful disease which he describes had spread even so 
 widely as in France. In the first place, he only witnesses 
 of a small part of Spain. He seems to have only been in 
 three Spanish cities in his hfe: Seville, Madrid, and 
 Cadiz ' ; and of these, while Seville is the only one of 
 which he had a right to speak, the metropolis and a sea- 
 port are just two of the places, where, if there was laxity, 
 you would eji^ect it to be found. Again, Spain is not, 
 like England, the seat of one people, an open country, 
 with easy communication from sea to sea. On the con- 
 trary, you have populations so different, that you may call 
 them foreign to each other, separated, moreover, not only 
 morally, but by the mountain barriers which intersect the 
 country in every direction : one part does not know 
 another, one part is not like another, and therefore Mr. 
 Blanco White's evidence is only good as far as it extends; 
 you cannot argue the state of the northern dioceses from 
 a southern ; of Valentia, by what you are told of Seville. 
 Inspect then his narrative itself, and see what it results 
 in. It amounts to this — that in the first years of this 
 century, there were a few priests at Seville who had 
 studied Jansenistic theology, and largely imported French 
 philosophy, and that the.y ended in becoming infidels, and 
 some of them unblushing hypocrites. I cannot find 
 mention of any except at Seville, and how many there ! 
 You may count them. First, " I became acquainted 
 with a member of the upper clergy, a man of great read- 
 ing, and secretly a most decided disbeliever in all religion." 
 Secondly, " Through him I was introduced to another 
 
 ' He ran down to Salamanca from Madrid, apparently .for a day or 
 two. 
 
146 TEUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 dignitary, a man much older than either of us, who had 
 for many years held an office of great influence in the 
 diocese, but who now lived in a very retired way. He 
 was also a violent Antichristian, as I subsequently found *." 
 Thirdly, an intimate friend of his own, who was promoted 
 from Seville to a canonry of Cordova, and who had been 
 chaplain to the Archbishop of Seville \ Fourthly, him- 
 self. I am not able to number more, as given on his 
 own personal knowledge^, though, rightly or wrongly, 
 he thought many others existed'; but this is ever the 
 case with men who do wrong ; they quiet the voice 
 within them by the imagination that all others are 
 
 " P. 114. 
 
 5 P. 17. I consider this to be the person mentioned in the " Evi- 
 dences," p. 132, whom accordingly I have not set down as a separate 
 instance. 
 
 " On his visit to Salamanca, he saw Melendez, a Deist (p. 128), who 
 had been one of the judges of the Supreme Court at Madrid ; a poet, 
 too ; whether an ecclesiastic does not appear. 
 
 ' Life, p. 117. "Many other members of the clergy." If he had 
 definite knowledge of others, or more than suspicion, I cannot understand 
 his not giving us the numbers, or the rank, or the dioceses, in short, 
 something categorical, instead of an indirect allusion. The question then 
 simply is, what his suspicions are worth. " Among my numerous ac- 
 quaintance in the Spanish clergy, I have never met with any one, pos- 
 sessed of bold talents, who has not, sooner or later, changed from the most 
 sincere piety to a state of unbelief." Doblado's Letters, v. I observe, 
 1. He had experience only of one diocese. 2. He evidently does not 
 speak of what he knew, when he says, " who lias not, sooner or later.'' 
 3. Observe, " possessed of bold talents." In like manner, he would, I 
 think, have said, that when he was at Oxford, every one of bold talents 
 agreed with Archbishop Whately, then resident in the University ; but 
 every one knows how small that number was. I do not notice a passage 
 in the " Poor Man's Preservative," (Dial. i. pp. 32, 33,) for he is speaking 
 of laity, and what he says of the clergy is very vague. After all, though 
 I have a right to ask for proof, it is not necessary for my argument to 
 deny, that the infidel part might have been as large in Spain as in France. 
 
TO TIIK PROTESTANT VIEW. 147 
 
 pretty much what they are themselves. I do not trust 
 his inferences. 
 
 And so again, as he fell into immoral practices himself, 
 so did he impute the same to the mass of the Spanish 
 clergy, whom he considered as " falling and rising, strug- 
 gling and falling again '," in a continual course ; but here 
 too he could not speak of many on his personal knowledge. 
 It was not to be supposed that a priest, who was both dis- 
 believing what he professed, and was breaking what he 
 had vowed, should possess friends very different from him- 
 self. He formed the eighth of a group of ecclesiastics, 
 whom he much admired : one of these, as we have seen, 
 was an infidel ; but apparently only one ; none of them 
 however were blameless in their moral conduct. Besides 
 these friends of his, he mentions a Priest of a religious 
 Congregation, who had been his ov?n Confessor, in which 
 " capacity he had no fault to find with him, nor could he 
 discover the least indication of his not acting up to the 
 principles he professed"," who however, as he was told by 
 
 ' Evid. p. 132. Again, he says, " hundreds migM be found" who live 
 " a life of settled systematic vice." p. 135. How very vague is " hun- 
 dreds !" and " hundreds" out of 60,000 seculars, and 125,000 ecclesi- 
 astics in all, as I shall mention in the text. Ibid. p. 133. He speaks 
 vaguely of the " crowd" of priests ; and he says the best of them, and 
 he knew the best from confession, " mingled vice and superstition, 
 grossness of feeling and pride of office, in their character." I suspect 
 that coarseness with him was one great evidence of vice ; he despised 
 uneducated persons. " I am surprised," he says of Tavora, Bishop of 
 the Canary Islands (p. 129), " that a man of his taste and information 
 accepted the Bishopric of a semi-barbarous portion of the Spanish domi- 
 nions :" though he attributes it " to his desire of improving the moral 
 and intellectual state of those islands." 
 
 " This conscientiousness in his duty is remarkable in this priest, even 
 if his account of him is to be believed (for it stands on different grounds 
 from those cases which he knem). Of himself, too, he says, his resolution 
 
148 TRUE TESTIMONY DNEftDAL 
 
 ■ 
 
 a young atheist merchant who knew the Priest's " secret 
 courses" well, and, "as he had afterwards sufficient ground 
 to be convinced," if such a vague statement is a sufficient 
 testimony to the fact, " sinned and did penance by rota- 
 tion \" Another too is mentioned laden with similar 
 guilt, with whom he had been intimate, but whom he de- 
 scribes as deficient in mere natural principle ; this man 
 got involved in money matters and died of vexation ^ 
 
 Ten, or, if it were, twenty bad ecclesiastics form a most 
 melancholy catalogue certainly ; Mr. Blanco White says, 
 "hundreds might be found," though not on his personal 
 knowledge ; but then you must recollect first, that it was a 
 time apparently of great religious declension, when Spain 
 had imitated France, and a judgment vvas on the point of 
 
 was to do his duty to his charge, though an unbeliever. " I will not put 
 myself forward in the Church. I will not affect zeal : whatever trust is 
 put in me, as a confessor, I will conscientiously prove myself worthy of. 
 I will urge people to observe every moral duty. I will give them the 
 best advice in their difficulties, and comfort them in their distress. Such 
 were the resolutions I made, and which, indeed, I always (sie) kept, in 
 regard to the confidence reposed in my priestly office. In that respect, 
 I may positively and confidently assert, that I never availed myself of 
 the privileges of my priesthood for any thing immoral." Life, vol. i. 
 p. 112. I think ray memory cannot play me false in saying, that, in 
 answer to a question once put to him, he declared emphatically, that the 
 bad priests never made use of the confessional for immoral purposes : 
 he said, " They daren't. It would raise the people." Moreover, as time 
 went on, he himself mthdrew altogether from clerical duty. He speaks of 
 another of the party, who having "for many years held an office of great 
 influence in the diocese, now lived in a very retired may.'' p. 114. 
 
 ' Life, p. 121. 
 
 * Life, p. 104. He speaks (Evidences, p. 135) of two priests who 
 died of love. " Love, long resisted, seized them, at length, like madness. 
 Two I knew who died insane." Even granting it, I suppose it was love 
 of particular objects. May not Protestants fall in love with persons who 
 will not have them, or are married ? Dying for love is certainly an idea 
 quite known m England, still more so perhaps in the South. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 149 
 
 coming down upon the country. The Jesuits, the flower 
 of the priesthood, whom, as he says himself, " their bit- 
 terest enemies have never ventured to charge with moral 
 irregularities," had been barbarously expelled by the 
 government. The Congregation of St. Philip Neri took 
 their place, but though they did a great deal, had not 
 strength, single-handed, to resist the flood of corruption. 
 Moreover, you must consider the number of clergy in a 
 given place or neighbourhood, before you form a judgment 
 upon their slate as a whole. The whole number of clergy 
 of Spain at this time amounted to 1 25,000 persons : of these 
 the seculans were as many as 60,000. In the Cathedral of 
 Seville alone 500 masses were said daily ; and the city was 
 divided into twenty-six parishes, and contained besides, be- 
 tween forty and fifty ecclesiastical establishments in ad- 
 dition to the monasteries'. The real question simply is, 
 whether the proportion of bad priests at that time in the 
 city and arch-diocese, was greater than the proportion of 
 bad married clergy in England in the reign, we will say, 
 of George the Second. It is to be remembered too that 
 Catholic priests know each other far more intimately than 
 is possible in the case of a married clergy; in a large city 
 bad priests herd together : married clergymen in respect- 
 able station, sin each by himself, and no one of them 
 can turn king's-evidence against the rest. 
 
 This being Mr. Blanco White's evidence about the 
 secular priests, about monks and friars he frankly tells us 
 he knows next to nothing, though he thinks them "gross 
 and vulgar." But here, as in the case of the secular clergy, 
 he suspects and believes much evil, which he does not 
 know, and which those only will receive who have implicit 
 reliance on his judgment. As to nuns, he speaks of those 
 
 ' Laborde, vol. ii. 
 
150 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEttUAL 
 
 of them whom he knew, as for the most part ladies of high 
 character and unimpeachable purity* ; though some were 
 otherwise, at least to some extent. He seems to allow that 
 reluctant nuns were comparatively few ; though he says 
 
 * He lias a most intense notion that they are " prisoners ;" but that 
 does not hinder his admitting that they are willing prisoners. He thinks 
 the majority live in" a daWmoMiOBy." Life, p. 67. It is not wonderful 
 that he should take the formal Parliamentary view of nuns, considering 
 that from his youth, as I have said, he, though a Catholic, had appa- 
 rently as little sense of the Real Presence {the true and sufficient Paraclete 
 of a Nunnery) as the House of Commons. The following expressions 
 sketch his idea of a nunnery ; let it be observed, mce (except as an acci- 
 dent) is absent : — " The minute and anxious narrative* of a nervom 
 recluse." p. 66. " A sensible woman confined for life." Ibid. " A soul 
 troubled with all the fears of a morbid conscience." p. 6?. " The 
 word Nunnery is a byword for weakness of intellect, fretfulness, childish- 
 ness. In short, nun is the superlative of old woman." p. 69. " Some of 
 them were women of superior good sense, and models of that fortitude 
 which," &c. Ibid. " One of those excellent persons." Ibid. The greater 
 part of the nuns whom I have known, were beings of a much higher de- 
 scription, femcdes whose purity owed nothing to the strong gates and high 
 walls of the cloister." Evid. p. 135. " Some there are, I confess, among 
 the nuns, who never seem to long for freedom ; but the happiness boasted 
 of in convents is generally the effect of an honowrahle pride of purpose, 
 supported by a sense of utter hopelessness." Ibid. p. 136. " Suppose but 
 one nun in ten thousand wished vehemently for that liberty." p. 137. 
 " The reluctant nuns, you say, are few ; — vain, unfeeling sophistry." p. 139. 
 " The most sensitive, innocent, and ardent minds." Ibid. p. 141. " Crime 
 makes its way into," (observe, not, is congenial to) " those recesses." Ibid. 
 p. 135. " Itis a notorious fact, that the nunneries in Estremadura and Por- 
 tugal " {not, that is, in Seville and Andalusia) " are frequently infected with 
 vice of the grossest kind." Ibid. p. 135. " Souls more polluted than those of 
 some never fell within my observation, &c." Life, vol. i. p. 70. Observe, 
 " souls," to which he limits the sin, and which he puts in italics, and 
 " some." When it comes to the soul, the evidence is very vague ; and 
 this, out of 500, in Seville alone ! Such, on the whole, is his evidence 
 against convents : how little of fact, how much of suspicion, contempt, 
 and hatred ! how much, again, of involuntary admission in favour of 
 their religious condition ! 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 151 
 
 that many were tormented by scruples, and all would 
 have been much happier had they married. But this is 
 his opinion, as distinct from his testimony ; and in like 
 manner he has other strong opinions on the miseries in- 
 flicted on men and women by celibacy" ; but I have no 
 reliance on his judgment, nor had any one, I think, who 
 knew him; he had so much prejudice, and so little patience; 
 while I have the fullest confidence in his word, when he 
 witnesses to facts, and facts which he knew. 
 
 Such is this remarkable evidence, remarkable in the 
 witness, and in the things witnessed, remarkable as coming 
 from a person, who had special means of knowing a Ca- 
 tholic country, and whose honour you may depend upon ; 
 unlike such men as Ciocci and A chilli, and others, who also 
 have left the Church and borne witness against her, whom 
 no sensible man credits. Here is a man you can trust ; and 
 you see how little he has to say to the purpose of Protest- 
 antism after all. He makes the most indeed of his little, 
 but he gives us the means of judging for ourselves. Here 
 is no conspiracy of evil, no deep-laid treachery, no dis- 
 guised agents prowling about, no horrible oaths, no secret 
 passages, trapdoors, dungeons, axes, racks, and thumb- 
 screws ; no blood and fire, no screams of despair, no wail- 
 ing of children, no spectres born of feverish guilt and 
 flitting before the mental eye. Here is little more than what 
 happens every day in England ; for I suppose that here in 
 
 ' The simple question is, whether more nuns are eaten up with scru- 
 ples — more are restless and discontented — more are old women or old 
 maids — more sin grossly, than unmarried women in a Protestant country. 
 Here, as before, I am taking the worst side of things ; and nothing of 
 all this, be it observed, disproves, (1) the religiousness of the great ma- 
 jority ; (2) the angelic saintliness of many ; (3) the excellence and utility 
 of the institution itself, after all drawbacks ; which are the points a 
 Catholic maintains. 
 
152 TKUE TESTIMONY UNKQUAL 
 
 England there are secret unbelievers, and men who are 
 fair and smooth, but inwardly corrupt, and many a single 
 female wasted by weariness and sadness, and many a mar- 
 ried woman cursing the day she ever took her vow ; for 
 these things must be, though they ought not to be, while 
 the nature of man is the same. And moreover, as I have 
 said, the popular voice seems to bear me out in the view 
 I am taking, for this testimony, given under such favour- 
 able circumstances against the Church, has been let drop 
 out of print ; for it was after all tame ; it did not do its 
 work ; it did not go far enough ; it was not equal to the de- 
 mand ; it was not in keeping with the great Protestant 
 Tradition. 
 
 No, it must have something huge, enormous, prodigi- 
 ous, because the people love story books, and do not like 
 dry matter of fact. How dull is history, or biography, 
 or controversy, compared with a good romance, the Lives 
 of highwaymen, a collection of ghost stories, a melo- 
 drama, a wild-beast-show, or an execution ! What would 
 a Sunday newspaper be without trials, accidents, and 
 offences ? Therefore the poor Catholic is dressed up like 
 a scarecrow to gratify on a large scale the passions of 
 curiosity, fright, and hatred. Something pr other we 
 must fear, we must loathe, we must suspect, even if it be 
 to turn away our minds from our own inward miseries. 
 Hence it is, if a stranger comes to a small town, that he 
 furnishes so inexhaustible a supply of gossip to his neigh- 
 bours, about who he is, what he was, whom he knows, 
 why he comes, and when he will go. If a house is empty 
 for a while, it is sure to be haunted. When learning 
 began to revive, your student was the object of curious 
 horror ; and Dr. Faustus, the printer and, as the nurserj; 
 rhyme goes, schoolmaster, was made a magician, and is 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 153 
 
 still drawn as such in poems and romances. When then 
 a Catholic Church is opened in a place, or a monastic 
 body takes up its abode there, its novelty and strangeness 
 are a call for fiction on those who have a talent for 
 invention ; and the world would be seriously disappointed, 
 if all manner of superstition were not detected in the 
 Church's rites, and all manner of wickedness in her 
 priests and nuns. 
 
 The popular appetite does not clamour long in vain. 
 It asks, and it is answered. Look at that poor degraded 
 creature, strolling about from village to village, from 
 settlement to farmhouse, among a primitive and simple 
 population. She has received an injury in her head, 
 when young ; and this has taken away, in part, her re- 
 sponsibility, while it has filled her brain with wild ideas, 
 and given it a morbid creative power. Ere she is grown 
 up she leaves her home, and flits here and there, the 
 prey of any one who meets with her. Catholics are all 
 round about her ; as a child she has been in a Catholic 
 school, and perhaps she has from time to time wandered 
 into Catholic Churches. She enters, she peers about; 
 still and demure, yet with wild curious eyes, and her own 
 wanton thoughts. She sees, at first glance, the sanctity 
 and gravity of the ceremonial: she is struck with the 
 appearance of modesty whether in the sacred ministers 
 or in the sisters ; but her evil heart instantly suggests 
 that what shows so well is nothing but a show, and that 
 close under the surface lies corruption. She contem- 
 plates the whole scene, she cannot forget it; but she 
 asks herself, what if'ii be but a solemn mockery cloaking 
 bad deeds ? The words, the actions, so calm, so gentle, 
 the words of peace, the sacramental actions, she carries 
 them off with an accurate memory; those verses and 
 
 o 
 
154 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEftUAL 
 
 responses, those sweet voices, those blessings, and cross- 
 ings, and sprinklings, and genuflections. But what if 
 they all be a cloak ? And when the priest went out, or 
 when he spoke to any one, what is it all about ? And 
 when he was in his confessional, and first one, and then 
 another came to him, what could they be saying ? Ah, 
 what indeed ! what if it all be but a cloak for sin I 
 There is the point. What if it be but a jest ? the plea- 
 sant mischief ! the stirring, merry fancy ! to think that 
 men can look so grave yet love sin, that women too, who 
 pretend so much, need not be better than she is herself ; 
 that that meek face, or those holy hands belong to a 
 smooth hypocrite, who acts the angel, and lives the 
 devil ! She looks' closer and closer, measuring the limbs, 
 scanning the gestures, and drinking, in the words of 
 those who unconsciously go about their duties in her 
 presence ; and imputing meanings to the most harmless 
 and indifferent actions. It really is as she suspected, 
 and the truth breaks upon her more and more. Her 
 impure imagination acts upon her bodily vision, and she 
 begins to see the image of her own suspicions in the 
 objects she is gazing on. A sort of mirage spreads 
 through the sacred building, or religious house, and 
 horrors of all kind float across her brain. She goes 
 away, but they pursue her ; — what may not have taken 
 place amid those holy rites or within those consecrated 
 walls 2 The germ of a romance is already fermenting in 
 her brain, and day after day it becomes more developed 
 in its parts, and more consistent in its form. 
 
 Poor sinful being ! She finds herself in a Peni- 
 tentiary ; no, sure, it is a religious house ; so she will 
 consider it ; every thing she sees there speaks to her of 
 her feverish dream ; the penitents become nuns ; the 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 155 
 
 very rooms, windows, passages, and stairs, she recognizes 
 them as conventual, the very convent which her fancy 
 has been framing. Things utterly separate from each 
 other are confused together in her bewildered mind ; 
 and when she comes into the world again, she thinks 
 herself a nun escaped from confinement, and she now 
 begins to recollect scenes of indescribable horror, which 
 gradually become clearer and clearer. Now, Protestant i 
 public, the hgur is come ; you have craved after lies, 
 and you shall have your fill ; you have demanded, and " 
 here is the supply. She opens her mouth; she lifts her 
 voice ; your oracle, your prophet, your idol, Oh, Protes- 
 tant public, is about to speak ; she begins her " Awful Dis- 
 closures ;" who is this hapless creature, very wicked, very 
 mischievous, yet much to be pitied ! It is Maria Monk. 
 My Brothers, in what I have been saying, I have but 
 given substance in my own way to the facts recorded of 
 her ; but those facts are simply as I have stated them. 
 The history of the wretched impostor was traced out 
 and given to the world immediately on the publication of 
 her romance. It was deposed by divers witnesses that 
 she was born of parents who had lived at Montreal in 
 Canada, about the year 1816. When about seven years 
 old, she broke a slate pencil in her head, and had been 
 strange ever since ; at the age of eight she frequented a 
 convent school ; when about fourteen or fifteen she left 
 her mother's roof, and is found successively in the ser- 
 vice of various persons, an hotel-keeper, a farmer, a 
 tradesman, and others, and then for a time dependent on 
 charity. From one of her mistresses she absconded 
 with a quantity of wearing-linen ; she was discharged by 
 two' others for her bad conduct, and was generally looked 
 upon as a person of at least doubtftil character. Then 
 
 o 2 
 
156 TJIUE TESTIMONY UNEttUAL 
 
 she made her appearance at Montreal itself, declaring she 
 was daughter to Dr. Robertson, a magistrate of the city, 
 who had kept her chained in a cellar for four years. This 
 attempt failing, she next went off to the United States, 
 appeared at New York, and then began a second and 
 a more successful tale against one of the convents of the 
 city she had left, from which she said she had escaped. 
 She was taken up by a party of New York Protestants, 
 who thoroughly believed her, and reduced her story to 
 writing. Who was the author is not quite certain ; two 
 names have been mentioned, one of them a person con- 
 nected with this very place. In this book, whoever wrote 
 it, she gives a minute description of her imaginary con- 
 vent in Montreal, and some of the nuns and others she 
 professed to have known there. On the slander making 
 its way to Montreal, Protestants carefully went over the 
 calumniated convent; and they reported after minute 
 inspection that it in no respect answered to her account of 
 it ; indeed it was certain she had never been within it. 
 It was proved on the other hand, that her description 
 did distinctly answer to a Penitentiary of which she had 
 lately been an inmate, and whence she was dismissed for 
 bad conduct ; and further, that the account she gave of 
 her nuns in the convent answered to some of her fellow 
 penitents. Moreover, there is something about the book 
 more remarkable still, not indeed as it concerns her, but 
 as it concerns the argument I have in several of these 
 Lectures been pursuing. I have insisted much on the 
 traditional character of the fable, of which Catholics are 
 the victims. It is the old lie, brought up again and 
 again. Now this is most singularly exemplified in the 
 infamous work I am speaking of. On its appearance the 
 newspapers of the day asserted, without contradiction, 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 157 
 
 that it was in great measure a mere republication of a 
 work printed in the year 1731 under the title of 
 " The Gates of Hell opened, or a Development of the 
 Secrets of Nunneries." " Maria Monk's pamphlet," 
 says a Liverpool paper, " is a mrlatim copy of that 
 work, the only difference being a change of names." The 
 editor of a Boston paper " pledged himself that this was 
 the fact ;" and the editor of another " was ready to make 
 affidavit that the original work was in his possession a 
 few months previously, when it had been lent to the pub- 
 lishers of Maria Monk's Disclosures." To show this 
 he copied out passages from both works, which were the 
 same word for word ". 
 
 Here then you have a witness who is prepared to 
 go any lengths in support of the Protestant Tradition, 
 however truth or principle may lie in her way ; and 
 offensive as it will be to you to listen, and painful to me 
 to read, you must for the sake of the contrast between 
 her and Mr. Blanco White, submit to one or two of those 
 passages from her romance, which I am able without 
 impropriety to quote. 
 
 Now first I will give you the key to the whole book 
 considered as a composition, and its burden, and (what 
 may be called) its moral as addressed to the Protestant 
 world. It is an idea, which, as I have already said, was 
 naturally suggested to an impure mind, and forcibly 
 addressed itself to a curious reader. Mankind neces- 
 sarily proceeds upon the notion that what is within dis- 
 closes itself by what is without ; that the soul prompts 
 the tongue, inspires the eye, and rules the demeanour ; 
 
 " For these facts, vid. A complete refutation of Maria Monk's atrocious 
 plot, &c., by Kev. R. W. Willson (now Bishop of Hobart Town), Not- 
 tingham, 1837. 
 
158 TKUE TESTIMONV UNEQUAL 
 
 and such is the doctrine of holy writ, when it tells us 
 that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh." Hence when strangers visit a nunnery, and 
 see the order, cheerfulness, and quiet which reigns 
 through it, they naturally take all this as the indication 
 of that inward peace and joy which ought to be the 
 portion of its inmates. And again, when strangers 
 attend mass, and observe the venerable and awful cha- 
 racter of the rite, they naturally are led to think that 
 the priest is " holding up pure hands," and is as unde- 
 filed in heart as he is grave in aspect. Now it is the 
 object of this Narrative to reverse this natural associa- . 
 tion, to estabUsh the contrary principle, and to impress 
 upon the mind that what is within is always what the 
 outward appearance is not, and that the more of saintli- 
 ness is in the exterior, the more certainly is there 
 depravity and guilt in the heart. And it must be con- 
 fessed, there have been cases where what looked fair and 
 beautiful was but a whited sepulchre, " full within of 
 dead men's bones and of all filthiness ;" such cases have 
 been and may be, but they are unnatural surely, not 
 natural ; the exception, not the rule. To consider this 
 as the rule of things, you must destroy all trust in the 
 senses : when a man laughs, you must say he is sad ; 
 when he cries, you must say he is merry ; when he is 
 overbearing in words, you must call him gentle; and 
 when he says foolish things, you must call him wise ; all 
 because sad hearts sometimes wear cheerful counte- 
 nances, and divine wisdom sometimes has condescended 
 to look like folly. It is reported to have been said by 
 an able diplomatist, that the use of words is to disguise 
 men's thoughts ; but the very wit of the remark lies in 
 the preposterous principle it ironically implies. Yet 
 
TO THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 159 
 
 still to the run of readers there is something attractive 
 in this perverted and unhealthy notion, both from a sort 
 of malevolence and love of scandal, which possesses the 
 minds of the vulgar, and from the wish to prove others, 
 who seem religious, to be even worse than themselves ; and 
 besides, from the desire of mystery and marvel, which 
 prompts them, as I have said before, to have recourse to 
 some monstrous tale of priestcraft for excitement, as they 
 would betake themselves to a romance or a ghost story. 
 
 Thus she says in one place, or rather the writers who- 
 ever they may be ; "I have often reflected how griev- 
 ously I had been deceived in my opinions of a nun's 
 condition — all the holiness of their lives, I now found, 
 was merely pretended. The appearance of sanctity and 
 heavenly-mindedness which they had shown among us 
 novices, I found was only a disguise, to conceal such 
 practices as would not be tolerated in any decent society 
 in the world ; and, as for joy and peace like that of 
 heaven, which I had expected to find among them, I 
 learned too well that they did not exist there '. 
 
 Again, speaking of a picture of the infernal pit, at 
 which the nuns were looking, she introduces a nun, say- 
 ing something so dreadful, that a reader hardly knows 
 whether to laugh or to cry at it. " I remember she named 
 the wretch who was biting at the bars of hell, with a 
 serpent gnawing his head, with chains and padlocks on, 
 Father Dufresne ; and she would say. Does he not look 
 like him, when he comes in to catechism with his long 
 solemn face, and begins his speeches with, ' My children, 
 my hope is that you have Hved very devout lives'?'" 
 
 In such passages, the object of the writer is to fami- 
 liarize the reader's imagination to the notion that hypo- 
 ' P. 116. * P. 82. 
 
160 TRUE TESTIMONY UNESUAL 
 
 crisy is natural, and the ordinary state of things, and to 
 create in him a permanent association between any 
 serious act whatever and inward corruption. They make 
 the appearance of religion the presumption, not of reality, 
 but of hoUowness, and their very extravagance is their 
 plausibility. The reader says, " It is so shocking, it 
 must be true ; no one could have invented it." 
 
 It is with a view to increase this unnatural plausibility 
 that the writers dwell minutely on various details which 
 happen, or might easily happen, in Catholic Churches 
 and convents. For instance, they sa,y, " The old priest 
 . , . when going to administer (the Blessed Sacrament) 
 in any country place, used to ride with a man before 
 him, who rang a bell as a signal. When the Canadians 
 heard it, whose habitations he passed, they would come 
 and prostrate themselves to the earth, worshipping it as 
 God." Of course, it is so ; Catholics do worship the 
 Blessed Sacrament, because they believe it to be our 
 Lord Himself. Therefore we will say so in our book, 
 for we wish to lie naturally, we wish to root our impos- 
 ture in a foundation of truth. 
 
 Again ; " The bell rang at half-past six to awaken us. 
 The old nun who was acting as night-watch immediately 
 spoke aloud, ' Behold the Lord cometh ! ' The nuns 
 all responded, ' Let us go and meet Him.' Presently, 
 ' We then kneeled, and kissed the floor \'' " 
 
 Now observe the effect of aU this : when a person, who 
 never was in a Catholic Church or convent, reads such 
 particulars, when he reads, moreover, of the lattice-work 
 of the confessional, of the stoup of holy water, and the 
 custom of dipping the finger into it, of silence during 
 dinner, and of recreation after it ; of a priest saying 
 ' P. 39. 
 
TO THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 161 
 
 mass with his hands first joined together, and then 
 spread, and his face to the altar ; of his being addressed 
 by the title of " my Father," and speaking of his " chil- 
 dren," and many other similar particulars; and then 
 afterwards actually sees some Catholic establishment, 
 he says to himself, " This is just what the book said ;" 
 " here is quite the very thing of which it gave me the 
 picture ;" and, I repeat, he has, in consequence of his 
 reliance on it, so associated the acts of the ceremonial, 
 the joined hands or the downcast eye, with what his 
 book went on slanderously to connect them, with hor- 
 rible sin, that he cannot disconnect them in his ima- 
 gination ; and he thinks the Catholic Priest already 
 convicted of hypocrisy, because he observes those usages 
 which all the world knows that he does observe, which 
 he is obliged to observe, and which the Church has 
 ever observed. Thus you see the very things, which are 
 naturally so touching and so beautiful in the old Catholic 
 forms of devotion, become by this artifice the means of 
 infusing suspicion into the mind of the beholder. 
 
 Yes ; all this outward promise of good is but a beau- 
 tiful veil, hiding behind it untold horrors. Let us lift it, 
 so far as we may do so, without sharing in the writer's 
 sin. Our heroine has passed through her noviciate, and 
 proceeds to take the vows. Then she learns suddenly 
 the horrors of her situation ; she was, in fact, in a house 
 of evil spirits ; she represents herself, as was very natu- 
 ral, supposing she had been a religious person, overcome 
 by distress, and unable to resign herself to her lot ; and 
 she was told by the Mother Superior, " that such feelings 
 were very common at first, and that many other nuns 
 had expressed themselves as I did, who had long since 
 changed their minds. She even said, on her entrance 
 
162 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 into the nunnery, she had felt like me. Doubts, she 
 declared, were among our greatest enemies. They would 
 lead us to question every path of duty, and induce us to 
 waver at every step. They arose only from remaining 
 imperfections, and were always evidences of sin ; our 
 only way was to dismiss them immediately, to repent, to 
 confess them. They were deadly sins, and would con- 
 demn us to hell, if we should die without confessing 
 them. Priests, she insisted, could not sin. It was a 
 thing impossible. Every thing they did and wished was 
 of course right ^.^ 
 
 Now, my Brothers, you know there is a divine law- 
 written on the heart by nature, and that the Catholic 
 Church is built on that law, and cannot undo it. No 
 priest, no Bishop, no Council can make that right which 
 is base and shameful. In this passage the false witness 
 would make the Protestant world believe, that nuns are 
 obliged to obey their confessors in commands strictly 
 sinful, and horrible, and blasphemous. How different 
 from the true witness, Mr. Blanco White ! He said all 
 he could against convents ; he never hinted that rehgious 
 women were taught by the priests that priests could not 
 possibly sin, could not possibly issue a sinful command, 
 could not possibly have a sinful wish; and therefore 
 must be obeyed whatever they asked. His quarrel with 
 the Catholic Religion was that it was too strict, not that 
 it was too lax ; that it gave rise to nervousness, scruples, 
 and melancholy. His utmost accusation, except in the 
 case of the unbelieving few, was that he knew some 
 persons, and he believed there were others, who sinned, 
 knew their sin, came and confessed it, and sinned 
 
 2 P. 35. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 163 
 
 again. There was no calling evil good, and good evil. 
 Let her continue her revelations : — 
 
 " She also gave me another piece of information, which 
 excited other feelings in me, scarcely less dreadful. In- 
 fants were sometimes born in the convent, but they were 
 always baptized, and immediately strangled. This secured 
 their everlasting happiness ; for the baptism purified 
 them from all sinfulness, and being sent out of the world 
 before they had time to do any thing wrong, they were 
 at once admitted into heaven. How happy, she ex- 
 claimed, are those who secure immortal happiness for 
 such little beings ! Their little souls would thank those 
 who killed their bodies, if they had it in their power '." 
 
 " So far as I know, there were no pains taken to pre- 
 serve secrecy on this subject. ... I believe I learned 
 through the nuns, that at least eighteen or twenty infants 
 were smothered, and secretly buried in the cellar, while 
 I was a nun *." 
 
 The nuns, according to her account, underwent the 
 same fate, if they would not resign themselves to the 
 mode of life in all its details, for which alone, as it would 
 seem, the nunnery was set up. She gives an account of 
 the murder of one of them, and after quoting this, I 
 consider I may fairly be excused from quoting any more. 
 
 " I entered the door," she says, " my companions 
 standing behind me, as the place was so small as hardly 
 to hold five persons at a time. The young nun was 
 standing alone, near the middle of the room ; she was 
 probably about twenty, with light hair, blue eyes, and a 
 very fair complexion '." The poor victim is brought to 
 the Bishop, who, the writer says, " it was easy to per- 
 
 ' P. 35. * P. 120. s p. 75. 
 
164i TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 ■ceive, considered her fate to be sealed, and was deter- 
 mined she should not escape. In reply to some of the 
 questions put to her, she was silent ; to others, I heard 
 her voice reply, that she did not repent of words she had 
 uttered ; though they had been reported by some of the 
 nuns who had heard them ; that she had firmly resolved 
 to resist any attempt to compel her to the commission of 
 crimes which she detested. She added, that she would 
 rather die than cause the murder of harmless babes. 
 ' That is enough, finish her ! ' said the Bishop. Two 
 nuns instantly fell upon the woman ; and, in obedience 
 to directions given by the Superior, prepared to execute 
 her sentence. She still maintained all the calmness and 
 submission of a lamb." Then they gag her, and throw 
 her on a bed. " In an instant," the narrative proceeds, 
 " another bed was thrown upon her. One of the priests 
 sprung like a fury upon it with all his force. He was 
 speedily followed by the nuns, until there were as many 
 upon the bed as could find room, and all did what they 
 could, not only to smother, but to bruise her. . . After 
 the lapse of fifteen or twenty minutes, and when it was 
 presumed that the sufferer had been smothered and 
 crushed to death, (the priest) and the nuns ceased to 
 trample upon her, and stepped from the bed. All was 
 motionless and silent beneath it. They then began to 
 laugh," &c. 
 
 'But I surely need not continue trash, such as this, 
 which is as stupid as it is atrocious. In like manner, she 
 tells us the number of nuns killed, the number who killed 
 themselves, the various penances and tortures which were 
 common, gags, hot irons, glass chewing, and the " cap ;" 
 the cells, and every thing which is proper furniture of 
 such an abode. She concludes the book with a solemn 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. J 65 
 
 reflection, how hard it is to think aright after thinking 
 wrong. " The Scriptures," she is made to say, " always 
 affect me powerfully when I read them ; but I feel that 
 I have but just begun to learn the great truths, in which 
 I ought to have been early instructed. . . . The first 
 passage of Scripture that made any serious impression on 
 my mind, was the text on which the chaplain preached 
 on the Sabbath after my introduction into the house, 
 ' Search the Scriptures:' " — and so the book ends. 
 
 I have now described, first, the character of the writer, 
 next, the character of her book ; one point alone remains, 
 its reception by the public. The calumny first appeared 
 in 1836, it still thrives and flourishes in 1851. I have 
 made inquiries, and I am told I may safely say that in the 
 course of the fifteen years it has lasted, from 200,000 to 
 250,000 copies have been put into circulation in America 
 and England. The edition I have used is printed at 
 Nottingham in the present year. Vast numbers have been 
 sold at a cheap rate and given away by persons who ought 
 to have known it was a mere blasphemous fiction ; at this 
 very time it is found, I believe, in some of the Parochial 
 lending libraries of this place, and I hear rumours con- 
 cerning some of the distributors, which from the respect 
 I wish to entertain towards their names, I do not know 
 how to credit. Nor have these various efforts been 
 without visible fruit, at least in America. A nunnery 
 was burnt down at Oharlestown ; and at New York fifty 
 houses, inhabited by Catholics, were also destroyed by 
 fire, which extended to the Cathedral. 
 
 And thus I have completed, my Brothers, the contrast 
 I proposed to set before you. A writer of name, of charac- 
 ter, of honour, of gentleman-like feeling, who has the 
 entre of the first and most intellectual circles of the 
 
166 TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL 
 
 metropolis, and is the friend of the first Protestant 
 ecclesiastics of his day, records his testimony against 
 Catholicism, it is in the main true, and it fails : a worth- 
 less stroller gets her own testimony put into writing; 
 it is a heap of fables, and it triumphantly succeeds. 
 Let the people be the judge ; — their award reveals a 
 great fact ; truth is not equal to the exigences of the Pro- 
 testant cause, falsehood is its best friend. 
 
 Nor let it be imagined, my Brothers, that I have unfairly 
 selected my examples, in order to serve a purpose. Men 
 of Birmingham ought more than others to acquit me of 
 this. Only two years have I been here, and each of these 
 two has been signalized by accusations against Catholics, 
 the same in the disveputableness of their authors, and in 
 the enormity of their falsehood, and in the brilliancy of 
 their success, as this of Maria Monk. Two years ago it 
 was Jeffreys, last year it was Teodore. You recollect 
 how Jeffreys acted his part, how he wept, and prayed, and 
 harangued, and raised a whole population against an inno- 
 cent company of Monks, and how he was convicted of 
 fraud, and confessed his guilt, and was sent to prison : you 
 also recollect how an impostor, called Teodore, declaimed 
 such shocking things, and wrote such indecent pamphlets 
 against us, that they cannot have been intended for any 
 other purpose than to afford merriment to the haunts of 
 profligacy and vice ; yet he was followed for a time, was 
 admitted into Protestant places of worship, and honoured 
 as a truth-teUing oracle, till at length he was plainly de- 
 tected to be what every one from the first would have 
 seen he really was, were it usual to do the same common 
 justice to Catholics which every Protestant considers his 
 due ; — for falsehood is the basis of the Protestant Tra- 
 dition. 
 
TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 167 
 
 On the other hand, I might give you other instances 
 similar to that of Mr. Blanco White. I might point to 
 Mr. Steimnitz, who, within the last ten years, began his 
 noviciate among the Jesuits, left them, turned Pro- 
 testant, and published an account of the community he 
 had quitted. He wrote to expose them, and abounded 
 in bitterness and invective ; but as to his facts, so little 
 had he to produce from his own personal knowledge to 
 the disadvantage of the institution he was attacking, and 
 so severely did he disappoint the Protestants for whom 
 he wrote, that they considered his work, what they 
 called a Jesuitical trick, and said that he was pretending 
 to attack the good fathers in order really to set them off 
 to advantage; — for truth is no aid to the Protestant 
 Tradition. 
 
 Falsehood succeeds for a generation, or for an era ; but 
 therein it has its full course and comes to an end. Truth 
 is eternal ; it is great, and will prevail. The end is the 
 proof of things. Brothers of the Oratory, surely we 
 shall succeed because " they say all manner of evil 
 against us falsely for His Name's sake." 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 LOGICAL INCOKSISTENCY OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 A CONSIDERATION was incidentally introduced into the 
 argument which engaged our attention last week, Bro- 
 thers of the Oratory, which deserves insisting on, in the 
 general view which I am taking of the present position 
 of the Catholic Religion in England. I then said that, 
 even putting aside the special merits and recommenda- 
 tions of the Catholic rule of celibacy, as enjoined upon 
 the Priesthood and as involved in Monachism (with 
 which I was not concerned), and looking at the question 
 in the simple view of it, to which Protestants confine 
 themselves, and keeping ourselves strictly on the defen- 
 sive, still, when instances of bad priests and bad religious 
 are brought against us, we might fairly fall back upon 
 what may be called the pre vious question^ I mean, it is 
 incumbent on our opponents to show, that there are 
 fewer cases of scandal among a married clergy than 
 among an unmarried ; fewer cases of mental conflict, of 
 restlessness, of despondency, of desolation, of immorality,. 
 
170 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 and again of cruel slavery and hopeless suffering, among 
 Protestant women, whether unmarried or wives, than 
 among Catholic nuns. It must be shown that in such 
 instances of guilt or sorrow which can be adduced, the 
 priests accused have fallen into sin, the nuns compas- 
 sionated have passed from happiness to misery, distinctly 
 hy virtue of the vow which binds them to a single life :— 
 for till this is proved, nothing is proved. Protestants, 
 however, for the most part, find it very pleasant to 
 attack others, very irksome and annoying to defend 
 themselves ; they judge us by one rule, themselves by 
 another ; and they convict us of every sin under heaven 
 for doing sometimes what they do every day. 
 
 This one-sidedness, as it may be called, is one of the 
 very marks or notes of a Protestant ; and bear in mind, 
 when I use the word Protestant, I do not mean thereby 
 all who are not Catholics, but distinctly the disciples of 
 the Elizabethan Tradition. Such a one cannot afford to 
 be fair ; he cannot be fair if he tries. He is ignorant, 
 and he goes on to be unjust. He has always viewed 
 things in one light, and he cannot adapt himself to any 
 other ; he cannot throw himself into the ideas of other 
 men, fix upon the principles on which those ideas depend, 
 and then set himself to ascertain how those principles 
 differ, or whether they differ at all, from those which he 
 acts upon himself; and, like a man who has been for a 
 long while in one position, he is cramped and disabled, 
 and has a difficulty and pain, more than we can well con- 
 ceive, in stretching his limbs, straightening them, and 
 moving them freely. 
 
 This narrow and one-sided condition of the Protestant 
 intellect might be illustrated in various ways. For in- 
 stance, as regards the subject of education. It has 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 171 
 
 lately been forcibly shown, that the point which the 
 Catholic Church is maintaining against the British Go- 
 vernment in Ireland, as respects the Queen's Colleges 
 for the education of the middle and upper classes, is 
 precisely that which Protestantism maintains and suc- 
 cessfully maintains, against that same Government in 
 England ; viz., that secular instruction should not be 
 separated from religious '. The Catholics of Ireland are 
 asserting the very same principle as the Protestants of 
 England ; however, the Minister does not feel the logi- 
 cal force of the fact ; and the same persons who think it 
 so tolerable to indulge Protestantism in the one country, 
 are irritated and incensed at a Catholic people for asking 
 to be similarly indulged in the other. But how is it that 
 intelligent men, who can ascend in their minds from the 
 fall of an apple to the revolution of a comet, who can 
 apply their economical and political inductions from Eng- 
 lish affairs, to the amelioration of Italy and Spain, how 
 is it, that, when they come to a question of reUgion, they 
 are suddenly incapable of understanding that what is 
 reasonable and defensible in one country, is not utterly 
 preposterous and paradoxical in another ! What is true 
 under one degree of longitude, is true under another. 
 You have a right indeed to say that Catholicism itself is 
 not true ; but you have no right, for it is bad logic, to be 
 surprised that those who think it true, act consistently 
 with that supposition ; you do not well to be angry with 
 those who resist a policy in Ireland, which your own 
 friends and supporters cordially detest and triumphantly 
 withstand in England. 
 
 Take again a very different subject. A Protestant 
 blames Catholics for showing honour to images ; yet he 
 
 1 Vid. Tablet Newspaper, May 31, 1851. 
 P 2 
 
172 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 does it himself. And first, he sees no difiiculty in an 
 observance in relation to them, quite as repugnant to his 
 own ideas of what is rational, as the practice he abomi- 
 nates; and that is, the offering insult and mockery to 
 them. Where is the good sense of showing dishonour, 
 if it be stupid and brutish to show honour 2 Approbation 
 and criticism, praise and blame go together. I do not mean 
 of course that you dishonour what you honour ; but that 
 the two ideas of honour and dishonour so go together, that 
 where you can apply (rightly or wrongly, but still) where 
 it is possible to apply the one, it is possible to apply the 
 other. Tell me, then, what is meant by burning Bishops, 
 or Cardinals, or Popes in effigy ? has it no meaning ? is 
 it not plainly intended for an insult I Would any one, 
 who was burned in effigy, feel it no insult ! Well, then, 
 how is it, not absurd to feel pain at being dishonoured in 
 effigy, yet absurd to feel pleasure at being honoured in 
 effigy ? How is it childish to honour an image, if it is 
 not childish to dishonour it I This only can a Protestant 
 say in defence of the act which he allows and practises, 
 that he is used to it, whereas to the other he is not used. 
 Honour is a new idea, it comes strange to him ; and, 
 wonderful to say, he does not see that he has admitted it 
 in principle already, in admitting dishonour, and after 
 pi"eaching against the Catholic, who crowns an image of 
 the Madonna, he complacently goes his way, and sets 
 light to a straw effigy of Guy Fawkes. 
 
 But this is not all ; Protestants actually set up images 
 to represent their heroes, and they show them honour 
 without any misgiving. The very flower and cream of 
 Protestantism used to glory in the statue of King Wil- 
 liam on College Green, Dublin ; and, though I cannot make 
 any reference in point, I recollect well what a shriek 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 173 
 
 they raised some years ago, when the figure was unhorsed. 
 Some profane person one night blew the king right out 
 of his saddle, and he was found by those who took inter- 
 est in him, Hke Dagon, on the ground. You might have 
 thought the poor senseless block had life, to see the way 
 people took on about it, and how they spoke of his face, 
 and his arm, and his legs ; yet those same Protestants, 
 I say, would at the same time be horrified, had I used 
 " he" and " hjm" of a crucifix, and would call me one of 
 the monsters described in the Apocalypse, did I honour 
 my living Lord as they their dead king. 
 
 Another instance : — when James the Second went out, . 
 and the aforesaid William came in, there were persons 
 who refused to swear fidelity to William, because they 
 had already sworn fidelity to James ; and who was to ; 
 dispense them from their oath 1 yet these scrupulous men 
 were the few. The many virtually decided that the oath 
 had been conditional, depending on their old king's good 
 behaviour, though there was nothing to show it in the 
 words in which it ran : and that accordingly they had no 
 need to keep it any longer than they liked. And so in a 
 similar way, should a Catholic Priest, who has embraced 
 the Protestant persuasion, come over to this country, 
 and marry a wife, who among his new co-religionists 
 would dream of being shocked at it ! Every one would 
 think it both natural and becoming, and reasonable too, 
 as a protest against Romish superstition ; yet the man 
 has taken a vow, and the man has broken it. " Oh ! but 
 he had no business to make such a vow, he did it in igno- 
 rance, it was anti-Christian, it was unlawful." There 
 are then, it seems, after all, such things as unlawful oaths, 
 and unlawful oaths are not to be kept, and there are 
 
174 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 cases which require a dispensation ; yet let a Catholic 
 say this, and he says nothing more, — (rather he says much 
 less than the Protestant ; for he strictly defines the 
 limits of what is lawfiil, and what is unlawful, he takes a 
 scientific view of the matter and forbids a man to be 
 judge in his own case) — let a Catholic, I say, assert what 
 the Protestant practices, and he has furnished matter for 
 half a dozen platform speeches, and a whole set of Re- 
 formation Tracts. 
 
 These are some of the instances, which might be en- 
 larged upon, of the blindness of our opponents to those 
 very same acts or principles in themselves, which they 
 impute as enormities to us ; but I leave them for your 
 consideration, my Brothers, and proceed to an instance 
 of a different character. 
 
 What is a more fruitful theme of declamation against 
 us, than the charge of persecution ? The Catholic 
 Church is a persecuting power ; and every one of us is 
 a persecutor ; and, if we are not by nature persecutors, 
 yet we are forced to be persecutors by the necessity we 
 lie under of obeying a persecuting Church. Now let us 
 direct a careful attention to this Protestant land, which 
 has so virtuous a horror of persecution, and so noble a 
 loathing of persecutors, and so tender a compassion for 
 the persecuted, and let us consider whether the multi- 
 tude of men are not, to say the least, in the same boat 
 with us ; whether there is any thing which we are said 
 to do, which they do not do also, any thing which we are 
 said to have done, which they have not done, and there- 
 fore, whether, with this theoretical indignation of per- 
 secution on the one hand, and this practical sanction of it 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 175 
 
 on the other, they are not in the very position of that 
 great king, in his evil hour, who sentenced a transgressor, 
 when he himself was "the man." 
 
 Now I suppose, when men speak of persecution, and 
 say that CathoHcs persecute, they mean, that Cathohcs 
 on the score of rehgious offences inflict punishment on 
 persons, property, privileges, or reputation ; that we hate, 
 calumniate, mock, mob, and disquiet those who differ 
 from us ; that we pursue them with tests, disabilities, 
 civil penalties, imprisonment, banishment, slavery, tor- 
 ture, and death ; that we are inflexible in our tempers, 
 relentless in our measures, perfidious in our dealings, 
 and remorseless in our inflictions. Something of this 
 kind will be said, with a good deal of exaggeration, 
 even at very first sight ; but still, as even a candid 
 man may perhaps fancy, with some truth at the, bot- 
 tom. Well, see what I propose to do. I shall not 
 discuss any point of doctrine or principle : such a task 
 would not fall within the scope of these Lectures ; I 
 am not going to assume that savage cruelty, ruthless 
 animosity, frantic passion, that love of tormenting and 
 delight in death, are right, nor am I going to assume 
 that they are wrong ; I am not entering upon any ques- 
 tion of the moral law ; — moreover, I will not discuss how 
 far Catholics fairly fall under the charge of barbarity, 
 mercilessness, and fanaticism, and for this reason, because 
 it is not my concern ; for I mean to maintain, that the 
 acts imputed to Catholics, whatever be their character, 
 so very closely resemble in principle what is done by 
 Protestants themselves, and is, in a Protestant's judg- 
 ment, natural, explicable, and becoming, that Protestants 
 are just the very last persons in the world who can with 
 safety or consistency call Catholics persecutors, for the 
 
176 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 simple reason, that they should not throw stones who 
 live in glass houses. 
 
 I am maintaining no paradox in saying this ; It is a 
 truth which is maintained by intelligent Protestants 
 themselves. There is Dr. Whately, the present Protes- 
 tant archbishop of Dublin, one of the first writers of the 
 day, and a most violent opponent of Catholicism, listen 
 how he speaks, at the very time he is inveighing against 
 our holy religion. " The Romish Church," he says, 
 *' which has so long and so loudly been stigmatized as a 
 persecuting Church, is indeed deeply stained with this 
 guilt, but cannot with any reason be reckoned the origi- 
 nating cause of it. . . This, as well as the other Eomish 
 errors, has its root in the evil heart of the unrenewed 
 man. Like the rest, it neither began with Romanism, 
 nor can reasonably be expected to end with it ''." 
 
 Now, what I shall do is, to take the Protestant in his 
 house, his family, and his circle of friends, in his occu- 
 pation, and his civil and political position, as a good kind 
 father, as a liberal master, as a useful member of society ; 
 and to consider, as regards this matter of persecution, 
 whether, could he see himself in a looking-glass, he would 
 not mistake himself for a Catholic. 
 
 For instance, what is the first and natural act on the 
 part of a Protestant father of a family, when he receives 
 the intelligence that his son or daughter, grown up to 
 man's or woman's estate, nay, long since come of age, has 
 become, or is on the point of becoming a Catholic 2 Of 
 course there are exceptions; but in most cases his conduct 
 is so uniform, so suggestive of a general law, to which 
 particular cases belong, that I almost fear to describe it, 
 lest, what is farthest from my wish, I seem to be personal, 
 
 ^ Whately on Romanism, p. 225. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 177 
 
 and to be indulging in satire, when I am but pursuing an 
 argument. " My dear son," the father says, caUing him 
 by his Christian name, " you know how tenderly I love 
 you, and how indulgent I have ever been to you. I have 
 given you the best of educations, and I have been proud 
 of you. There is just one thing I cannot stand, and that 
 is Popery, and this is the very thing you have gone and 
 taken up. You have exercised your right of private 
 judgment ; I do not quarrel with you for this ; you are 
 old enough to judge for yourself; but I too have sacred 
 duties, which are the unavoidable result of your conduct. 
 I have duties to your brothers and sisters ; never see my 
 face again ; my door is closed to you. It wounds me to 
 come to this decision, but what can I do ? My affection 
 for you is as strong as ever it was, but you have placed 
 yourself under influences hostile to your fathers roof and 
 your own home, and you must take the consequences." 
 
 No one can look round him, who has much to do with 
 conversions and converts, without seeing this fulfilled 
 often to the letter, and mutatis mutandis, in a variety of 
 parallel cases. Protestants have felt it right, just, and 
 necessary to break the holiest of earthly ties, and to in- 
 flict the acutest temporal suffering on those who have 
 exercised their private judgment in the choice of a re- 
 ligion. They have so acted, and they so act daily. A 
 sense of duty to religious opinions, and of the supposed 
 religious interests of those entrusted to them, has 
 triumphed over the feelings of nature. Years have passed, 
 perhaps death has come, without any signs of recognition 
 passing from the father to the son. Sometimes the 
 severance and its consequences may be sterner still : the 
 wife may be sent away, her children taken from her, be- 
 cause she felt a call in conscience to join the Catholic 
 
178 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 Church. The son has been cut off (as they say) to a 
 shilling. The daughter has been locked up, her books 
 burned, the rites of her religion forbidden her. The 
 malediction has been continued to the third generation ; 
 the grandchildren, the child unborn, has not been tole- 
 rated by the head of the family, because the parents were 
 converts to the faith of their forefathers. 
 
 Nature pleads ; and therefore, to fortify the mind, the 
 various reasons for such severity must be distinctly passed 
 before it, and impressed upon it, and passion must be 
 roused to overcome affection. " Such a base, grovelling, 
 demoralizing religion, unworthy of a man of sense, un- 
 worthy of a man ! I would have borne his turning Drum- 
 mondite, Plymouth Brother, or Mormonite. He might 
 have joined the Agapemone. I would rather see him an 
 unbeliever ; yes, I say it deliberately, Popery is worse 
 than Paganism. I had rather see him dead. I could 
 have borne to see him in his coffin. I cannot see him the 
 slave of a priest. And then the way in which he took 
 the step : he never let me know, and had been received 
 before I had had a hint about it ;" or, " he told me what 
 he meant to do, and then did it in spite of me ;" or, " he 
 was so weak and silly," or " so headstrong," or " so long 
 ^nd obstinately set upon it." " He had nothing to say 
 for himself," or " he was always arguing." " He was in- 
 veigled into it by others," or " he ought to have consulted 
 others, he had no right to have an opinion. Any how he 
 is preferring strangers to his true friends ; he has shown 
 an utter disregard of the feelings of his parents and 
 relations ; he has been ungrateful to his father." 
 
 These are a few out of the many thoughts which pass 
 through the Protestant's mind under the circumstances 
 I have supposed, and which impel him to inflict a severe 
 
TllK PUOTESTANT VIEW. J 79 
 
 penalty on a child for a change of religion. And if there 
 be Protestant fathers, who demur to the correctness of 
 this representation (and I am using the word Protestant 
 in its proper sense, as I have noticed several times 
 before), I beg to ask such parents whether, in fact, they 
 have themselves suffered the affliction I have supposed, — 
 I mean, that of their children becoming Catholics ; and, 
 if they have not, I entreat them to fancy such an afflic- 
 tion for a moment, and how they would feel and act, if it 
 really took place. Eather they will not be able to get 
 themselves to fancy it ; I am sure that most of them will 
 revolt from the thought in indignation : the very sup- 
 jposition irritates them. " I should like to see any son 
 or daughter of mine turning Papist!" is the thought 
 which spontaneously rises in their mind. 
 
 I have been speaking of the upper and middle classes : 
 in the lower the feeling is the same, only more uncour- 
 teously expressed, and acted on more summarily. The 
 daughter, on her return home, tells the mother that she 
 has been attending, and means to attend, the Catholic 
 chapel ; whereupon the mother instantly knocks the 
 daughter down, and takes away from her her bonnet and 
 shawl, and the rest of her clothes, to keep her in doors : 
 or if it is the case of a wife, the husband falls to cursing, 
 protests he will kill her if she goes near the Catholics ; 
 and that if the priest comes there, he will pitch him out 
 of window. Such are specimens of what Dr. Whately 
 truly calls, " the evil heart of the unrenewed man." 
 
 Perhaps, however, the one party or the other gives 
 way ; milder counsels prevail with the persecutor, or the 
 persecuted is menaced into submission. A poor child is 
 teased and worried, till, to escape black looks, sharp 
 speeches, petty mortifications, and the unsympathizing 
 
180 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 chill of the domestic atmosphere, she consents to go to 
 Protestant worship ; and is forced to sit, stand, and 
 kneel, in outward deference to a ceremdnial which she 
 utterly disbelieves, and perhaps hates. At length, doing 
 violence to her conscience, she loses her sense of the 
 reality of Catholicism, grows indifferent to all religion, 
 sceptical of the truth of every thing, and utterly des- 
 ponding and sick at heart and miserable. Her friends 
 suspect her state, but it is better than Popery ; their 
 detestation of the Catholic religion is so intense, that, 
 provided their child is saved from its influence, for them 
 she may believe any thing or nothing ; and as to her dis- 
 tress of mind, time will overcome it — they will get her 
 married. Such is a Protestant's practical notion of free- 
 dom of opinion, religious liberty, private judgment, and 
 those other fine principles which he preaches with such 
 unction in public meetings, and toasts so enthusiastically 
 at public dinners. 
 
 Perhaps, however, there is a compromise. Terms are 
 made, conditions exacted ; the parties who have made 
 the mistake of thinking they might judge for themselves, 
 are taken into favour again, — are received under the 
 paternal roof on the rigid stipulation that no sign of 
 Catholicism is to escape them ; their mouths are to be 
 sealed ; their devotional manuals to be hid ; their beads 
 must never escape from their pocket ; their crucifix must 
 lie in a drawer ; opinion is to be simply put down in the 
 family. 
 
 As to domestic servants whose crime is to be Catho- 
 lics, far more summary measures are taken with them ; 
 not less cruel in effect, though more plausible in repre- 
 sentation. They are the first to suffer from a popular cry 
 against the Catholic Religion. Perhaps, some reverend 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 181 
 
 person high in station draws public attention to this de- 
 fenceless portion of the community, — not to protect them 
 from those moral dangers which benevolent statesmen are 
 striving to mitigate, — but to make them the objects of 
 suspicion, and to set their masters and mistresses against 
 them. Suddenly a vast number of young persons are 
 thrown out of their situations, simply because they are 
 Catholics — because, forsooth, they are supposed to be 
 emissaries of the Jesuits, spies upon the family, and 
 secret preachers of Popery. Whither are they to go ? 
 home they have none : trials and perils they have without 
 number, which ought to excite remorse in the breasts of 
 those, who, at the gain of a smart argument in contro- 
 versy, or a telling paragraph in a speech or a charge, are 
 the cause of their misfortunes. They look about in vain 
 for a fresh place ; and their only chance of success is by 
 accepting any wages, however poor, which are offered 
 them, and going into any service, however hard, however 
 low, however disadvantageous. Well, but let us suppose 
 the best that can befal them : they shall be tolerated in 
 a household and not discharged ; but what is the price 
 they pay for this indulgence ? They are to give up their 
 religious duties ; never to go to confession ; only once or 
 twice a year to mass ; or an arrangement is made, as a 
 great favour, to allow them to go monthly. Moreover, 
 they are had up into the parlour or drawing-room for 
 family prayers, or to hear tracts and treatises, abusive of 
 their religion, or to endure the presence of some solemn 
 Protestant Curate, who is expressly summoned to scare 
 and browbeat, if he cannot persuade, a safe victim, whom 
 her hard circumstances have made dependent on the 
 tyranny of others. 
 
 Now I would have every Protestant to whom my words 
 
182 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 may come, put his hand on his heart and say, first, whe- 
 ther scenes such as I have been describing, whether in 
 high life or in low, are not very much what he would call 
 persecution in Catholics ; and next, whether they can by 
 any, the utmost ingenuity, be referred, in the cases sup- 
 posed, to any Catholic influence as their cause. On the 
 contrary, they come out of the very depths and inner- 
 most shrine of the Protestant heart: it is undeniable, 
 the very stanchest Protestants are the actors in them : 
 nay, the stancher they are, the more faithfully do they 
 sustain their part : and yet, I repeat, if a similar occur- 
 rence were reported of some Catholic family in Italy or 
 Spain, these very persons whose conduct 1 have been 
 describing, would listen with great satisfaction to the 
 invectives of any itinerant deelaimer, who should work up 
 the sternness of the father, the fury of the mother, the 
 beggary of children and grandchildren, the blows struck, 
 the imprecations uttered, the imprisonment, the over- 
 persuasion, or the compulsory compromise, into a demon- 
 stration that Popery was nothing else than a persecuting 
 power, impatient of light, and afraid of inquiry, and 
 forcing upon fathers, mothers, and husbands, under pain 
 of reprobation, the duty of tormenting their children, and 
 discharging their servants at an hour's warning. 
 
 Let us walk abroad with those children or servants, 
 who, by the spirit of Protestantism, have been sent about 
 their business for being Catholics, and we shall see fresh 
 manifestations of its intolerance. Go into the workshops 
 and manufactories, you will find it in full operation. The 
 convert to Catholicism is dismissed by his employer; 
 the tradesman loses his custom ; the practitioner his pa- 
 tients ; the lawyer has no longer the confidence of his 
 clients ; pecuniary aid is reclaimed, or its promise re- 
 
THE PUOTESTANT VIEW. 183 
 
 called ; business is crippled, the shop cannot be opened ; 
 the old is left without provision, the young without his 
 outfit — he must look about for himself; his friends fight 
 shy of him ; gradually they drop him, if they do not dis- 
 own him at once. There used to be pleasant houses open 
 to him, and a circle of acquaintance. People were glad 
 to see him, and he felt himself, though solitary, not 
 lonely ; he was by himself, indeed, but he had always a 
 refuge from himself, without having recourse to public 
 amusements which he disHked. It is now all at an end ; 
 he gets no more invitations ; he is not a welcome guest ; 
 he at length finds himself in Coventry ; and where his 
 presence once was found, now it is replaced by malicious 
 and monstrous tales about him, distorted shadows of 
 himself, freely circulated and readily believed. What is 
 his crime 2 — he is a Catholic among Protestants. 
 
 If such is the conduct of Protestant society towards 
 individuals, what is it not against the Priest ? what 
 against the Catholic Name itself 1 Do you think it is 
 with the good will of Establishment, Wesleyan Con- 
 nexion, and various other denominations of religion, that 
 Catholics are in Birmingham at all! Do we worship, — 
 have we a place of worship, — with or against the will 
 of the bodies in question? Would they not close all 
 our churches and chapels to-morrow, would they not cut 
 the ground from under us, if they could ? what hinders 
 them turning us all out of the place, except that tliey 
 can't ! Attend to this, my Brothers, and observe its 
 bearing. You know what an outcry is raised, because 
 the Roman government does not sell or give ground to 
 • Protestants to build a Protestant Church in the centre 
 of Rome : that government hinders them there, because 
 it is able ; Protestants do not hinder us here because they 
 are not able. Can they, in the face of day, deny this ? — 
 
184 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 they cannot. Why, then, do they find fault with others 
 who do, because they can, what they themselves would do 
 if they could? Do not tell me, then, that they are in 
 earnest when they speak of the " intolerance of Catholics" 
 abroad : they ought to come into court with clean hands. 
 They do just the same themselves, as far as they can ; 
 only, since they cannot do it to their mind's content, they 
 are determined it shall form an article of impeachment 
 against us ; and they eagerly throw a stone that comes 
 to hand, though it is only by an accident that it does not 
 fall back on themselves ; like the boy in the story, who 
 went and told of his playmate, who was before him in 
 stealing the gooseberry pie. It has lately been reported in 
 the papers, that the Catholics of Italy are going to build 
 a Church in London for their poor countrymen, who in 
 great numbers are found there. Let them go to the 
 Board of Woods and Forests (and less equitable bodies 
 might be found), and try to negotiate a purchase of 
 ground for a site ; would Grovernment for a moment en- 
 tertain the proposal ? would it not laugh at their impu- 
 dence in asking ? would the people suffer the Government, 
 even if it were disposed 2 would there not be petitions to 
 the two Houses, enough to break the tables on which 
 they were ranged, petitions to the Queen enough to block 
 up the Home Office! would not the whole press, both 
 daily and weekly, in town and in country, groan and 
 tremble under the portentous agitation such a project 
 would occasion ? Happily for Catholics, other ground is 
 to be had. But would not Court and Ministry, Esta- 
 blishment, Wesleyans, almost every political party, al- 
 most all the denominations of London, the Court of 
 Aldermen, the Common Council, the City Companies, 
 the great landlords, the Inns of Court, and the Vestries, 
 : hinder any Catholic Church if they could I Yet these 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 185 
 
 are the parties to cry out against a proceeding in Rome, 
 which they do their best to imitate in London. 
 
 But this is not all : in spite of their manifesting, every 
 day of their lives, an intense desire to do us all the harm 
 in their power, wonderful to say, they go on to reproach 
 us with ingratitude, We evince no gratitude, say the 
 Protestant Bishops, for the favours which have been 
 shown us. Gratitude for what ? What favours have we 
 received ? the Frenchman's good fortune, and nothing 
 else. When lie boasted the king had spoken to him, he 
 was naturally asked what the king had said ; and he an- 
 swered, that his Majesty had most graciously cried out 
 to him, " Fellow, stand out of the way." Statesmen 
 would ignore us if they could : they recognize us in order 
 to coerce ; they cannot coerce without recognizing, there- 
 fore at last they condescend to recognize. When there 
 was a talk several years ago, of an interchange of minis- 
 ters between England and the Pope, then they would not 
 have his name mentioned ; he was not to be called by any 
 title of his own, but by a new-fangled name, framed for 
 the occasion. He was to be known as " Sovereign of 
 the Roman States ;" a title which pretty well provided, 
 should occasion occur, for treating with some other sove- 
 reign power in his States, who should not be he. Now 
 that they wish to do him an injury, forthwith they wake 
 up to the fact of his existence. Our statesmen affect to 
 know nothing of the greatest power on earth, the most 
 ancient dynasty in history, till it comes right across their 
 path, and then they can recognize as foes, what before 
 they could not recognize as gentlemen. 
 
 Indeed, if the truth must be told, so one-sided is this 
 Protestantism, that its supporters have not yet admitted 
 the notion into their minds, that the Catholic Church has 
 
 a 
 
186 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 as much right to make converts in England, as any other 
 denomination. It is a new idea to them ; they thought 
 she ought to be content with vegetating, as a sickly 
 plant, in some back yard or garret window ; but to at- 
 tempt to spread her faith abroad — this is the real insidi- 
 ousness, and the veritable insult. I say this advisedly. 
 Some public men, indeed, have even confessed it ; they 
 have been candid enough to admit distinctly, that the 
 penal Bill is intended to throw a damper on our energies ; 
 and others imply it who dare not say it. There are 
 words, for instance, imputed to the Prime Minister with 
 reference to a publication of my own, which puts the 
 matter in a very clear point of view. I have to acknow- 
 ledge his civility to myself personally ; and I am sure, 
 though I have an aversion to his party ' and his politics, 
 of twenty, nay, thirty years' standing, yet I bear nothing 
 but good will to himself, except as the representative of the 
 one and the other. But now consider what he said. It 
 appears he had laid it down, that his only object in his 
 Parliamentary measure was to resist any temporal pre- 
 tensions of the Pope ; and, in proof, observe, that such 
 pretensions were made, what does he do, but quote 
 some words which I used in a Sermon preached at St. 
 Chad's, last October, on occasion of the establishment 
 of the Hierarchy. Now what was that Sermon about ? 
 was there a word in it about Catholics exercising or 
 gaining temporal power in England, which was the point 
 on which he was insisting ! — not a syllable. I may con- 
 fidently say, for I know my own feelings on the subject, 
 that the notion of any civil or pohtical aggrandizement of 
 Catholicism never came into my head. From the begin- 
 
 ' The fuayirbe oraffis of Mr. Froude : vid. Lyra ApostoUca,133. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 187 
 
 ning to the end of the Sermon, I spoke simply and purely 
 of conversions — of conversions of individuals, of the 
 spread of the Church by means of individual conversions, 
 by the exercise of private judgment, by the communica- 
 tion of mind with mind, by the conflict of opinion, by 
 the zeal of converts, and in the midst of persecution ; 
 not by any general plan of operation, or by political 
 movement, or by external influence bearing upon the 
 country. Such a growth of Catholicism, intellectual, 
 gradual, moral, peaceable, and stable, I certainly predicted 
 and predict, and such only : yet this, though the fruit of 
 free opinion and disputation, is adduced by the Premier 
 as an intelligible, as a sufficient, reason for introducing 
 a measure of coercion. An intellectual movement must 
 be met by Act of Parliament. Can a clearer proof be 
 required, that not our political intrigues — for we are 
 guilty of none — but our moral and argumentative power, 
 is the real object of apprehension and attack : they wish 
 to coerce us because we are zealous, and they venture to 
 coerce us because we are few. They coerce us for the 
 crime of being few, and wishing to be many. They 
 coerce us while they can, lest they should not dare to 
 coerce, when another twenty years has passed over our 
 heads. " Hit him, he's down !" this is the cry of the 
 Ministry, the country gentlemen, the Establishment, and 
 Exeter Hall. Tlierefore are we ultramontanes ; therefore 
 are we aggressive ; this is our conspiracy, that we have 
 hearts to desire what we believe the religious welfare of 
 others, and heads to compass it. Two centuries ago, all 
 England, you know, was in terror about some vast and 
 mysterious Popish plot, which was to swallow up the 
 whole population, without any one knowing how. What 
 does the historian, Hume, — no Catholic, certainly, — say 
 
 a 2 
 
188 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 on the subject ? " Such zeal of proselytism," he observes, 
 " actuates that sect" (meaning us), " that its missionaries 
 have penetrated into every nation of the globe ; and in 
 one sense there is a Popish plot perpetually carrying on 
 against all states, Protestant, Pagan, and Mahometan *.■" 
 The simple truth ! this is the unvarnished account of the 
 matter : we do surpass in zeal every other religion, and 
 have done so from the first. But this surely ought to be 
 no oifence, but a praise : that religion which inspires the 
 most enthusiasm, has a right to succeed. If to cherish 
 zeal, if to deal the blows of reason and argument, if this 
 be political, if this be disloyal, certainly we deserve worse 
 punishment than the deportation of one member of Par- 
 liament, and the 500?. penalty of another. 
 
 Had indeed the ruUng powers of the country, when 
 coercion was in their power, refrained from coercion, and 
 turned a host of controversialists in upon us instead; 
 had a gracious answer come from the Throne in return 
 for the loyal address of the Protestant Bishops, com- 
 manding them to refute us, and never to enter the royal 
 closet again without a tail of twenty converts apiece ; had a 
 Parliamentary Committee been appointed to inquire into 
 the best means of denying our facts, and unravelling our 
 arguments ; had a reward of some 1000?. been offered for 
 our scientific demolition, in Bridgewater Treatise or 
 Warburton Lecture, we should have felt gratitude to- 
 wards those, who had rather fail in their end, than be 
 ungenerous in their measures. But for years and years 
 the case has been just the reverse ; they have ever done 
 us all the harm that they could, they have not done only 
 what they could not. They have only made concessions 
 
 * Charles the Second, ch. 67. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 189 
 
 under the influence of fear. Small thanks for scanty 
 favours ; such thanks as Lazarus's, for the rich man's 
 crumbs which could not help falling from the table : it is 
 no virtue to grant what you cannot deny. Now what is 
 the state of the case ? Protestant sects quarrel among 
 themselves, they scramble for power, they inflict injuries 
 on each other ; then at length they come to think it 
 would be well to bear and forbear. They establish the 
 great principle of toleration, not at all for our sakes, 
 simply for the sake of each other, one and all devoutly 
 wishing that they could tolerate each other without tole- 
 rating us. We, born Britons and members of the body 
 politic as much as they, accidentally come under the 
 shadow of a toleration which was meant for others. When 
 they find that common sense and fairness are too strong 
 for them, and they cannot keep us out, and, moreover, 
 that it is dangerous to do so, they make a merit of letting 
 us in, and they wish us to be grateful for a privilege 
 which is our birthright as much as it is theirs. 
 
 I know well there is a rising feeling, there are emergent 
 parties in this country, far more generous and equitable, 
 far more sensible than to deserve these imputations ; but 
 I am speaking all along of the dominant faction, and the 
 children of the Tradition. As for the latter, it will be 
 long before they realize the fact that we are on a social 
 equality with them, and that what is allowable in them- 
 selves is allowable in us. At present, it is a matter of 
 surprise to them, that we dare to speak a word in our 
 defence, and that we are not content with the liberty of 
 breathing, eating, moving about, and dying in a Protestant 
 soil. That we should have an opinion, that we should 
 take a line of our own, that we should dare to convince 
 people, that we should move on the oSensive, is intolerable 
 
190 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 presumption, and takes away their breath. They think 
 themselves martyrs of patience if they can keep quiet in 
 our presence, and condescending in the heroic degree, if 
 they offer us any lofty civility. So was it the other day, 
 when the late agitation began ; the hangers-on of Govern- 
 ment said to us, " Cling tight to our coat tails ; we are 
 your best friends ; we shall let you off easy ; we shall only 
 spit upon you; but beware of those rabid conservatives ;" 
 and they marvelled that we did not feel it to be the 
 highest preferment for the Catholic Church to wait in the 
 antechambers of a political party. So is it with your 
 Protestant controversiahst, even when he shows to best 
 advantage ; his great principle of disputation is that he 
 is up, and the Catholic is down; and his great duty 
 is to show it. He is intensely conscious that he is in a 
 very eligible situation, and his opponent in the gutter ; 
 and he lectures down upon him, as if out of a drawing- 
 room window. It is against his nature to be courteous to 
 those for whom he feels so cordial a disdain, and he can- 
 not forgive himself for stooping to annihilate them. He 
 mistakes sharpness for keenness, and haughtiness for 
 strength ; and never shows so high and mighty in manner 
 as when he means to be unutterably conclusive. It is a 
 standing rule with him to accuse his opponent of evasion 
 and misstatement ; and, when in fault of an argument, he 
 always can impugn his motives, or question the honesty 
 of his professions. So it is with that writer to whom 
 Cardinal Wiseman alludes in his late Appeal to the 
 English people. The person I speak of is a gentleman 
 and a scholar, nay, one of the most distinguished Protes- 
 tant theologians of the day ; but that did not hinder him, 
 on the occasion alluded to by the Cardinal, strutting 
 about with indignation that a Catholic should intrude 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 191 
 
 himself into the quarrels of the Establishment, and fan- 
 cying that rudeness would be an indication of superiority. 
 In his title-page, he describes his pamphlet as " a letter 
 to N. Wiseman, D.D., calling himself Bishop of Melipo- 
 tamus ;" then he addresses him, not " Rev. Sir," but 
 " Sir," and talks of its being reported that he has " re- 
 ceived the form of episcopal consecration at Rome," and 
 tells him this is no excuse for his " acting in opposition 
 to his legitimate diocesan, the [Protestant] Bishop of 
 Worcester." He proceeds to speak of Dr. Wiseman's 
 " characteristic sagacity," and of the " leaders of his 
 party ;" reminds him that " in the eyes of his superiors 
 the end sanctifies the means," and says that a mistake, 
 of which he accuses him, " appears to be not quite unin- 
 tentional." He is ever upon stilts, and, as the pamphlet 
 proceeds, there is an ever thickening recurrence of such 
 rhetoric as " Excuse me. Sir," and " Now, Sir," and 
 " Such, Sir," and " But, Sir," and " Yes, Sir," and " No, 
 Sir." I should not notice this pamphlet, which is of 
 some years' standing, did I think the writer at all repented 
 of its tone, and might not any day publish just such 
 another. After all, it is but an instance in detail of 
 the Protestant Tradition ; for such has been the received 
 style of the Church of England, ever since the days of 
 such considerable men as Laud, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and 
 Usher. Moreover, it is emphatically the gentlemanlike 
 manner of conducting the controversy with us, in contrast 
 to that of the pulpit or the platform, when the speaker 
 considers himself a sort of theological Van Amberg, 
 scares us with his eye, and hits up to and fro with his 
 cudgel. 
 
 Now for another department of this petty persecution. 
 That able writer. Dr. Whately, whom I have already 
 
192 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 quoted in this Lecture, and whom, for the love I bear 
 him, from old memories, in spite of our religious differ- 
 ences, I take pleasure in quoting, whenever I can do so 
 with any momentary or partial agreement with him, the 
 Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, I say, writing on the 
 subject of persecution, is led to speak of insult and 
 abuse, calumny, ridicule, and blasphemy, as directed by 
 the professors of one religion against those of another ; 
 and he uses the following remarkable words : " Undoubt- 
 edly," he says, " they ought to enjoy this protection, not 
 only of their persons and property, but of their comfort 
 and feelings also. The State is both authorized and 
 bound to prohibit and to guard against, by her own appro- 
 priate penalties, not only every thing that may tend to 
 a breach of the peace, but also every thing that unne- 
 cessarily interferes with the comfort and molests the 
 feelings of any one. I say unnecessarily, because it may 
 be painful indeed to a man's feelings to have his opinions 
 controverted, and to be obliged to encounter opponents ; 
 but then, free discussion is necessary for the attainment 
 and maintenance of truth. Not so with ridicule and 
 insult : to forbid these can be no violation of religious 
 liberty, since no man can be bound in conscience to em- 
 ploy such weapons : they have manifestly no tendency to 
 advance the cause of truth ; they are therefore analogous 
 to the slaughter of women and children, and other non- 
 belligerents, which is regarded by all civilized nations as 
 a violation of the laws of war ; these being unnecessary 
 cruelties, since they have no direct tendency to bring the 
 war to a conclusion." And then he goes on to say, " It is 
 evident that all this reasoning applies with equal force to 
 the case of persons of every religious persuasion, whether 
 Christians of various sects, or Jews, or Mahometans. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 193 
 
 All of these, though they must be prepared indeed to 
 encounter fair argument, should be protected, not only 
 from persecution, but from insult, libel, and mockery, as 
 occasioning a useless interruption of public or of domestic 
 peace and comfort ; and this being an offence against 
 society, may justly be prohibited and punished by human 
 
 Here you will observe, a writer, setting down his 
 thoughts on persecution twenty-five years ago, when the 
 present state of the controversy was as yet in the womb 
 of the future, distinctly tells us that insult, abuse, and 
 mockery are inconsistent with religious liberty, and that 
 they should be prohibited by law, even as directed 
 against Mahometans. Now I accept this sentiment, 
 though I will not adopt it without an explanation. I 
 consider, then, that in applying it to the existing state 
 of things, we must distinguish between religious objects 
 and rites, and the persons who acknowledge them. I 
 cannot reprobate, in a free country like this, the ridi- 
 cule of individuals, whoever they are ; and I think it 
 would be a very evil day when it was forbidden. From 
 the Queen and Prime Minister to the ephemeral charlatan 
 or quack, who astonishes the world with his impudence 
 and absurdity, it is desirable that all should be exposed to 
 the ridicule of any who choose to make them the objects 
 of it. In no other way are various abuses, or encroach- 
 ments, or nuisances, or follies, so easily and gently got 
 rid of ; it is a most healthy expression of public opinion ; 
 it is a safety-valve for feelings, which, if not allowed so 
 harmless an escape, might end in a serious explosion. 
 Moreover, it is our boast among the nations, that, while 
 elsewhere it is dangerous, with us it is positively healthy. 
 ° Letters on the Church, p. 53. 
 
194 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 In France or in Italy I suppose no Government could 
 stand against public ridicule ; the Anglo-Saxon is good- 
 natured in his satire, and he likes his rulers not at all the 
 worse, or rather the better, that he can distort them into 
 attitudes, and dress them up in masquerade. And this 
 permission must be suffered to extend to the case of per- 
 sons who bear a religious profession, as well as that of 
 others ; though in this case the line will sometimes be 
 difficult to draw. It will be painful indeed to those who 
 look up to them, to see one whom they revere, or who is 
 associated with what is sacred in their minds, made the 
 subject of insult and buffoonery ; as it may be painful to 
 the private circle and the living relations of a statesman 
 or public man, who undergoes a similar ordeal ; but, as 
 matters go in this country, there is no sufficient ground 
 for prohibiting, nor much wisdom in complaining. But 
 the case is very different when the religious rite is insulted, 
 and the individual for the sake of the rite. For ex- 
 ample, were England a Catholic country, I can fancy a 
 caricature of a fat monk or a fanatical pilgrim being quite 
 unobjectionable ; it would argue no disrespect to the re- 
 ligion itself, but would be merely a blow at an abuse of 
 rehgion, in the instance of certain individuals who were no 
 ornament to it ; on the other hand, in a Protestant land, 
 it would or would not be an insult to Oatholicisip, accord- 
 ing to the temper of the moment, in the colouring and 
 details of the satire. However, my business is not to 
 draw the line between what is allowable and what is un- 
 fair as regards ridicule in matters of rehgion, but merely 
 to direct your attention to this point, that I have no wish, 
 when it can be helped, to shelter the persons of religious 
 men under the sacredness of the religion itself. With 
 this explanation, then, in favour of ridicule, I accept Dr. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 195 
 
 Whately's doctrine as reasonable and true ; but consider, 
 my Brothers, its application to ourselves. What a re- 
 markable light does it cast on the relative position of Pro- 
 testants and Catholics in England during the current year ! 
 Our author tells us that insult and mockery, in religious 
 controversy, is as cowardly and cruel as the slaughter of 
 women and children in war, and he presses on us the 
 duty of the State to prohibit by penalties such interference 
 with the comforts and feelings of individuals ; now, I 
 repeat, what a remarkable illustration have Protestants 
 supplied to this doctrine of a Protestant divine, since 
 Michaelmas last ! The special champions of toleration, 
 the jealous foes of persecution, how studiously and con- 
 scientiously, during nine long months, have they practised 
 what they preached ! What a bright example have they 
 set to that religious communion which they hold in such 
 abhorrence on the ground of its persecuting spirit ! 
 the one-sided intellect of Protestantism ! I appeal in 
 evidence of it to a great banquet, where, amid great ap- 
 plause, the first judge of the land spoke of trampling 
 Cardinal Wiseman's hat under his feet. I appeal to the 
 last fifth of November, when jeers against the Blessed 
 Sacrament and its rites were chalked up in the Metro- 
 polis with impunity, under the very shadow of the Court, 
 and before the eyes of the Home Office and the Police. 
 I appeal to the mock processions to ridicule, and bonfires 
 to burn, what we hold most venerable and sacred, not 
 only Pope, and Cardinal, and Priest, but the very Mother 
 of our Lord, and the Crucifix itself. I appeal to those 
 ever growing files of newspapers, whose daily task, in 
 the tedious succession of months, has been to cater for 
 the gross palate of their readers all varieties of disgusting 
 gossip, and of bitter reproach, and of extravagant slander, 
 
196 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 and of affronting, taunting, sneering, irritating invective 
 against us. I appeal to the buckram nuns of Warwick- 
 shire, Nottingham, and Clapham, to the dungeons of 
 Edgbaston, and the sin-table of St. Gudule. I appeal to 
 the outrageous language perpetrated in a place I will not 
 name, where one speaker went the length of saying, what 
 the reporters suppressed for fear of consequences, that a 
 dear friend and brother of mine, for whose purity and 
 honour I would die, mentioning him by name, went about 
 the country, as the words came to the ears of those present, 
 seducing young women. I appeal to the weekly carica- 
 tures, not of persons only and their doings, but of all that 
 is held sacred in our doctrines and observances, of our 
 rites and ceremonies, our saints and our relics, our sacred 
 vestments and our rosaries. I appeal to a popular pub- 
 lication, which, witty and amusing in its place, thought 
 it well to leave its " sweetness " and its " fatness," to 
 change make-belief for earnest, to become solemn and 
 sour in its jests, and awkwardly to try its hand at divinity, 
 because Catholics were the game. I appeal to the cow- 
 ardly issue of a cowardly agitation, to the blows dealt in the 
 streets of this very town upon the persons of the innocent, 
 the tender, and the helpless ; not to any insult or infliction 
 which has come upon us, for it is our portion, and we 
 have no thought of complaining, but to the ladies and the 
 school-girls, who, at various times, up to the day I am 
 recording it, because they are Catholics, have been the 
 victims of these newspaper sarcasms, and these platform 
 blasphemies. I appeal to the stones striking sharply 
 upon the one, and the teeth knocked out of the mouths 
 of the other. Dr. Whately's words have been almost 
 prophetic ; mockery and insult have literally terminated 
 in the bodily injury of those non-belligerents, who are 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 197 
 
 sacred by the laws of all civilized warfare. Such are some 
 of the phenomena of a religion which makes it its special 
 boast to be the Prophet of Toleration. 
 
 And in the midst of outrages such as these, my Bro- 
 thers of the Oratory, wiping its mouth, and clasping its 
 hands, and turning up its eyes, it trudges to the Town 
 Hall to hear Dr. Achilli expose the Inquisition. Ah ! 
 Dr. Achilli, I might have spoken of him last week, had 
 time admitted of it. The Protestant world flocks to 
 hear him, because he has something to tell of the Catholic 
 Church. He has a something to tell, it is true ; he has 
 a scandal to reveal, he has an argument to exhibit. It 
 is a simple one, and a powerful one, as far as it goes — 
 and it is one. That one argument is himself; it is his 
 presence which is the triumph of Protestants ; it is the 
 sight of him which is a Catholic's confusion. It is in- 
 deed our great confusion, that our Holy Mother could 
 have had a priest like him. He feels the force of the 
 argument, and he shows himself to the multitude that is 
 gazing on him. " Mothers of families," he seems to say, 
 " gentle maidens, innocent children, look at me, for I am 
 worth looking at. You do not see such a sight every 
 day. Can any church live over the imputation of such 
 a production as I am ? I have been a Catholic and an 
 infidel ; I have been a Eoman priest and a hypocrite ; I 
 have been a profligate under a cowl. I am that Father 
 Achilli', who, as early as 1826, was deprived of my faculty 
 to lecture, for an offence which my superiors did their 
 best to conceal ; and who in 1827 had already earned 
 the reputation of a scandalous friar. I am that Achilli, 
 who in the diocese of Viterbo in February, 1831, robbed 
 
 " Vid. Dublin Review for July, 1850 ; and Authentic Brief Sketch 
 of the Life of Dr. Giacinto Achilli. — Bichardsons. 
 
198 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 of her honour a young woman of eighteen : who in Sep- 
 tember, 1833, was found guilty of a second such crime, in 
 the case of a person of twenty-eight; and who perpetrated 
 a third in July, 1834, in the case of another aged twenty- 
 four. I am he, who afterwards was found guilty of sins, 
 similar or worse, in other towns of the neighbourhood. I 
 am that son of St. Dominic who is known to have repeated 
 the offence at Capua, in 1834 or 1835 ; and at Naples 
 again, in 1840, in the case of a child of fifteen. I am 
 he who chose the sacristy of the church for one of these 
 crimes, and Good Friday for another. Look on me, ye 
 mothers of England, a confessor against Popery, for ye 
 ' ne'er may look upon my like again.' I am that veritable 
 priest, who, after all this, began to speak against, not 
 only the Catholic faith, but the moral law, and perverted 
 others by my teaching. I am the Cavaliere Achilli, who 
 then went to Corfu, made the wife of a tailor faithless to 
 her husband, and lived publicly and travelled about with 
 the wife of a chorus-singer. I am that Professor in 
 the Protestant College at Malta, who with two others 
 was dismissed from my post for offences which the au- 
 thorities cannot get themselves to describe. And now 
 attend to me, such as I am, and you shall see what you 
 shall see about the barbarity and profligacy of the 
 Inquisitors of Rome." 
 
 You speak truly, Achilli, and we cannot answer you 
 a word. You are a Priest ; you have been a Friar ; 
 you are, it is undeniable, the scandal of Catholicism, and 
 the palmary argument of Protestants, by your extra- 
 ordinary depravity. You have been, it is true, a pro- 
 fligate, an unbeliever, and an hypocrite. Not many years 
 passed of your conventual life, and you were never in 
 choir, always in private houses, so that the laity observed 
 
THE PROTESTAXT VIEW. 199 
 
 you. You were deprived of your professorship, we own 
 it ; you were prohibited from preaching and hearing con- 
 fessions ; you were obhged to give hush-money to the 
 father of one of your victims, as we learn from the official 
 report of the Police of Viterbo. You are reported in 
 an official document of the Neapolitan Police to be 
 " known for habitual incontinency ;" your name came be- 
 fore the civil tribunal at Corfu for your crime of adultery. 
 You have put the crown on your offences, by, as long as 
 you could, d^hying them all ; you have professed to seek 
 after truth, when you were ravening after sin. Yes, you 
 are an incontrovertible proof, that priests may fall and 
 friars break their vows. You are your oWn witness; 
 but while you need not go out of yourself for your argu- 
 ment, neither are you able. With you the argument 
 begins ; with you too it ends : the beginning and the 
 ending you are both. When you have shown yourself, 
 you have done your worst and your all ; you are your 
 best argument and your sole. Your witness against 
 others is utterly invalidated" by your witness against 
 yourself. You leave your sting in the wound : you 
 cannot lay the golden eggs, for you are already dead. 
 
 For how, Brothers of the Oratory, can we possibly 
 believe a man like this, in what he says about persons, 
 and facts, and conversations, and events, when he is of 
 the stamp of Maria Monk, of Jeffi-eys, and of Teodore, 
 and of others who have had their hour, and then been 
 dropped by the indignation or the shame of mankind ? 
 What call is there on Catholics to answer what has not 
 yet been proved ? what need to answer the evidence of 
 one, who has not replied to the Police reports of Viterbo, 
 Naples, and Corfu ? He tells me that a Father Inqui- 
 sitor said to him, " Another time" that you are " shut 
 
200 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 up in the Inquisition," "you" will not "get away so 
 easily'." I do not believe it was said to hira. He 
 reports that a Cardinal said of him, " We must either 
 make him a Bishop, or shut him up in the Inquisition'." 
 I do not believe it. He bears witness, that " the 
 General of the Dominicans, the oldest of the Inquisitors, 
 exclaimed against him before the council, ' This heretic, 
 we had better burn him alive '.' " I don't believe a word 
 of it. " Give up the present Archbishop of Canterbury," 
 says he, " amiable and pious as he is, to one of these 
 rabid inquisitors; he must either deny his faith, or 
 be burned alive. Is my statement false ? Am I 
 doting ' ! " He is not doting, but he is false. " Sup- 
 pose I were to be handed over to the tender mercy of 
 this Cardinal [Wiseman], and he had full power to dis- 
 pose of me as he chose, without losing his character in 
 the eyes of the nation, should I not have to un- 
 dergo some death more terrible than ordinary ?" Dr. 
 Achilli does not dote ; they dote who listen to him. 
 
 Why do I so confidently assert that he is not to be 
 believed? — first, because his life for twenty years past 
 creates no prepossession in favour of his veracity: se- 
 condly, because during a part of that period, according to 
 his own confession, he spoke and argued against doc- 
 trines, which at the very time he confessed to be main- 
 tained by the communion to which he belonged ; thirdly, 
 because he has ventured to deny in the general, what 
 official documents prove against him in the particular ; 
 fourthly, because he is not simple and clear enough in 
 his narrative of facts to inspire any confidence in him ; 
 fifthly, because he abounds in misstatements and romance, 
 
 ' Dealings with the Inquisition, p, 2. 
 
 « Ibid. p. 27. 9 Ibid. p. 46. « Ibid. p. 75. 
 
THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 201 
 
 as any one will see who knows any thing of the matters 
 he is writing about ; sixthly, because he runs counter to 
 facts known and confessed by all. 
 
 Indeed, I should not finish my Lecture to-night, my 
 Brothers, if I went through the series of historical facts 
 which might be detailed in contradiction to the state- 
 ments which this author advances, and in proof of the 
 utterly false view which Protestants take of the In- 
 quisition, and of the Holy See in connexion with it. I 
 will set down a few. A recent Catholic controver- 
 sialist, a Spanish writer of great name. Dr. Balmez, 
 goes so far as to say " that the Roman Inquisition has 
 never been known to pronounce the execution of capital 
 punishment, although the Apostolic See has been occu- 
 pied, during that time, by Popes of extreme rigour and 
 severity in all that relates to the civil administration'." — 
 " We find," he continues, " in all parts of Europe scaf- 
 folds prepared to punish crimes against religion ; scenes 
 which sadden the soul, were every where witnessed. 
 Eome is an exception to the rule; — Rome, which it has 
 been attempted to represent as a monster of intolerance 
 and cruelty .... The Popes, armed with a tribunal of 
 intolerance, have not spilt a drop of blood ; Protestants 
 and philosophers have shed torrents." Moreover the 
 Spanish Inquisition, against which, and not the Roman, 
 it is more common to inveigh, though Dr. Achilli writes 
 about the Roman, the Spanish Inquisition, which really 
 was bloody, is confessed by gi-eat Protestant authorities, 
 such as Ranke, and Guizot, to have been a political, not 
 
 " Balmez' Protestantism transl., p. 166. — I am rather surprised that 
 this is stated so unrestrictedly, vid. Life of St. Philip Neri, vol. i. ; how- 
 ever, the fact is substantially as stated, even though there were some 
 exceptions to the rule. 
 
 R 
 
202 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 an ecclesiastical institution; its officials, though eccle- 
 siastics, were " appointed by the crown, responsible to the 
 crown, and removable at its pleasure'." It had indeed been 
 originally authorized by the Pope, who, at the instance 
 of the civil power, granted it a bull of establishment ; 
 but as soon as it began to act, its measures so deeply 
 shocked him, that he immediately commenced a series of 
 grave remonstrances against its proceedings, and bitterly 
 complained that he had been deceived by the Spanish 
 Government. The Protestant Ranke distinctly main- 
 tains that it was even set up against the Pope and the 
 Church. " As the jurisdiction of the Court," he says, 
 " rested on the Royal Supremacy, So its exercise was 
 made available for the maintenance of the Royal au- 
 thority. It is one of those spoliations of the ecclesiastical 
 power, by which this government rose into strength .... 
 in its nature and its object, it was a purely political 
 institute." Moreover, the Pope, anxious and displeased 
 at what was going on, appointed a new functionary to 
 reside on the spot, with the office of Judge of Appeals 
 from the Inquisition, in favour of the condemned ; and 
 when this expedient was evaded, he appointed special 
 judges for particular cases ; and lastly, when the cruelty 
 of the Spanish Government and its officials, lay and 
 ecclesiastical, defeated this second attempt to amehorate 
 the evil, then he encouraged the sufferers to flee to 
 Rome, where he took them under his own protection *. 
 
 ' Vid. an able article in the Dublin Review, June, 1850, — which is 
 my authority for this and other facts. 
 
 * Gieseler says that " the Popes at first tried to cl/raw some advantage 
 from the new Institution by selling [ecclesiastical] absolution for the 
 crime of apostasy." — Vol. iii. p. 335. It is easy to throw out such insi- 
 nuations as to objects and motives. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 203 
 
 In this way it is recorded, that, in one year, he rescued 
 230 persons, and 200 in another. Sometimes he directly 
 interfered in Spain itself ; in the beginning of one year 
 he liberated fifty heretics; and fifty more a month or 
 two later; three further interpositions of mercy are 
 recorded within the year. Sometimes he set aside and 
 annulled the judgments passed ; sometimes he managed to 
 rescue the condemned from the infamy and civil conse- 
 quences of the sentence ; sometimes he actually sum- 
 moned, censured, and excommunicated the Inquisitor; 
 and often he took the part of the children of those 
 whose property was forfeited to the crown. Moreover 
 he refused to allow the Spanish Government to introduce 
 their Inquisition into Naples, or the Milanese, which then 
 belonged to Spain, from his disapprobation of its rigour. 
 Such conduct is but in accordance with the historical 
 character of the Holy See, in all times and in all countries. 
 Doubtless in the long course of eighteen hundred years, 
 there are events which need explanation, or which the 
 world might wish otherwise : but the general tenor and 
 tendency of the traditions of the Papacy, have been mercy 
 and humanity. It has ever been less fierce than the 
 nations, and in advance of the age : it has ever mode- 
 rated, not only the ferocity of barbarians, but the fana- 
 ticism of Catholic populations. Let the accusations which 
 can be made against it be put in form ; let the formal 
 charges be proved ; let the proved offences be counted 
 up ; and then Protestants themselves will be able to de- 
 termine what judgment is to be passed on the language 
 in which they indulge themselves against it. " An actual 
 hell," says their present oracle. Dr. A chilli, " seems to be 
 at the command of this Church, and it may be known by 
 the name of the Inquisition. . . . The Inquisition is truly 
 
 e2 
 
204 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 a hell, invented by priests. . . . Christianity suffers more 
 now than in former times under this harsh slavery*." 
 The Inquisition, it seems, is a hell ; then there are many 
 other hells in the world present and past, and worse hells, 
 though this is the only one of which Dr. Achilli has had 
 experience. He, indeed, may be excused for not know- 
 ing that in his reprobation of the Inquisition, he is 
 secretly reflecting upon the nation, at whose good opinipn 
 he is aiming ; but Protestants, had they the caution of 
 ordinary disputants', would have known better than to 
 accept a field of controversy, far less dangerous to their 
 enemy than to themselves. Judgment and justice, like 
 charity, begin at home : and before they commiserate 
 culprits two thousand miles away, they would do well to 
 feel some shame at victims of their own making. They 
 are shocked, forsooth, at religious ascendancy and reli- 
 gious coercion at Rome ; as if the ideas and the things 
 were foreign to a British soil and a British policy. The 
 name alone of the Inquisition, says Dr. Achilli, " is 
 sufiicient to incite in the minds of all rational beings, a 
 sentiment of horror and repugnance, little inferior to 
 what Christians experience with respect to hell itself ^'" 
 A true word ! what is the Inquisition iiit a name ? what 
 is the Court of Queen''s Bench but a name ? why should 
 not, in this matter, the names be interchanged ? what 
 has the Inquisition done at Rome, which the Royal name 
 and authority has not done in England I The question 
 is, not what a tribunal is called, but what has been its 
 work. Dr. Achilli has been imprisoned by the Inquisi- 
 tion, for preaching in Rome against the religion of Rome : 
 and has no one ever been put in prison, or fined, or 
 
 ' Inquisition, pp. 5. 11. ^ Inquisition, p. 5. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 205 
 
 transported, or doomed to death in England, for preach- 
 ing against the reHgion of England ? Those adversaries, 
 indeed, of Catholicism, pleaded that Catholicism was 
 rebellion : and has Dr. Achilli had nothing to do with a 
 party, not only dangerous, but actually and contempo- 
 raneously subversive of the Pontifical Government ? It 
 seems never to occur to a Protestant, that he must not 
 do in his own case what he blames in another ; and should 
 he at any time leave off a practice, he is surprised every 
 one else has not left it off at the same moment, and he 
 has no mercy on any that has not ; like converted pro- 
 digals, who are sternly unforgiving towards the vices 
 they have only just abandoned. 
 
 It is in my own memory, that a popular writer was con- 
 victed in the King's Bench, and sentenced to fine and 
 imprisonment, for parodying passages of the Protestant 
 Prayer Book. It is within my own memory, that an un- 
 believer in Christianity incurred a similar sentence, for ex- 
 posing and selling his publications in a shop in Fleet-street. 
 Why is Protestantism to be protected by law, if Catholi- 
 cism is not ? What has the Inquisition done to Dr. Achilli, 
 which the King's Bench did not do, and more, to Hone and 
 Carlyle ? Why is that so shocking to-day, which came so 
 natural to you thirty years ago ? Not many years have 
 passed since Unitarian worship was a legal offence ; the 
 Unitarian creed was felony, and Unitarian congrega- 
 tions incurred the penalty of transportation. " If the 
 civil magistrate," says Dr. Whately, " have no rightful 
 jurisdiction whatever in rehgious concerns, it is quite as 
 much an act of injustice, though of far less cruelty, to 
 fine a Socinian, as to burn him'." Nor was burning 
 
 ' Letters on tlie Church, p 42. 
 
206 LOGICAL INCONSISTEKCY OF 
 
 away; five men were burnt in Elizabeth's reign for 
 denying the Holy Trinity, of whom the Protestant 
 Bishop of Norwich burnt three. In the next reign, the 
 Protestant Bishop of London burnt one, and the Protes- 
 tant Bishop of Lichfield another. A third was sen- 
 tenced, but the compassion of the people saved him. 
 Catholics have fared even worse ; they have not, indeed, 
 been burned, but they have been tortured, hung, cut 
 down alive, cut open ahve, quartered, and boiled. Nay, 
 it is only quite lately, that heavy penal inflictions have 
 been taken off the daily acts of our religion. Many of 
 us, my Brothers, as you know well, wear about us crosses, 
 pictures, medals, beads, and the like, blessed by the 
 Pope ; they are still illegal ; an Agnus Dei is still illegal. 
 Nay, five years have not fully passed, since the bringing 
 them into the kingdom, and the giving them away, and 
 the receiving and wearing them, were punishable, by out- 
 lawry, in civil matters, forfeiture of all goods and chattels 
 to the Queen, and imprisonment for life. Yet the 
 British Constitution is the wonder of the world, and 
 Eome is Antichrist ! Nor has this prohibition been at 
 all times an empty menace, as it is to-day : time was, when 
 it was followed out into its extreme consequences. The 
 possession of an Agnus Dei was the foremost charge in 
 the indictment brought against the first of our martyrs 
 among the Missionary Priests in the reign of bloody 
 Elizabeth. " As soon as the Sheriff came into the 
 chamber," say the Acts of the martyrdom of Cuthbert 
 Maine, " he took Mr. Maine by the bosom, and said 
 to him. What art thou? he answered, I am a man. 
 Whereat the Sheriff", being very hot, asked if he had a 
 coat of mail under his doublet ; and so unbuttoned it, 
 and found an Agnus Dei case about his neck, which he 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 207 
 
 took from him, and called him traitor and rebel, with 
 many other opprobrious names '." Maine was hanged, 
 cut down alive, falling from a great height, and then quar- 
 tered. He was the first fruit of a sanguinary persecu- 
 tion, which lasted a hundred years. John Wilson, while 
 his heart was being torn out, said, " I forgive the Queen, 
 and all that are the cause of my death." Edward Cam- 
 pion was cruelly torn and rent upon the rack divers times. 
 " Before he went to the rack, he used to fall down at the 
 rack-house dbor, upon both knees, to commend himself 
 to God's mercy ; and upon the rack he called continually 
 upon God, repeating often the holy name of Jesus. His 
 keeper asking him the next day, how he felt his hands 
 and feet, he answered, ' Not ill, because not at all.' 
 He was hanged and embowelled at Tyburn." Ralph 
 Sherwin came next ; the hangman, taking hold of him 
 with his bloody hands, which had been busy with the 
 bowels of the martyred priest who preceded him, said to 
 him, thinking to terrify him, " Come, Sherwin, take thou 
 also thy wages." But the holy man, nothing dismayed, 
 embraced him with a cheerful countenance, and reve- 
 rently kissed the blood that stuck to his hands ; at which 
 the people were much moved. He had been twice racked, 
 and now he was dealt with as his brother before him. 
 Thomas Sherwood, after six months' imprisonment in a 
 dark and filthy hole, was hanged, cut down alive, dis- 
 membered, bowelled, and quartered. Alexander Brian had 
 needles thrust under his nails, was torn upon the rack, 
 hanged, and beheaded. George Haydock was suffered to 
 hang but a very little while, when the Sheriff" ordered the 
 rope to be cut, and the whole butchery to be performed 
 
 ' Challoner's Missionary Priests. 
 
208 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 upon him while he was alive, and perfectly sensible. 
 John Finch was dragged through the streets, his head 
 beating all the way upon the stones ; was then thrust 
 into a dark and fetid dungeon, with no bed but the damp 
 floor ; was fed sparingly, and on nothing but oxen's liver. 
 Here he was left first for weeks, then for months ; till at 
 length he was hanged, and his quarters sent to the four 
 chief towns of Lancashire. Richard White, being cut 
 down alive, pronounced the sacred name of Jesus, twice, 
 while the hangman had his hands in his bowels. James 
 Claxton, was first put into little ease, that is, a place 
 where he could neither stand, lie, nor sit ; there he was 
 for three days, fed on bread and water. Then he was 
 put into the mill to grind ; then he was hanged up by the 
 hands, till the blood sprang forth at his fingers' ends : 
 at length he was hanged, dying at the age of twenty-one 
 years. These are the acts, these are the scenes, which 
 Protestants, stopping their ears, and raising their voices, 
 and casting dust into the air, will not let us inflict upon 
 them. No, it is pleasanter to declaim against perse- 
 cution, and to call the Inquisition a hell, than to consider 
 their own devices, and the work of their own hands. The 
 catalogue reaches to some hundred names. One was 
 killed in this manner in 1577, two in 1 578, four in 1581, 
 eleven in 1582, thirteen in 1683 and 1584, nineteen in 
 1585 and 1586, thirty-nine in 1587 and 1588, and so on 
 at intervals to the end of the seventeenth century ; be- 
 sides the imprisonments and transportations, which can 
 hardly be numbered °. What will the Protestants bring 
 
 " " If you talk to me of the intolerance of Rome, or the liorrors of the 
 Inquisition," says Mr. Moore, M.P. for Mayo, in a late letter to the 
 " Times" about Ireland, "I can submit to your inspection the original 
 
THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 209 
 
 against the Holy See comparable to atrocities such as 
 these! not, surely, with any fairness, the burnings in 
 Queen Mary's reign, the acts, as they were, of an EngHsh 
 party, inflamed with revenge against their enemies, and 
 opposed by Cardinal Pole, the Pope's Legate, as well as 
 by the ecclesiastics of Spain. 
 
 My time is run out, Brothers of the Oratory, before 
 my subject is exhausted. One remark I will make in 
 conclusion. The horrors I have been describing are no 
 anomaly in the history of Protestantism. Whatever 
 theoretical differences it has had on this subject with the 
 Catholic Religion, it has in matter of fact ever shown 
 itself a persecuting power. It has persecuted in England, 
 in Scotland, in Ireland, in Holland, in France, in Ger- 
 many, in Geneva. Calvin burnt a Socinian, Cranmer an 
 Anabaptist, Luther advised the wholesale murder of the 
 fanatical peasants, and Knox was party to bloody enact- 
 ments and bloody deeds. You would think that with 
 scandals such as these at their door, Protestants would 
 find it safest to let history alone, and not meddle with 
 the question of persecution at all, from a lively conscious- 
 ness of deeds identical with those which they impute to 
 the Catholic Church. Not a bit of it. What then is 
 their view of the matter I Strange to say, they make it 
 their plea of exculpation, and the actual difference be- 
 tween Catholics and them, that they condemn persecution 
 in principle ; in other words, they bring their own incon- 
 sistency as the excuse for their crime. Now I grant 
 them, I am far from disputing it, that a man who holds a 
 
 of an Act of Parliament, passed unanimously by a whole Protestant Legis- 
 lature, bishops and all, which subjected the whole priesthood of a wliole 
 people to obscene and horrible mutilation." 
 
210 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 right principle, and occasionally, nay, often, offends against 
 it, is better than he who holds the opposite wrong prin- 
 ciple, and acts consistently upon it ; but that is not the 
 present case. The case before us is that of persons who 
 never once have acted on the principle they profess — 
 never once ; for they cannot produce their instance, when 
 Protestants, of whatever denomination, were in posses- 
 sion of national power for any sufiBcient time, without 
 persecuting some or other of their polemical aptagonists. 
 So it has been, so it is now. Three centuries ago Pro- 
 testantism in England set off on its course with murder- 
 ing Catholic priests ; but a few months have passed since 
 a clergyman of the Estabhshment gave out to his con- 
 gregation that transportation was too good for us, and he 
 thought we all ought to be put to death. So far from the 
 Protestant party feeling any real shock at this avowal, a 
 little while after, a second clergyman, as influential in 
 Manchester as the first mentioned is in Liverpool, re- 
 peated the sentiment ; and still no shock or sensation in 
 the Protestant public was the result. Doubtless they 
 gave their reasons for wishing it, sufficient in their own 
 judgment, and so too did the Protestant Elizabeth, so 
 too did Gardiner and the other advisers of the Catholic 
 Mary ; but still such was the upshot of their reasons, 
 death to every Catholic Priest. The present case then 
 is not that of an individual, or a ruler, or a body politic 
 laying down a good principle, and not being able at times 
 and under circumstances, through passion or policy, to 
 act up to it ; no, it is the case of a religion saying one 
 thing, and on every actual and possible occasion doing 
 another. Can such a religion extenuate its acts on the 
 ground of its professions ? Yet this is the excuse, nay, 
 this is the boast, the glory, of the Protestant party : — 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIKW. 211 
 
 " We always do one thing, and we always say another ; 
 we always preach peace, but we always make war ; we 
 have the face of a lamb, and the claws of a dragon. And 
 we have another boast ; to be sure, we persecute, but 
 then, as a set off, you see, we always denounce in others 
 what we are in the practice of doing ourselves ; this is 
 our second great virtue. Observe, we, persecutors, pro- 
 test against persecution, — virtue one ; next, we, perse- 
 cutors, blacken and curse the Papists for persecuting, — 
 virtue two ; and now for a third virtue — why, we are so 
 superlatively one-sided, that we do not even see our own 
 utter inconsistency in this matter, and we deny, to use a 
 vulgar but expressive proverb, that what is sauce for the 
 goose is sauce for the gander. We think that profession 
 and denunciation make up a good Christian, and that we 
 may persecute freely, if we do but largely quote Scripture 
 against it." 
 
 And now I might leave Protestants to explain this 
 matter if they can, and to unravel the mystery how it is 
 that, after all their solemn words against persecution, they 
 have persecuted, as I have shown, whenever, wherever, 
 and however they could, from Elizabeth down to Victoria, 
 from the domestic circle up to the Legislature, from black 
 looks to the extremity of the gibbet and the stake ; I 
 might leave them, but I am tempted to make them one 
 parting suggestion. I observe, then, it is no accident 
 that they unite in their history this abjuration with this 
 practice of religious coercion ; the two go together. I say 
 it boldly and decidedly, and do not flinch from the avowal, 
 — Protestants attempt too much, and they end in doing 
 nothing. They go too far ; they attempt what is against 
 nature, and therefore impossible. I am not proving this ; 
 it is a separate subject ; it would require a treatise. I 
 
212 LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY OF 
 
 am only telling the Protestant world why it is they ever 
 persecute, in spite of their professions. It is because 
 their doctrine of private judgment, as they hold it, is 
 extreme and unreal, and necessarily leads to excesses 
 in the opposite direction. They are attempting to re- 
 verse nature, with no warrant for doing so ; and nature 
 has its ample revenge upon them. They altogether 
 ignore a principle which the Creator has put into our 
 breasts ; and, in consequence, they deprive themselves of 
 the opportunity of controlling, restraining, and directing 
 it. So was it with the actors in the first French Revo- 
 lution : never were there such extravagant praises of the 
 rights of reason ; never so signal, so horrible a profana- 
 tion of them. They cried, " Liberty, Equality, Frater- 
 nity," and then proceeded to massacre the priests, and to 
 hurry the laity by thousands to the scaffold or the 
 stream. 
 
 Far other is the wisdom of the Church. It is plain, if 
 only to prevent the occurrence of persecution, she must — 
 to use a phrase of the day — head a movement, which it is 
 impossible to suppress. And in the course of eighteen hun- 
 dred years, though her children have been guilty of various 
 excesses, though she herself is responsible for isolated 
 acts of most solemn import, yet for one deed of severity 
 with which she can be charged, there have been a hun- 
 dred of her acts, repressive of the persecutor and pro- 
 tective of his victims. She has been a never-failing 
 fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and compassion, 
 in consequence of her very recognition of natural im- 
 pulses and instincts, which Protestants would vainly deny 
 and contradict : and this is the solution of the paradox 
 stated by the distinguished author I just now quoted, 
 to the effect, that the religion which forbids private judg- 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 213 
 
 ment in matters of revelation, is historically more tole- 
 rant than the religions which uphold it. His words 
 will bear repetition : " We find, in all parts of Europe, 
 scaffolds prepared to punish crimes against religion ; 
 scenes which sadden the soul were every where witnessed. 
 Eome is one exception to the rule ; Eome, which it has 
 been attempted to represent as a monster of intolerance 
 and cruelty. It is true, that the Popes have not preached, 
 like the Protestants, universal toleration ; but the facts 
 show the difference between the Protestants and the 
 Popes. The Popes, armed with a tribunal of intole- 
 rance, have scarce spilt a drop of blood ; Protestants 
 and philosophers have shed it in torrents '." 
 
 ' Since this Lecture has been in type, I have heen shown De Maistre's 
 Letters on the Inquisition, and am pleased to see that in some places I 
 have followed so great a writer. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW 
 
 In attributing the extreme aversion and contempt in 
 which we Catholics are held by this great Protestant 
 country, to the influence of falsehood and misrepresen- 
 tation, energetic in its operation and unbounded in its 
 extent, I believe in my heart I have referred it to a 
 cause, which will be acknowledged to be both real and 
 necessary by the majority of thoughtful and honest 
 minds. Catholics or not, who set themselves to examine 
 the state of the case. Take an educated man, who has 
 seen the world, and interested himself in the religious 
 bodies, disputes, and events of the day, let him be ever 
 so ill-disposed towards the Catholic Church, yet I think, 
 if he will but throw his mind upon the subject, and then 
 candidly speak out, he will confess that the arguments 
 which lead him to his present state of feeling about her, 
 whatever they are, would not be sufficient for the multi- 
 tude of men. The multitude, if it is to be arrested and 
 moved, requires altogether a different polemic from that 
 
216 PKEJDDICE THE LIFE OK 
 
 which is at the command of the man of letters, of thought, 
 of feeling, and of honour. His proofs against Catho- 
 licism, though he considers them sufficient himself, and 
 considers that they ought to be sufficient for the mul- 
 titude, have a sobriety, a delicacy, an exactness, a nice 
 adjustment of parts, a width and breadth, a philosophical 
 cumulativeness, an indirectness and circuitousness, which 
 will be lost on the generality of men. The problem is, 
 how to make an impression on those who have never 
 learned to exercise their minds, to compare thought with 
 thought, to analyse an argument, or to balance proba-' 
 bilities. The Catholic Church appeals to the imagina- 
 tion, as a great fact, wherever she comes ; she strikes it ; 
 Protestants must find some idea equally captivating as 
 she is, something fascinating, something capable of pos- 
 sessing, engrossing, and overwhelming, if they are to 
 battle with her hopefully : their cause is lost, unless they 
 can do this. It was then a thought of genius, and, as I 
 think, superhuman genius, to pitch upon the expedient 
 which has been used against the Church from Christ's 
 age to our own ; to call her, as in the first century, 
 Beelzebub, so in the sixteenth, Anti-Christ ; it was a bold, 
 politic, and successful move. It Startled men who heard ; 
 and, whereas Anti-Christ by the very notion of his cha- 
 racter will counterfeit Christ, he will therefore be neces- 
 sarily like Him ; and if Anti-Christ is like Christ, then 
 Christ, I suppose, must be like Anti-Christ ; thus there 
 was, even at first start, a felicitous plausibility about the 
 charge, which went far towards securing belief, while it 
 commanded attention. 
 
 This, however, though much, was not enough ; the 
 charge that Christ is Anti-Christ must be sustained; 
 and sustained it could not possibly be, in the vastness 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 217 
 
 and enormity of its idea, as I have described it, by means 
 of truth. Falsehood then has ever been the indis- 
 pensable condition of the accusation which Protestants 
 prefer ; and the accusation they prefer is the indis- 
 pensable weapon wherewith to encounter the antagonist 
 whom they combat. Thus you see that calumny and 
 obloquy of every kind is, from the nature of the case, 
 the portion of the Church, while she has enemies, that is 
 in other wor^s, while she is militant, — her portion, that 
 is, if she is to be argued with at all ; and argued with 
 she must be, because man from his very moral consti- 
 tution cannot content himself, in his warfare of whatever 
 kind, with the use of brute force. The lion rends his 
 prey, and gives no reason for doing so ; but man cannot 
 persecute without assigning to himself a reason for his 
 act ; he must settle it with his conscience ; he must 
 have sufficient reasons, and if good reasons are not forth- 
 coming, there is no help for it ; he must put up with 
 bad. How to conflict with the moral influence of the 
 Church, being taken as the problem to be solved, nothing 
 is left but to misstate and defame ; there is no alterna- 
 tive. Tame facts, elaborate inductions, subtle presump- 
 tions, will not avail with the many; something which 
 will cut a dash, something gaudy and staring is the rhe- 
 toric in request ; he must make up his mind then to resign 
 the population to the action of the Catholic Church, or 
 he must slander her to her greater confusion. This, I 
 maintain, is the case ; this, I consider, must be the case ; 
 — bad logic, false facts ; and I really do think that 
 candid men, of whatever persuasion, though they will 
 not express themselves exactly in the words I have used, 
 will agree with me in substance ; will allow, that, putting 
 aside the question whether Protestantism can be sup- 
 
 s 2 
 
218 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 ported by any other method than controversy, for in- 
 stance, by simple establishment, or by depriving Catholics 
 of education, or by any other violent expedient, still, if 
 popular controversy is to be used, then fable, not truth, 
 calumny, not justice, will be its staple. Strip it of its 
 fallacies and its fictions, and where are you ? It is no 
 accident then that we are the victims of slander. 
 
 So much in corroboration of what I have said in former 
 Lectures ; but I have not yet stated the full influence in 
 the controversy, or (as it may be called) virtue, of this 
 system of misrepresentation. The question may have 
 occurred to you, my Brothers, as a philosophical difficulty, 
 how it is that able, cultivated, enlarged minds should, not 
 only be the organs of the grossest slanders about us, but 
 should refuse to retract them, when they are absolutely 
 silenced and exposed. The very courtesy of civilized life 
 demands from them a retractation ; it is the rule among 
 gentlemen that, even when an accuser adheres in his 
 heart to what he has advanced against another, yet on that 
 other's denying it, he accepts the denial and withdraws 
 his words. It is otherwise in the contest with Catholics; 
 when we deny what is charged against our character or 
 conduct, and deny it with irresistible arguments, we not 
 only have reason to desiderate that outward consideration 
 which the laws of society enforce, but probably are bluntly 
 told that we lie, and there we are left, and the matter too. 
 Doubtless this phenomenon is traceable in part to that 
 characteristic of the human kind, noticed by philoso- 
 phers, to crouch to what is in the ascendant, and to in- 
 sult what is down in the world ; but it partly arises from 
 a cause to which I have not yet referred, and which I 
 mean to make the subject of this Lecture. This cause 
 is so obvious, that you may wonder I am so circuitous in 
 
THE I'ROTESTANT VIEW. 219 
 
 introducing it, and why I have not treated of it before ; 
 but it properly comes in this place. I allude to the 
 power of prejudice, which is to be considered a principal 
 reason why our most triumphant refutations of the facts 
 and arguments urged against us by our enemies avail us 
 so little ; for, in reality, those facts and arguments have 
 already done their work before their demolition arrives, 
 which work their demolition has no tendency to undo, by 
 impressing ii^e minds of the persons who have heard and 
 have used them with a prejudice against us. 
 
 Now, first I must explain what prejudice is, and how 
 it is produced, before I go on to consider its operation. 
 Prejudice, you know, means properly a pre-judgment, or 
 judgment by anticipation ; a judgment which is formed 
 prior to the particular question submitted to us, yet is 
 made to bear upon it. Thus, if a man is accused of theft, 
 and I already believe him to be an habitual thief, I am 
 naturally led to think that this particular charge is well- 
 founded, before going into the evidence which is actually 
 adducible for it. In this way, previous good or bad name 
 has so much to do with the decision in courts of justice ; 
 slight evidence will be enough to convict a reputed thief ; 
 on the other hand, a person under accusation, in order to 
 repel it, brings witnesses to his character. When we 
 have this previous knowledge of persons, we say, — should 
 their actions or they themselves come under considera- 
 tion, — on the one hand, that we cannot help being " pre- 
 judiced" against one, and on the other, "prejudiced" or 
 "prepossessed"' {m/acoM/" of another. Now there is no- 
 thing unfair in all this ; what is past naturally bears on 
 the future ; from what has been we conjecture what will 
 be ; it is reasonable and rational to do so ; and hence, 
 persons who have all their lives long heard nothing but 
 
220 PREJDIflCE THE LIFE OF 
 
 bad of Catholics, naturally and fairly entertain a bad 
 opinion of them ; and when a new charge is made against 
 them, are disposed to credit it without stopping to con- 
 sider the evidence. And it matters not, whether the 
 previous judgment, which influences their belief, be a 
 judgment of their own forming, or be inherited ; let it be 
 the tradition of their country; still there is nothing 
 strange, there is nothing wrong, in their being influenced 
 by it. 
 
 But then observe this : — after all, a previous judgment, 
 conclusion, or belief such as this, in which consists their 
 prejudice, is but vague and general ; it is not more than 
 an opinion or inference, of greater or less strength, as 
 the case may be, and varying with the trustworthiness of 
 the reasons or testimony which has created it. It cannot 
 reasonably, and must not be taken, as infallible ; did the 
 persons in question so simply rest upon it, that they 
 would not hear what could be said on the other side, as 
 if they were quite sure nothing could be said to the pur- 
 pose, they would cease to act rationally, they would be 
 simply obstinate. And this is prejudice in its bad and 
 culpable sense, the sense in which the word is commonly 
 used, and in which I am using it here, and am imputing 
 it to Protestants. I accuse them of making too much 
 of the Tradition which has come down to them; they 
 not only take it at first sight as true, and act upon it as 
 true (a proceeding against which nothing can fairly be 
 said), but they put such implicit confidence in it, that 
 they cannot bring themselves to hear what can be said on 
 the other side. They make the Tradition practically infal- 
 lible, as if it had settled the view they are to take of the 
 subject of it, once for all and for ever. 
 
 How can any one, you will say, act so absurdly, who 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 221 
 
 has any pretension to good sense and good feeling ? it may 
 happen in a measure to any one of us, and in the follow- 
 ing way. Now I hope I shall not be taxing your atten- 
 tion, my Brothers, more than I have a right to do on an 
 occasion such as this, in what I am going to say in expla- 
 nation. Prejudice then is something more than an act 
 of judgment ; it is not a mere act, it is a habit or state 
 of mind. I must refer to a peculiarity, not of the 
 English character, but of our mental constitution gene- 
 rally. When, then, we hear a thing said again and 
 again, it makes what may be called an impression upon 
 us. We not only hold it in our mind as an opinion or ' 
 belief, as separate from us, and depending on the in- | 
 formation or grounds on which we have received it, ! 
 and as admitting of being thrown off the next minute 
 at our will, if we have reasons for discarding it, but it 
 has acted upon our mind itself, it has sunk into it, it has ' 
 impressed it. No longer at our disposal as before, to 
 keep or throw away, it becomes one of our habitual and , 
 invariable modes of judging and believing, something hke j 
 the ideas we have of good and evil, and of religious duty. ; 
 The idea, for instance, that justice is a virtue, or that i 
 there is a Divine Being, is imprinted in our minds ; it is 
 congenial to our nature, and true, and that, because it is 
 found in all times and places, with exceptions too rare or 
 inconsiderable to be worth noticing. Such an idea, I say, 
 is true ; still there may also be impressions, similar in 
 permanence, which yet are false and uncongenial to our 
 nature, and they are characterized first in not being 
 common to all ; next, in not being found in the mind 
 from the first (if I may so speak), not coming thither no 
 one knows how, that is, from heaven itself, but formed in 
 us by the accidental occurrence of things we have seen or 
 
222 PKEJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 heard, and another has not. These impressions are com- 
 monly created in the mind by the repetition of something 
 striking it from without. A fact or argument is not 
 stronger in its own nature by being repeated ; but the effect 
 on any mind, which is passive under the infliction, is 
 stronger and stronger every time it is repeated. In this 
 way almost any idea whatever may be impressed on the 
 mind ; a man will begin at length to think himself a fool or 
 a knave, if every one tells him so. This then is what the 
 perpetual talk against Catholicism is doing against it in 
 England ; the clatter does not become truer because it is 
 incessant ; but it continually deepens the impression in the 
 minds of those who hear it, that Catholicism is an impos- 
 ture. I say, there is no increase of logical cogency ; a lie 
 is a lie just as much the tenth time it is told as the first, 
 or rather more ; it is ten lies instead of one ; but it gains 
 in r heto rical jnfluence. Let it be repeated again and 
 again ; it matters not ; the utterer has only to go on 
 steadily proclaiming it, and first one, then another will 
 begin to believe it, and at length it will assume the shape 
 of a very respectable fact or opinion, which is held by a 
 
 I considerable number of well-informed persons. This is 
 what is meant by the proverb. Fling dirt enough, and 
 some will stick. And if even one pertinacious slanderer 
 has the prospect of such success in his slander, from this 
 peculiarity of our nature, what must be the efiect when 
 vast multitudes of men are ever crying out to each other, 
 with unwearied and sleepless energy, fables and fallacies 
 against the Catholic religion ? Why, each is convincing 
 the other, and deepening the hostile impression in his 
 mind with a keenness and precision which it is appalling 
 to contemplate ; and thus the meetings and preachings 
 which kre ever- going on against us on all sides, though 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 223 
 
 they may have no argumentative force whatever, are still 
 immense factories for the creation of prejudice, — an ar- 
 ticle, by means of these exertions, more carefully elabo- 
 • rated, and more lasting in its texture, than any specimens 
 of hardware, or other material productions, which are the 
 boast of a town such as this is. 
 
 Now the peculiarity of these mental impressions is, that 
 they do not depend afterwards upon the facts or reasonings 
 by which they were produced, any more than a blow, when 
 once given, depends on the stone or the stick which gave 
 it. To burn the stick will not salve the sore : and to 
 demolish the argument, as I have already said, does not 
 obliterate the prejudice. Suppose I have been told that 
 my neighbour is a thief; suppose the idea has rested 
 on my mind, and I have accustomed myself to it ; and 
 suppose I hear what it was that made my informant 
 assert it, and examine into it, and find it is utterly un- 
 true : why I may cast off my feeling against my neighbour 
 at once and altogether, but I may have a difficulty in 
 doing so. The idea may still cling to me, and I may find, 
 it impossible, except by degrees, to overcome the associ- 
 ations with which he is connected in my mind, and the 
 repugnance I feel to him ; there is something I have to 
 struggle against. And thus, even though a slander be 
 perfectly cleared up, even though it be brought into a 
 court of justice, and formally disconnected from the per- 
 son who has been the victim of it, he is not what he was. 
 It was a saying of the greatest of the Romans, that 
 " Caesar's wife should not be suspected." The slander 
 has, as it were, stained the minds of the hearers, and only 
 time, if even time, can wipe it out. This, then, is pro- 
 perly a prejudice, not an opinion which is at our own 
 disposal, and dependent for its presence or its dismissal 
 
22-1 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 on our will, but an impression, which reason indeed can 
 act upon, and the will can subdue, but only by degrees and 
 with trouble. It sunk into the mind by the repetition of 
 untrue representations ; it must be effaced by an opposite , 
 process, by a succession of thoughts and deeds anta- 
 gonist to it. We must make it up to the injured party 
 by acts of kindness, by friendly services, by good words, 
 by praising him, by the desire and attempt to please him 
 and honour him, and thus gradually we shall lose all 
 recollection of our former hard thoughts of him : on the 
 other hand, it is quite possible to shut ourselves up in 
 ourselves ; to keep at a distance from him, and to cherish 
 coldness or ill-will ; and then, in spite of the calumnies 
 having been triumphantly refuted, and of our nominal 
 acquiescence, we shall be as suspicious or jealous as ever. 
 We shall say that we are not, after all, satisfied ; that 
 we cannot, indeed, give our grounds, but that things have 
 a suspicious appearance ; and we look about diligently for 
 some fresh ground of accusation against him, to justify 
 us in such thoughts and such conduct. 
 
 Now you may recollect. Brothers of the Oratory, that, 
 in speaking of prejudice in its first and most simple sense, 
 as a mere anticipation or previous opinion in disparage- 
 ment of another, I said there was no harm in it. It is a 
 mere judgment formed on previous grounds, like any 
 judgment, which the owner puts away at once, as soon as 
 its unsoundness is detected. But prejudice, in its second 
 and ordinary sense, in which I have now for some time 
 been using it, viz. as an impression or stain on the mind, 
 is not at all innocent or excusable, just the reverse. 
 This may surprise you ; you may say. How can a man 
 help his impressions ! he is passive under them ; they 
 come of themselves ; he is as little answerable for what 
 
THE PROTKSTAKT VIEW. 225 
 
 is actually stamped upon his mind, as for a wound which 
 is inflicted on his body : but this is very far from the case, 
 as a little consideration will show. The will goes with a 
 prejudice ; there is no compulsion or necessity ; those 
 who have prejudices are unwilling to give them up ; 
 there is no prejudice without the will : we are prejudiced, 
 I say, because we will ; and therefore, if we did not will, 
 we should not be prejudiced. I do not say we could get 
 rid of a prejudice in a day ; but we should, in that case, 
 be tending to get rid of it. Scripture speaks of those 
 who " loved darkness rather than light :" and it is im- 
 possible for us to deny, from what we see on all sides, 
 that as regards the Protestant view of Catholics, men 
 love to be left to their own dark thoughts of us ; they 
 desire to be able with good reason and a good conscience 
 to hate us : they do not wish to be disabused, they are 
 loth that so pleasant an error should be torn from them. 
 Fii'st, then, I say, that pre judice depend3 __on J.hti will : 
 now, secondly, if it does depend on the will, it is not, 
 cannot be, innocent, because it is directed, not against 
 things, but against persons, against God's rational crea- 
 tures, against our fellows, towards all of whom we owe 
 the duties of humanity and charity. There is a natural 
 law, binding us to think as well as we can of every one ; 
 we ought to be glad when imputations are removed, and 
 scandals cleared up. And this law is observed by every 
 generous mind : such a person is pained to believe that 
 bad things can be said of others with any plausibility, 
 and will rejoice to be able to deny them — will hope they 
 are not true, and will give the subject of them the benefit 
 of his doubts. Every hour, then, as it passes, bears with 
 it protests against prejudice, from the natural striving of 
 the heart the other way. Jealousy, suspicion, dishke. 
 
226 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 thinking ill, are feelings so painful to the rightly dis- 
 posed, that there is a constant reclamation going on 
 within them, an uneasiness that they should be obliged 
 to entertain them, and an effort to get rid of them. Nay, 
 there are persons of such kind and tender hearts, that 
 they would believe there is no evil at all in the world if 
 they could : and it is a relief to them whenever they can 
 knock off, so to say, any part of the score of accusations 
 which the multitude of men bring against each other. On 
 the other hand, to close the ears to an explanation, and 
 to show a desire that the worst may be true, — unless in- 
 deed the innocence of the individual who at present lies 
 under a cloud involves the guilt of a vast many others 
 instead, so that one has to strike a balance of crimes, — 
 I say, to resolve that rumours or suspicions, for which no 
 distinct grounds are alleged, shall be true, is simple male- 
 volence, deplorable, shocking, inexcusable. 
 
 I do not know how any one can deny the justice of 
 these remarks ; but observe what a melancholy comment 
 they form on the treatment which Catholics receive in 
 this Protestant country. Where are the tender hearts, 
 the kind feelings, the upright understandings of our 
 countrymen and countrywomen ? where is the generosity 
 of the Briton, of which from one's youth up one has been 
 so proud ? where is his love of fair play, and his com- 
 passion for the weak, and his indignation at the oppressor, 
 when we are concerned ? The most sensible people on 
 earth, the most sensitive of inconsistency, the most 
 ambitious of propriety and good taste, would rather 
 commit any weakness, and incongruity — would rather 
 make fun, as they do, for the whole world by their con- 
 duct, than be betrayed into any portion — I will not say 
 of justice, I will not say of humanity and mercy, but of 
 
THE PROTESTAKT VIEW. 227 
 
 simple reasonableness and common sense, in their be- 
 haviour to the professors of the Catholic Religion ; so 
 much so, that to state even drily and accurately what 
 they do daily, is to risk the blame of ridicule and satire, 
 which, if any where, would be simply gratuitous and 
 officious in this matter, where truth most assuredly, 
 " when unadorned," is " adorned the most." This I 
 cannot help ; but, observe, that nothing I have said, or 
 shall say, is levelled at the objects or the rites of Protes- 
 tant worship. I am concerned with Protestants them- 
 selves ; moreover not with Protestants quiescent and 
 peaceable, but with Protestants malevolent, belligerent, 
 busy and zealous in an aggression upon our character and 
 conduct. We do not treat them with suspicion, contempt, 
 and aversion : this is their treatment of us : our only 
 vengeance, surely it is not a great one, is to make a 
 careful analysis of that treatment. 
 
 The Prejudiced Man, then — for thus I shall personify 
 that superincumbent quality which energizes and operates 
 so widely and so unvveariedly in the Protestant commu- 
 nity — the prejudiced man takes it for granted, or feels an 
 undoubting persuasion, not only that he himself is in 
 possession of divine truth, for this is a matter of opinion, 
 and he has a right to his own, but that we, who differ 
 from him, are universally impostors, tyrants, hypocrites, 
 cowards, and slaves. This is a first principle with him ; 
 it is like divine faith in the Catholic, nothing can shake 
 it. If he meets with any story against Catholics, on any 
 or no authority, which does but fall in with his notion of 
 them, he eagerly catches at it. Authority goes for no- 
 thing; likelihood, as he considers it, does instead of 
 testimony ; what he is now told is just what he expected. 
 Perhaps it is a random report, put into circulation. 
 
228 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 merely because it had a chance of succeeding, or thrown 
 up Hke a straw to the wind ; perhaps it is a mere pub- 
 lisher's speculation, who thinks that a narrative of hor- 
 rors will pay well for the printing : it matters not, he is 
 perfectly convinced of its truth ; he knew all about it 
 beforehand ; it is just what he always has said ; it is the 
 old tale over again a hundred times. Accordingly he 
 buys it by the thousand, and sends it about with all speed 
 in every direction, to his circle of friends and acquaint- 
 ance, to the newspapers, to the great speakers at public 
 meetings ; he fills the Sunday and week-day schools with 
 it, loads the pedlers' baskets, perhaps introduces it into 
 the family spiritual reading on Sunday evenings, consoled 
 and comforted with the reflection that he has got some- 
 thing fresh and strong and undeniable, in evidence of the 
 utter odiousness of the Catholic religion. 
 
 Next comes an absolute, explicit, total denial or refu- 
 tation of the precious calumny, whatever it may be, on 
 unimpeachable authority. The Prejudiced Man simply 
 discredits it, and simply puts it aside, not taking any 
 impression from it at all, or paying it the slightest atten- 
 tion. This, if he can : if he cannot, if it is urged upon 
 him, and brought up -against him, he draws himself up, 
 looks sternly at the objector, and goes on saying the very 
 Same thing as before, with a louder voice and more con- 
 fident manner, by way of making up for the interruption, 
 of braving the confutation, and of showing the world that 
 nothing whatever will ever make him think one hair- 
 breadth more favourably of Popery than he does think, 
 than he ever has thought, and than his family ever 
 thought before him, since the time of the fine old English 
 gentleman. 
 
 If a person ventures to ask the Prejudiced Man what 
 
THE I'KOTESTANT VIEW. 229 
 
 he knows of Catholics personally, — what he knows of 
 individuals, of their ways, of their books, or of their 
 worship, he blesses himself that he knows nothing of them 
 at all, and he never will ; nay, if they fall in his way, he 
 will take himself out of it ; and if unawares he shall ever 
 be pleased with a Catholic without knowing who it is, 
 he wishes by anticipation to retract such satisfaction. 
 About our state of mind, our views of things, our ends 
 and objects, our doctrines, our defence of them, our 
 judgment on his objections to them, our thoughts about 
 him, he absolutely refuses to be enlightened : and he is 
 as sore if expostulated with on so evident an infirmity of 
 mind, as if it were some painful wound or local inflamma- 
 tion, which must not be handled ever so tenderly. He 
 shrinks from the infliction. 
 
 However, one cannot always make the whole world 
 take one's own way of thinking ; so let us suppose the 
 famous story, to which the Prejudiced Man has pledged 
 his veracity, utterly discredited and scattered to the 
 winds by the common consent of mankind ; this only 
 makes him the more violent. For it ougJd, he says, to 
 be true, and it is mere special pleading to lay much 
 stress on its not having all the evidence which it might 
 have ; for if it be not true, yet half a hundred like stofies 
 are. It is only impertinent to ask for evidence, when the 
 fact has so often been established. What is the good of 
 laboriously vindicating St. Eligius, or exposing a leading 
 article in a newspaper, or a speaker at a meeting, or a 
 popular publication, when' the thing is notorious; and to 
 deny it is nothing else than a vexatious demand upon his 
 time, and an insult to his common sense. He feels the 
 same sort of indignation which the Philistine champion, 
 Goliath, might have felt, when David went out to 6ght 
 
230 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 with him. " Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with 
 a staff? and the Philistine cursed him by his gods." And, 
 as the huge giant, had he first been hit, not in the brain, 
 but in the foot or the shoulder, would have yelled, not 
 with pain, but with fury at the insult, and would not have 
 been frightened at all or put upon the defensive, so our 
 Prejudiced Man is but enraged so much the more, and 
 almost put beside himself, by the presumption of those 
 who, with their doubts or their objections, interfere with 
 the great Protestant Tradition about the Catholic Church. 
 Proof, against us is, as he thinks, but a matter of time ; 
 and we know in affairs of every-day, how annoyed and 
 impatient we are likely to become, when obstacles are put 
 in our way in any such case. We are angered at delays, 
 when they are but accidental, and the issue is certain ; we 
 are not angered, but we are sobered, we become careful 
 and attentive to impediments, when there is doubt about 
 the issue. The very same difficulties put us on our metal 
 in the one case, and do but irritate us in the other. If, 
 for instance, a person cannot open a door, or get a key 
 into a lock, which he has done a hundred times before, 
 you know how apt he is to shake, and to rattle, and to 
 force it, as if some great insult was offered him by its 
 resistance; you know how surprised a wasp, or other 
 large insect is, that he cannot get through a window 
 pane ; such is the feeling of the Pi-ejudiced Man when 
 we urge our objections — not softened by them at all, but 
 exasperated the more ; for what is the use of incontro- 
 vertible arguments against a conclusion which he already 
 considers to be infallible ? 
 
 This, you see, is the reason why the most overwhelming 
 refutations of the calumnies brought against us, do us no 
 good at all with the Protestant community. We were 
 
THK PROTESTANT VIEW. 231 
 
 tempted, perhaps, to say to ourselves, " What n>ill they 
 have to say in answer to this ? now at last the falsehood 
 is put down for ever, it will never show its face again !" 
 Vain hope ! just the reverse : like Milton's day star, 
 after sinking into the ocean, it soon " repairs its drooping 
 head,". 
 
 " And tricks its beams, and with new -spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 
 
 Certainly, for it is rooted in the mind itself ; it has no 
 uncertain holding of things external ; it does not depend 
 on the accident of time, or place, or testimony, or sense, 
 or possibility, or fact ; it depends on the will alone. 
 Therefore, " unhurt amid the war of elements," it 
 " smiles" at injury, and " defies" defeat ; for it is safe 
 and secure, while it has the man's own will on its side. 
 Such is the virtue of prejudice — it is ever reproductive ; 
 in vain is Jeffreys exposed ; he rises again in Teodore ; 
 Teodore is put down ; in vain, for future story-tellers and 
 wonder-mongers, as yet unknown to fame, are below the 
 horizon, and will come to view, and will unfold their tale 
 of horror, each in his day, in long succession ; for these 
 whispers, and voices, and echoes, and reverberations, are 
 but the response, and, as it were, the expression of that 
 profound inward persuasion, and that intense illusion, 
 which wraps the soul and steeps the imagination of the 
 Prejudiced Man. 
 
 However, we will suppose him in a specially candid 
 humour, when you set about undeceiving him on some 
 point on which he misstates the Catholic faith. He is 
 determined to be fairness itself, and to do full justice to 
 your argument. So you begin your explanation; — you 
 assure him he misconceives your doctrines ; he has got 
 a wrong view of facts. You appeal to original autho- 
 
232 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 rities, and show him how shamefully they have been mis- 
 quoted : you appeal to history, and prove it has been 
 garbled. Nothing is wanting to your representation ; it 
 is triumphant. He is silent for a moment, then he begins 
 with a sentiment. " What clever fellows these Oathohcs 
 are ! " he says, " I defy you to catch them tripping ; they 
 have a way out of every thing. I thought we had you, 
 but I fairly own I am beaten. This is how the Jesuits 
 get on ; always educated, subtle, well up in their books ; 
 a Protestant has no chance with them." You see, my 
 Brothers, you have not advanced a step in convincing 
 him. 
 
 Such is the Prejudiced Man at best advantage ; but 
 commonly under the same circumstances he will be grave 
 and suspicious. " I confess," he will say, " I do not like 
 these very complete explanations; they are too like a 
 made up case. I can easily believe there was exaggera- 
 tion in the charge ; perhaps money was only sometimes 
 taken for the permission to sin, but our friend professes 
 to prove it was never taken : this is proving too much. I 
 always suspect something behind, when every thing is so 
 very easy and clear." Or again, " We see before our 
 eyes a tremendous growth of Popery ; Tiow does it grow ? 
 You tell me you are poor, your priests few, your friends 
 without influence ; then how does it grow ? It could not 
 grow without means : it is bad enough, if you can assign 
 a cause ; it is worse, if you cannot. Cause there must 
 be some where, for effects imply causes. How did it get 
 into Oxford ? tell me that. How has it got among the 
 Protestant Clergy ? I like all things above board ; I hate 
 concealment, I detest plots. There is evidently some- 
 thing to be accounted for ; and the more cogently you 
 prove that it is not referrible to any thing which we see. 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 233 
 
 the graver suspicions do you awaken, that it is traceable 
 to something which is hid." Thus our Prejudiced Man 
 simply ignores that special cause, to which Catholics of 
 course refer the growth of Catholicism, and which surely, 
 if admitted, is sufficient to account for it, viz. that it is 
 true. He will not admit the power of truth among the 
 assignable, conjectural causes. He would rather, I am 
 sure, assign it to the agency of evil spirits, than suspect 
 the possibility of a religion being true which he wills 
 should be a falsehood. 
 
 One word here, as to this growth of Catholicism, of 
 conversions, and converts ; — the Prejudiced Man has his 
 own view of it all. First, he denies the fact that there 
 are any conversions or converts at all. This is a bold 
 game, and will not succeed in England, though I have been 
 told that in Ireland it has been strenuously maintained. 
 However, let him grant the fact, that converts there are, 
 and he has a second ground to fall back upon : the converts 
 are weak and foolish persons, — notoriously so ; all their 
 friends think so ; there is not a man of any strength of 
 character, or force of intellect among them. They have 
 either been dreaming over their folios, or have been 
 caught with the tinsel embeUishment of Popish worship. 
 They are lack-a-daisical women, or conceited young par- 
 sons, or silly squires, or the very dregs of our large 
 towns, who have nothing to lose, and no means of know- 
 ing one thing from another. Thirdly, in corroboration : — 
 they went over, he says, on such exceedingly wrong 
 motives ; not any one of them, but you may trace his 
 conversion to something distinctly wrong ; it was love of 
 notoriety, it was restlessness, it was resentment, it was 
 lightness of mind, it was self-will. There was trickery 
 in his mode of taking the step, or inconsiderateness to- 
 
 T 2 
 
234 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 wards the feelings of others. They went too soon, or 
 they ought to have gone sooner. They ought to have 
 told every one their doubts as soon as ever they felt 
 them, and before they knew whether or not they should 
 overcome them or no : if they had clerical charges in the 
 Protestant Church, they ought to have flung them up at 
 once, even at the risk of afterwards finding they had 
 made a commotion for nothing. Or, on the other hand, 
 what, forsooth, must these men do when a doubt came 
 on their mind, but at once abandon all their clerical duty 
 and go home, as if it were possible any where to be abso- 
 lutely certain ? In short, they did not become Catholics 
 at the right moment ; so that, however numerous they 
 may be, no weight whatever attaches to their conversion. 
 As for him, it does not affect him at all ; he means to die 
 just where he is ; indeed, these conversions are a positive 
 argument in favour of Protestantism : he thinks still 
 worse of Popery in consequence of these men going over, 
 than he did before. His fourth remark is of this sort : — 
 they are sure to come back. He prophesies that by this 
 time next year, not one of them will be a Catholic. His 
 fifth is as bold as the first : — they ham come back. This 
 argument, however, of the Prejudiced Man, admits 
 at times of being shown to advantage, should it so 
 happen that the subjects of his remark have, for some 
 reason or other, gone abroad, for then there is nothing 
 to restrain his imagination. Hence, directly a new Ca- 
 tholic is safely lodged two or three thousand miles away, 
 out comes the confident news that he has returned to Pro- 
 testantism ; when no friend has the means to refute it. 
 When this argument fails, as fail it must by the time a 
 letter can be answered, our Prejudiced Man falls back on 
 his sixth common place, which is to the effect that the 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 235 
 
 converts are very unhappy. He knows this on the first 
 authority ; he has seen letters declaring or showing it. 
 They are quite altered men, very much disappointed with 
 Catholicism, restless, and desirous to come back except 
 from false shame. Seventhly, they are altogether de- 
 teriorated in character; they have become harsh, or 
 overbearing, or conceited, or vulgar. They speak with 
 extreme bitterness against Protestantism, have cast off 
 their late friends, or seem to forget that they ever were 
 Protestants {hemselves. Eighthly, they have become 
 infidels ; — alas ! heedless of false witness, the Prejudiced 
 Man spreads the news about right and left in a tone of 
 great concern and distress ; he considers it very awful. 
 
 Lastly, when every resource has failed, and, in spite of 
 all that can be said, and surmised, and expressed, and 
 hoped, about the persons in question, Catholics they have 
 become and Catholics they remain, the Prejudiced Man 
 has a last resource ; he simply forgets that Protestants 
 they ever were. They cease to have antecedents ; they 
 cease to have any character, any history to which they 
 may appeal : they merge in the great fog, in which to his 
 eyes every thing Catholic is enveloped ; they are dwellers 
 in the land of romance and fable ; and, if he dimly con- 
 templates them plunging and floundering amid the gloom, 
 it is as grifiins, wiverns, salamanders, the spawn of 
 Popery, such as are said to sport in the depths of the 
 sea, or to range amid the central sands of Africa. He 
 forgets he ever heard of them ; he has no duties to their 
 names, he is released from all anxiety about them ; he 
 dies to them. 
 
 Now, my Brothers, unless I should be obliged to allude 
 to myself, I could, without bringing in other instances, 
 
236 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 show you, from my own experience, that there is no ex- 
 aggeration in what I have been saying. I will go so far 
 as to mention four facts about me, as they have been 
 commonly reported. First, when I became a Catholic, 
 grave persons, Protestant clergymen, attested (what they 
 said was well known to others besides themselves), that 
 either I was mad, or was in the most imminent danger of 
 madness. They put it in the newspapers, and people were 
 sometimes quite afraid to come and see me. Next, they 
 put about, what they had prophesied beforehand as cer- 
 tain to be, that I had the gravest differences with one from 
 whom I had received nothing but kindness, and whom I 
 regarded, and still regard, with no other feelings than those 
 of gratitude and affection. Cardinal Wiseman. They had 
 predicted it, and therefore so it must be, whether there 
 was evidence of it or not. I will quote to you the words 
 of an eminent pulpit and platform clergyman, one of the 
 two eloquent defenders of Protestantism, who lately 
 gave out that every Catholic Priest ought to be hanged. 
 " He believed," said the " Manchester Courier," reporting 
 his speech, " that already some of those reverend gentle- 
 men, who had betaken themselves to Eome, under the 
 idea that they were going to a scene of beauty and piety, 
 had found that dark was the place behind the scenes that 
 they had painted as so beautiful. So he believed it was 
 with Mr. Newman. (Hear, hear.) He (the speaker) 
 was told that Mr. Newman had a most sovereign con- 
 tempt for Dr. Wiseman ; and he was told that Dr. Wise- 
 man had the utmost hatred for Mr. Newman. And he 
 believed that result was brought about from Mr. Newman 
 having seen Dr. Wiseman more closely, and Dr. Wiseman 
 having found out that Mr. Newman saw through the 
 
THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 237 
 
 mask, and discerned him as he was." You see "the 
 wish was father to the thought." Thirdly, when I went 
 to Eome, then at once a long succession of reports went 
 about, to the effect that I had quarrelled with the eccle- 
 siastical authorities there, and had refused to be ordained 
 on their conditions ; moreover, that I was on the point 
 of turning Protestant, and that my friends about me had 
 done so already. The list of good stories had not run 
 out by the time I came back ; they were too precious to 
 be lost, any 'one of them; so it was circulated, when I 
 came here to Birmingham, that I was suspended by the 
 present Bishop of the diocese, and not allowed to preach. 
 Fourthly and lastly, it has lately been put into the papers 
 under the sanction of respectable names, that I am not a 
 believer in the Catholic doctrines ; and broader still in 
 private letters, that I have given up revealed religion 
 altogether. I mention these instances, not for their own 
 sake, but to illustrate the power of prejudice. Men are 
 determined they will not believe that an educated Protes- 
 tant can find peace and satisfaction in the Catholic 
 Church ; and they invent catastrophes for the occasion, 
 which they think too certain to need testimony or proof. 
 In the reports I have been setting down, there was not 
 even a rag or a shred of evidence to give plausibility to 
 them. 
 
 I have been setting forth as yet the resources of the 
 Prejudiced Man, when he has no facts whatever on his 
 side, but all against him ; but now let us suppose he has 
 something or other to show ; in that case, it is plain that 
 he finds it very much easier to maintain his position. If 
 he could do so much with no materials at all, to what 
 will he be unequal, when he has really something or 
 
238 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 other, external and objective, to bring forward in his jus- 
 tification 1 " Trifles light as air," says the poet, 
 
 " Are to the jealous confirmation strong 
 As proofs of Holy Writ." 
 
 You may be sure he makes the most of them. A vast 
 number of matters, we easily may understand, are of 
 daUy occurrence, which admit of an interpretation this 
 way or that, and which are, in fact, interpreted by every 
 one according to his own existing opinions. Rival phi- 
 losophers seize on new discoveries, each as being in favour 
 of his own hypothesis ; it is not, indeed, many instances 
 which are critical and decisive. Are we told of some 
 strange appearance at night in some solitary place ? 
 Those who are fond of the marvellous, think it an 
 apparition ; those who live in the rational and tangible, 
 decide that it has been some gleam of the moonbeam, or 
 some wayfarer or beggar, or some trick intended to 
 frighten the passer-by. Thus history also reads in one 
 way to one, in another to another. There are those who 
 think the French at the bottom of all the mischief which 
 happens in England and Ireland ; others lay it to the 
 Russians. Our Prejudiced Man of course sees Oathohcs 
 and Jesuits in every thing, in every failure of the potato 
 crop, every strike of the operatives, and every mercantile 
 stoppage. His one idea of the CathoUc Church haunts 
 him incessantly, and he sees whole Popery, living and 
 embodied, in every one of its professors, nay, in every 
 word, gesture, and motion of each. A Catholic Priest 
 cannot be grave or gay, silent or talkative, without giving 
 matter of offence or suspicion. There is peril in his 
 frown, there is greater peril in his smile. His half sen- 
 
THE PUOTESTANT VIEW. 239 
 
 tences are filled up ; his single acts are misdirected ; 
 nay, whether he eats or sleeps, in every mouthful and 
 every nod he ever has in view one and one only object, 
 the aggrandizement of the unwearied relentless foe of 
 freedom and of progress, the Catholic Church. The 
 Prejudiced Man applauds himself for his sagacity, in 
 seeing evidences of a plot at every turn ; he groans to 
 think that so many sensible men should doubt its exten- 
 sion all through Europe, though he begins to entertain 
 the hope thdt the fact is breaking on the apprehension of 
 the Government. 
 
 The Prejudiced Man travels, and then every thing he 
 sees in Catholic countries only serves to make him more 
 thankful that his notions are so true ; and the more he 
 sees of Popery, the more abominable he feels it to be. 
 If there is any sin, any evil in a foreign population, 
 though it be found among Protestants also, still Popery 
 is clearly the cause of it. If great cities are the schools 
 of vice, it is owing to Popery. If Sunday is profaned, if 
 there is a Carnival, it is the fault of the Cathohc Church. 
 Then, there are no private homes, as in England, families 
 live on staircases ; see what it is to belong to a Popish 
 country. Why do the Roman labourers wheel their 
 barrows so slow on the Forum 2 why do the Lazzaroni 
 of Naples lie so listlessly upon the beach ? why, but 
 because they are under the malaria of a false religion ? 
 Rage, as is well known, is in the Roman like a falling 
 sickness, almost as if his will had no part in it, and he had 
 no responsibility ; see what it is to be a Papist. Blood- 
 letting is as frequent and as much a matter of course in 
 the South, as hair-cutting in England ; it is a trick 
 borrowed from the convents, when they wish to tame 
 down refractory spirits. 
 
240 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 The Prejudiced Man gets up at an English hour, has 
 his breakfast at his leisure, and then saunters into some 
 of the churches of the place ; he is scandalized to have 
 proof of what he so often has heard, the infrequency of 
 communions among Catholics. Again and again, in the 
 course of his tour, has he entered them, and never by any 
 chance did he see a solitary communicant ; — hundreds, 
 perhaps, having been in those very churches, according 
 to their custom, before he was out of his bedroom. But 
 what scandalizes him most, is that even bishops and 
 priests, nay, the Pope himself, does not communicate at 
 the great festivals of the Church. He was at a great 
 ceremonial, a High Mass, on Lady Day, at the Minerva ; 
 not one Cardinal communicated ; — Pope, and Cardinals, 
 and every Priest present but the celebrant, having com- 
 municated, of course, each in his own Mass, and in his 
 own chapel or church, early in the morning. Then the 
 churches are so dirty ; faded splendour, tawdriness, 
 squalidness are the fashion of the day; — thanks to the 
 Protestants and Infidels who, in almost every country 
 where Cathohcism is found, have stolen the revenues by 
 which they were kept decent. He walks about and looks 
 at the monuments ; what is this ? the figure of a woman ; 
 who can it be ? his Protestant cicerone at his elbow, who 
 perhaps has been chosen by his good father or guardian 
 to protect him on his travels from a Catholic taint, whis- 
 pers that it is Pope Joan, and he notes it down in his 
 pocket-book accordingly. I am alluding to an accident, 
 which in its substance befel a most excellent person, for 
 whom I had and have a great esteem, whom I am sure 
 I would not willingly oifend, and who will not be hurt at 
 this cursory mention of an unintentional mistake. He 
 was positive he had seen Pope Joan, in Rome,— I think, 
 
THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 241 
 
 in St. Peter's ; nay, he saw the inscription on the monu- 
 ment, beginning with the words, " Joanni PapissEe." It 
 was so remarkable a fact, and formed so plausible an ar- 
 gument against the inviolateness of the chair of St. Peter, 
 that it was thought worth inquiring into. I do not re- 
 member who it was the female thus elevated turned into, 
 in the process of investigation, whether into the Countess 
 Matilda, or Queen Christina ; but certainly into no lady 
 who had any claims on the occupation of the Ecumenical 
 See. 
 
 This puts me in mind of another occurrence, of which 
 the publications of the day have recently been full. A 
 lady of high literary reputation deposed that Denon and 
 other French savans had given her the information that, 
 in the days of the EepubUc or Consulate, they had ex- 
 amined St. Peter's chair in the Vatican Basilica, and had 
 found that it unquestionably had come from the East, 
 long after the age of the Apostle, for it had inscribed 
 upon it the celebrated confession of Islamism, "There 
 is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet." Her preju- 
 dices sharpened her memory, and she was positive in her 
 testimony. Inquiry was made, and it turned out that 
 the chair of which she had spoken was at Venice, not at 
 Rome ; that it had been brought thither by the Crusaders 
 from the East, and therefore might well bear upon it the 
 Mahometan inscription ; and that tradition gave it the 
 reputation of being, by no means the Roman, but the 
 Antiochene Chair of the Apostle. In this, as in other 
 mistakes, there was no deliberate intention to deceive ; 
 it was but an ordinary result of an ordinary degree of 
 prejudice. The voucher of the story was so firmly con- 
 vinced, I suppose, of the " childish absurdity and falsehood 
 of all the traditions of the Romish Church," that she 
 
242 PREJUJJICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 thought it unnecessary to take pains to be very accurate, 
 whether in her hearing or her memory. 
 
 Our Prejudiced Man might travel half his Hfe up and 
 down Oathohc Europe, and only be confirmed in his con- 
 tempt tod hatred of its religion. In every place there 
 are many worlds, quite distinct from each other : there 
 are good and bad, and the good form one body, the bad 
 another. Two young men, as is well known, may 
 pass through their course at a Protestant University, 
 and come away with opposite reports of the state of the 
 place : the one will have seen all the good, the other all 
 the bad ; one will say it is a sober, well-conducted 
 place, the other will maintain that it is the home of 
 every vice. The Prejudiced Man takes care to mix 
 only in such society as will confirm his views ; he 
 courts the society of Protestants and unbelievers, and of 
 bad Catholics, who shelter their own vice under the 
 imputations they cast on others, and whose lives tell 
 against the Church prior to their testimony. His servants, 
 couriers, laquais de place, and acquaintance, are all of his 
 own way of thinking, and find it for their interest to 
 flatter and confirm it. He carries England with him 
 abroad; and, though he has ascended mountains and 
 traversed cities, knows scarcely more of Europe than 
 when he set out. 
 
 But, perhaps, he does not leave England at all ; he 
 never has been abroad ; it is all the same ; he can scrape 
 together quite as good evidence against Catholicism at 
 home. One day he pays a visit to some Catholic chapel, 
 or he casually finds the door open, and walks in. He 
 enters and gazes about him, with a mixed feeling of 
 wonder, expectation, and disgust ; and, according to cir- 
 cumstances, this or that feeling predominates, and shows 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 243 
 
 itself in his bearing and his countenance. One time it 
 is curiosity ; at another, scorn ; at another, conscious 
 superiority ; at another, abhorrence ; over all of their 
 faces, however, there is a sort of uncomfortable feeling, as 
 if they were in the cave of Trophonius or in a Mesmerist's 
 lecture-room. One and all seem to beUeve that some- 
 thing strange and dreadful may happen any moment; 
 and they crowd up together, if some great ceremony is 
 going on, tiptoeing and staring, and making strange 
 faces, like the gargoyles or screen ornaments of the 
 Church itself. Every sound of the bell, every movement 
 of the candles, every change in the grouping of the 
 sacred ministers and the assistants, puts their heads and 
 limbs in motion, to see what is coming next ; our poor 
 alleviation in thinking of them, lying in this, — that they 
 are really ignorant of what is going on, and miss, even 
 with their bodily eyes, the distinctive parts of the rite. 
 What is our ground of comfort, however, will be their 
 ground of accusation against us ; for they are sure to 
 go away and report that our worship consists of cross- 
 ings, bowings, genuflections, incensings, locomotions, 
 and revolvings, all about nothing. 
 
 In this matter, my Brothers, as I have already said, 
 the plain truth is the keenest of satires ; and therefore, 
 instead of using any words of my own, I shall put before 
 you a Protestant's account of a Benediction of the Blessed 
 Sacrament, which he went to see in the Chapel of the 
 Fathers of our Congregation in London. I quote his 
 words from a publication of an important body, the 
 British Reformation Society, established in the year 
 1827, and supported, I beheve, by a number of eminent 
 persons, noblemen, gentlemen, and ministers of various 
 denominations. The periodical I speak of is called " The 
 
244 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 British Protestant, or Journal of the EeHgious Principles 
 of the Eeformation :" it would seem to be one of the So- 
 ciety's accredited publications, as it has its device upon 
 the title-page. In the 62nd number of this work, being 
 the number for February, 1850, we are presented with 
 " Extracts from the Journal of a Protestant Scripture 
 Reader." This gentleman, among his missionary visits 
 to various parts of London, dropt in, it seems, on Tues- 
 day, January 8th, to the Eoman Catholic Chapel, in 
 King William-street ; which, he commences his narrative 
 by telling us, for " the large roses of every colour, and 
 laurel," " was more like the flower-shops in the grand 
 row of Covent Garden than a place of worship." Well, 
 he had a right to his opinion here as much as another ; 
 and I do not mean to molest him in it. Nor shall I say 
 any thing of his account of the Sermon, which was upon 
 St. Paul the first hermit, and which he blames as not 
 having in it " the Name of Jesus, or one word of Scrip- 
 ture," from beginning to end ; not dreaming that a Rite 
 was to follow, in which we not only bow before the Name, 
 but worship the real and substantial Presence of our 
 exalted Lord. 
 
 I need hardly observe to you, my Brothers, that the 
 Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is one of the simplest 
 rites of the Church. The Priests enter and kneel down ; 
 one of them unlocks the Tabernacle, takes out the 
 Blessed Sacrament, inserts it upright in a Monstrance of 
 precious metal, and places it in a conspicuous place above 
 the altar, in the midst of lights, for all to see. The 
 people then begin to sing; meanwhile the Priest twice 
 offers incense to the King of heaven, before whom he is 
 kneeling. Then he takes the monstrance in his hands, 
 and, turning to the people, blesses them with the Most 
 
THE PROTESTANT -VIEW. 245 
 
 Holy, in the form of a cross, while the bell is sounded by 
 one of the attendants to call attention to the ceremony. 
 It is our Lord's solemn benediction of His people, as 
 when He lifted up His hands over the children, or when 
 He blessed His chosen ones when He ascended up from 
 Mount Olivet. As sons might come before a parent be- 
 fore going to bed at night, so, once or twice a week, the 
 great Catholic family comes before the Eternal Father, 
 after the bustle or the toil of the day, and He smiles 
 upon them, 'and sheds upon them the light of His coun- 
 tenance. It is a full accomplishment of what the Priest 
 invoked upon the IsraeHtes, " The Lord bless thee and 
 keep thee ; the Lord show His face to thee and have 
 mercy on thee ; the Lord turn His countenance to thee 
 and give thee peace." Can there be a more touching 
 rite, even in the judgment of those who do not believe in 
 it? How many a man, not a Catholic, is moved, on 
 seeing it, to say, " Oh, that I did but believe it ! " when 
 he sees the Priest take up the Fount of Mercy and the 
 people bent low in adoration ! It is one of the most 
 beautiful, natural, and soothing actions of the Church ; 
 not so, however, in the judgment of our young Protestant 
 Scripture Reader, to whom I now return. 
 
 This Protestant Scripture Reader then, as he calls 
 himself, enters the chapel, thinking, of course, he knows 
 all about every thing. He is the measure of every thing, 
 or at least of every thing Popish. Popery he knows 
 perfectly well, in substance, in spirit, in drift, in results ; 
 and he can interpret all the details when they come be- 
 fore him at once, by this previous, or what a theologian 
 might term " infused," knowledge. He knows, and has 
 known from a child, that Popery is a system of imposture, 
 nay, such brazen impostm-e, that it is a marvel, or rather 
 
246 PKEJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 a miracle, that any one can be caught by it, — a miracle, 
 that is, of Satan ; for without an evil influence it is quite 
 impossible any single soul could believe what the Protes- 
 tant Scripture Reader would call so "transparent a 
 fraud." As a Scripture Eeader, he knows well the text, 
 Second of Thessalonians, chapter two, verse eleven, " He 
 shall send them strong delusion that they should believe 
 a lie," and he appHes it to the scene before him. He 
 knows that it is the one business of the Priest to take 
 in the people, and he knows that the people are so incon- 
 ceivably brutish that nothing is too gross or absurd a 
 trick to take them in withal. If the Priest were to put up 
 a scarecrow, they, like the silly birds, would run away as 
 if it were a man ; and he has only to lift his balls or 
 cards, and flourish them about, and they take him for a 
 god. Indeed, we all know, he gives out be is a god, and 
 can do what he pleases, for ib is sin to doubt it. It is 
 most wonderful, certainly, as to this Popery, that in 
 spite of the Parliament all in a bustle, passing laws, as if 
 against typhus or cholera, yet there it is, and spread it 
 will ; however, Satan is the father of lies ; that is sufiS- 
 cient. With this great principle, I say, clearly impressed 
 upon his mind, he walks into the chapel, knowing well 
 he shall find some juggling there; accordingly, he is 
 not at all surprised at the scene which passes before him. 
 He looks on at his ease, and draws up his own account 
 of it, all the time that the Cathohc people are bowing 
 and singing, and the Priest incensing ; and his account 
 runs thus : — 
 
 After the sermon, he tells us, " another young priest 
 came in with a long wand in his hand, and an extinguisher 
 on the top of it, and a small candle, and he began to light 
 others." Another young priest, he thinks we are born 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 247 
 
 priests ; " priest " is a sort of race, or animal, or pro- 
 duction, as oxen or sheep may be, and there are young 
 priests and old priests, and black priests and white 
 priests, and perhaps men priests and women priests ; 
 and so in came this other young priest with a wand. 
 With a wand ; he evidently thinks there is something 
 religious about this lighter and extinguisher ; it is a 
 conjuror's wand ; you will, I think, see presently I am 
 borne out in saying this. He proceeds, " The next part 
 of the play was four priests coming to the altar," (it is as 
 I said, every thing is a priest,) " four priests, and Gordon 
 in the middle ;" this is a mistake, and an unwarrantable 
 and rude use of the name of one of the Fathers of the 
 London Oratory, my dear brother and friend, the Ee- 
 verend Philip Gordon, — for it was not he, and he was 
 not a priest ; accordingly I should leave the name out, 
 except that it adds a good deal to the effect of the 
 whole. " One of them," he proceeds, " took from a 
 small cupboard on the altar," that is, the tabernacle, 
 " a gold star ;" this is the head of the monstrance, in 
 which was the Blessed Sacrament, "and screwed it 
 on to a candlestick," that is, the foot of the monstrance, 
 " and placed it on the top of the altar, under the form of 
 a beehive supported by four pillars," that is, under the 
 canopy. He calls the head of the monstrance a star, be- 
 cause it consists of a circle surrounded by rays. 
 
 " The star," he proceeds, " glittered like diamonds, for 
 it had a round lamp in the middle of it ;" I suppose he 
 means the glass covering the Blessed Sacrament, which 
 reflected the light, and you will see clearly, as he goes on, 
 that he actually thinks the whole congregation was wor- 
 shipping this star and lamp. " This star glittered like 
 diamonds, for it had a round lamp in the middle of it ; 
 
248 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 when placed under the beehive, the four priests began to 
 burn incense, waving a large thing like a lanthorn" (the 
 thurible) " towards the star, and bowing themselves to 
 kiss the foot of the altar before the star." Now observe, 
 my Brothers, I repeat, I am not blaming this person for 
 not knowing a Catholic rite, which he had no means of 
 knowing, but for thinking he knows it, when he does not ; 
 for coming into the chapel, with this most coxcombical 
 idea in his head, that Popery is a piece of mummery, 
 which any intelligent Protestant can see through, and 
 therefore being not at all surprised, but thinking it very 
 natural, when he finds four priests, a young priest with a 
 wand, and a whole congregation, worshipping a gold star 
 glittering like diamonds with a lamp in it. This is what 
 I mean hj prejudice. 
 
 Now you may really have a difficulty in believing that 
 I have interpreted him rightly ; so let me proceed. " The 
 next piece acted was, one of them went to bring down 
 the star, and put it on the altar, while another put some- 
 thing like a white shawl round Gordon's shoulders." 
 True ; he means the veil which is put upon the Priest, 
 before he turns round with the Blessed Sacrament in his 
 hand. " Gordon next takes the star, and, turning his 
 face to the people, to raise up the star, with part of the 
 shawl round the candlestick, the other two priests, one 
 on each side of him, drawing the shawl, it showed a real 
 piece of magic art." Now what makes this so amusing 
 to the Catholic is that, as far as the priest's actions go, 
 it is really so accurately described. It is the description 
 of one who has his eyes about him, and makes the best 
 of them, but who, as he goes on, is ever putting his own 
 absurd comment on every thing which occurs in succes- 
 sion. Now, observe, he spoke of " magic ;" let us see 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 249 
 
 what the magic is, and what becomes of the star, the 
 lamp, and the candlestick with the shawl round it. 
 
 " As Gordon raised the star, with his back to all the 
 lighted candles on the altar, he clearly showed the Popish 
 deceit, for in the candlestick there is a hell."" Here is his 
 first great failure of fact ; he could not be looking at two 
 places at once ; he heard the bell, which the attendant 
 was ringing at one side, he did not see it ; where could 
 it be I his ready genius, that is, the genius of his wonder- 
 ful prejudice about us, told him at once where it was. It 
 was a piece of priestcraft, and the bell was concealed in- 
 side the foot of the candlestick ; — listen. "As Gordon 
 raised the star, with his back turned to all the lighted 
 candles on the altar, he clearly showed the Popish deceit; 
 for in the candlestick there is a bell, that rung three 
 times of its own accord, to deceive the blind fools more ; 
 and the light through the shawl showed so many colours, 
 as Father Gordon moved his body ; the bell ringing they 
 could not see, for the candlestick was covered with part 
 of this magic shawl, and Gordon's finger at work under- 
 neath." 
 
 Such is his account of the rite of Benediction; he 
 is so densely ignorant of us, and so supremely confi- 
 dent of his knowledge, that he ventures to put in print 
 the following rubrical direction for its celebration : — first, 
 a young priest lighteth fifty candles by means of a wand 
 with an extinguisher and wax candle upon it ; then four 
 priests bow, burn incense, and wave a lanthorn before a 
 gold, diamond-like star, with a lamp in it, stuck on the 
 top of a candlestick ; then one of the priests, hiding what 
 he is at, by means of a great shawl about his hands and 
 the foot of the candlestick, taketh up said candlestick, 
 with the lamp and gold star glittering like diamonds, and 
 
 u 2 
 
250 PBEJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 beginneth secretly to tinkle with his finger a bell hid in 
 its foot ; whereupon the whole congregation marvelleth 
 much, and worshippeth star, lamp, and candlestick in- 
 continently. 
 
 He ends with the following peroration : " This is the 
 power of priests ; they are the best play actors in this 
 town. I should be glad to see this published, that I 
 might take it to Father Gordon, to see if he could con- 
 tradict a word of it." Rather, such is the power of pre- 
 judice, by good luck expressed in writing, and given to 
 the world, as a specimen of what goes on, without being 
 recorded, in so many hundred thousands of minds. The 
 very confidence with which he appeals to the accuracy of 
 his testimony, only shows how prejudice can create or 
 colour, where facts are harmless or natural. It is supe- 
 rior to facts, and lives in a world of its own. 
 
 Nor would it be at all to the purpose to object, that, 
 had he known what the rite really meant, he would quite 
 as much, or even more, have called it idolatry. The 
 point is, not what he would think of our rites, if he un- 
 derstood them exactly, for I am not supposing his judg- 
 ment to be worth any thing, or that we are not as likely 
 to be right as an individual Scripture Reader ; the 
 question is not, what he would judge, but what he did 
 think, and how he came to think it. His prejudice in- 
 terpreted our actions. 
 
 Alas, my Brothers, though we have laughed at the 
 extravagance which shows itself in such instances of pre- 
 judice, it is in truth no matter for a jest. If I laugh, it 
 is to hide the deep feelings of various kinds which it ne- 
 cessarily excites in the mind. I laugh at what is laugh- 
 able in the displays of this wretched root of evil, in order 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 251 
 
 to turn away my thoughts from its nature and effects 
 which are not laughable, but hateful and dangerous, 
 dangerous to the Catholic, hateful to the Supreme Judge. 
 When you see a beast of prey in his cage, you are led to 
 laugh at its impotent fury, at its fretful motions and its 
 sullen air, and its grotesque expressions of impatience, 
 disappointment, and malice, if it is baulked of its revenge. 
 And, as to this prejudice, Brothers of the Oratory, really 
 in itself it is one of the direst, most piteous, most awful 
 phenomena'in the whole country; to see a noble, generous 
 people, the victims of a moral infirmity, which is now a 
 fever, now an ague, now a falling sickness, now a frenzy, 
 and now a St. Vitus's dance ! Oh, if we could see as 
 the angels see, thus should we speak .of it, and in lan- 
 guage far more solemn. I told you why, in an earlier 
 part of this Lecture ; not simply because the evil comes 
 from beneath, as I believe it does ; not only because it so 
 falls upon the soul, and occupies it, that it is like a bad 
 dream or nightmare, which is so hard to shake off; 
 but chiefly because it is one of the worst sins of which 
 our poor nature is capable. Perhaps it is wrong to com- 
 pare sin with sin, but I declare to you, the more I think 
 of it, the more intimately does this prejudice seem to me 
 to corrupt the soul, even beyond those sins which are 
 commonly called most deadly, as the various forms of 
 impurity or pride. And why? because, I repeat, it argues 
 so astonishing a want of mere natural charity or love of 
 our kind. It is piercing enough to think what little faith 
 there is in the country ; but it is quite heartrending to 
 witness so utter a deficiency in a mere natural virtue. 
 Oh, is it possible, that so many, many men, and women 
 too, good and kind otherwise, should take- such dehght 
 in being quite sure, that miUions of men have the sign 
 
252 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 and seal of the Evil One upon them ! Oh, is it con- 
 ceivable that they can be considerate in all matters of 
 this life, friendly in social intercourse, indulgent to the 
 wayward, charitable to the poor and outcast, merciful to- 
 wards criminals, nay, kind towards the inferior creation, 
 towards their cows, and horses, and swine ; yet, as re- 
 gards us, who bear the same form, speak the same tongue, 
 breathe the same air, and walk the same streets, ruthless, 
 relentless, believing ill of us, and wishing to believe it ! 
 I repeat it, they wish us to be, what they believe us to be ; 
 what a portentous fact ! They delight to look at us, and 
 to believe that we are the veriest reptiles and vermin 
 which belied the human form divine. It is a dear thought, 
 which they cannot bear to lose. True, it may have been 
 taught them from their youth, they never may have had 
 means to unlearn it, — that is not the point ; they have 
 never wished better things of us, they have never hoped 
 better things. They are tenacious of what they believe, 
 they are impatient of being argued with, they are angry 
 at being contradicted, they are disappointed when a point 
 is cleared up ; they had rather that we should be guilty 
 than tJiey mistaken ; they have no wish at all we should 
 not be blaspheming hypocrites, stupid idolaters, loathsome 
 profligates, unprincipled rogues, and blood-thirsty demons. 
 They are kinder even to their dogs and their cats than 
 to us. Is it not true ? can it be denied ! is it not por- 
 tentous ? does it not argue an incompleteness or hiatus 
 in the very structure of their moral nature ? has not 
 something, in their case, dropped out of the list of natural 
 qualities proper to man ? 
 
 And hence it is, that, calm as may be the sky, and 
 gentle the breeze, we cannot trust the morning : at any 
 moment a furious tempest may be raised against us, 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 253 
 
 and scatter calamity through our quiet homes, as long as 
 the Prince of the power of the air retains this sovereignty. 
 There is ever a predisposition in the political and social 
 atmosphere to lour and thicken. We never are secure 
 against the access of madness in that people, whose name 
 and blood we share. Some accident, — a papal bull, 
 worded'as papal documents have been since the beginning 
 of time, a sudden scandal among our priests or in our 
 convents, or some bold and reckless falsehood, may raise 
 all England against us. Such also was our condition in 
 the first age of the Church : the chance of the hour 
 brought the pagan Romans upon us. A rash Christian 
 tore down an Imperial manifesto from its place ; the hor- 
 rible Dioclesian persecution was the consequence. A 
 crop failed, a foe appeared, it was all through the poor 
 Catholics. So speaks the early Christian Apologist, the 
 celebrated Tertullian, in his defence of them about a 
 hundred years after St. John's time. " They think the 
 Christians," he says, " to be the cause of every pubhc 
 calamity, of every national ill. If the Tiber cometh up 
 to the walls, if the Nile cometh not up to the fields, if 
 the rain hath not fallen, if the earth hath been moved, if 
 there be any famine, if any pestilence, Christianos ad 
 leonem — to the lion with the Christians — is forthwith the 
 cry." No limit could be put to the brutishness of the 
 notions then entertained of us by the heathen. They 
 believed we fed on children ; they, charged us with the 
 most revolting forms of incest ; they gave out we wor- 
 shipped beasts or monsters. " Now a new report of our 
 God hath been lately set forth in this city," says the 
 same Tertullian, " since a certain wretch put forth a 
 picture with some such title as this, — The god of the 
 Christians conceived of an ass. This was a creature with 
 
254 PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF 
 
 ass's ears, with a hoof on one foot, carrying a book, and 
 wearing a gown. We smiled both at the name and the 
 figure." Not, indeed, the same, but parallel, are the 
 tales told of us now. Sottish absurdities are gravely 
 appropriated as precious truths. Our very persons, not 
 merely our professions, are held in abhorrence ; we are 
 spit at by the malevolent, we are passed with a 'shudder 
 of contemptuous pity by the better natured ; we are sup- 
 posed to be defiled by some secret rites of blood by the 
 ignorant. There is a mysterious pollution and repulsion 
 about us, which makes those who feel its influence 
 curious or anxious to investigate what it can be. We 
 are regarded as something unclean, which no one would 
 touch, if they could help it : and our advances are met 
 as would be those of some hideous baboon, or sloth, 
 or rattlesnake, or toad, which strove to make itself 
 agreeable. 
 
 Is it wonderful, with this spirit of delusion on the 
 faculties of the many, that charges against us are believed 
 as soon as made ! So was it two centuries ago : one or 
 two abandoned men, Titus Gates, whom the Protestant 
 Hume calls " the most infamous of mankind," William 
 Bedloe, who, the same writer says, was, " if possible, 
 more infamous than Gates," and some others, aided by 
 the lucky accident of the assassination of a London 
 magistrate, whose murderers were never discovered, were 
 sufficient, by a bold catalogue of calumnies, to put the 
 whole kingdom into a paroxysm of terror and suspicion. 
 The fit had been some time coming on, when " the cry 
 of a plot," says Hume, " all on a sudden, struck their 
 ears. They were awakened from their slumber, and, like 
 men affrighted in the dark, took every figure for a spectre. 
 The terror of each man became a source of terror to 
 
THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 255 
 
 another ; and, a universal panic being diffiised, reason 
 and argument, and common sense and common humanity, 
 lost all influence over them." 
 
 Gates and Bedloe come forward to swear against us 
 the most atrocious and impossible falsehoods. The Pope 
 and Propaganda had claimed possession of England ; and 
 he had nominated the Jesuits to be his representatives 
 here, and to hold the supreme power for him. All the 
 ofiices of government had been filled up under the seal 
 of this Society, and all the dignities of the Protestant 
 Church given away, in great measure, to Spaniards and 
 other foreigners. The king had been condemned to 
 death as a heretic. There had been a meeting of fifty 
 Jesuits in London during the foregoing May, when the 
 king's death was determined on. He was to be shot 
 or to be poisoned. The confessor of the French king 
 had sent to London 10,000?. as a reward for any one 
 who would assassinate him ; a Spanish ecclesiastic had 
 offered 10,000?. more ; and the Prior of the Benedictines 
 6000?. The Queen's physician had been offered 10,000?., 
 and had asked 15,000?. for the job ; and had received an 
 instalment of 5000?. Pour Irish ruffians had been hired 
 by the Jesuits at twenty guineas a piece, to shoot the 
 king at Windsor. Two others were also engaged, one 
 at 1500?. ; the other, being a pious man, preferred to 
 take out the money in masses, of which he was to receive 
 80,000. Another had been promised canonization and 
 500?., if he was successful in the enterprise. There was 
 a subscription going on among the Catholics all through 
 England, to collect sums for the same purpose. The 
 Jesuits had determined to set fire to London, Southwark, 
 and all the chief cities of the country. They were plan- 
 ning to set fire to all the shipping in the Thames. 
 
256 PREJUDICE THE LIFE 01^ 
 
 Twenty thousand Catholics were to rise in London in 
 twenty-four hours' time, who, it was estimated, might cut 
 the throats of 100,000 Protestants. The most eminent 
 divines of the Establishment were especially marked for 
 assassination. Ten thousand men were to be landed 
 from abroad in the North, and were to seize Hull ; and 
 20,000 or 30,000 religious men and pilgrims from Spain, 
 were to land in Wales. 
 
 Is all this grave history ?— it is. Do not think I have 
 added ought of my own ; it is unnecessary. Invention 
 cannot run with prejudice. Prejudice wins. Do not my 
 true stories of Protestantism beat the fables against 
 Catholicism of Achilli and Maria Monk ? they are a ro- 
 mance, true and terrible. 
 
 What came of these wild allegations, preferred by men 
 of infamous character, and followed by the accident of Sir 
 Edmonsbury Godfrey's murder, by unknown assassins ? 
 " Without further reasoning," says Hume, " the cry rose 
 that he had been assassinated by the Papists, on account 
 of his taking Oates's evidence. The clamour was quickly 
 propagated, and met with universal belief. Each hour 
 teemed with new rumours and surmises. To deny the 
 reality of the plot was to be an accomplice ; to hesitate 
 was criminal. Eoyalist, republican, churchman, sectary, 
 courtier, patriot, all parties concurred in the illusion. 
 The city prepared for its defence, as if the enemy were 
 at its gates ; the chains and posts were put up. . . . The 
 dead body of Godfrey was carried into the city, attended 
 by vast multitudes. . . . Seventy-two clergymen marched 
 before ; above a thousand persons of distinction followed 
 after; and, at the funeral sermon, two able-bodied di- 
 vines mounted the pulpit, and stood on each side of the 
 preacher, lest, in paying the last duties to this unhappy 
 
THE PEOTBSTANT VIEW. 257 
 
 magistrate, he should, before the whole people, be mur- 
 dered by the Papists." 
 
 A recent historian adds to the picture ' ; " Every 
 where," he says, "justices were busied in searching 
 houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled 
 with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a 
 state of siege. The trainbands were under arms all night. 
 Preparations were made for barricading the great 
 thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down the streets. 
 Cannon were placed round Whitehall. No citizen thought 
 himself safe, unless he carried under his coat a small 
 flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins." 
 
 The Parliament kept pace with the people ; a solemn 
 fast was voted, and a form of prayer drawn up ; five 
 Catholic peers were committed to the Tower on charge of 
 high treason ; a member of the Commons, who in pri- 
 vate society spoke strongly against the defenders of the 
 plot, was expelled the House ; and both Houses, Lords 
 and Commons, voted, almost in the form of a dogmatic 
 decree, " that there is, and hath been, a damnable and 
 hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the Popish 
 recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the 
 Government, and for rooting-out and destroying the Pro- 
 testant succession." Titus Gates was called the Saviour 
 of his country ; was lodged in Whitehall, protected by 
 guards, and rewarded with a pension of 1200?. a year. 
 
 I will not pursue the history of this remarkable frenzy 
 into its deeds of blood, into the hangings, and em- 
 bowellings, and the other horrors of which innocent 
 Catholics were in due course the victims.. Well had it 
 been, had the pretended plot ended with the worldly 
 
 ' Macaulay, History, vol. i. p. 235. 
 
258 PREJUDICE THE LIFE, &C. 
 
 promotion of its wretched fabricators, whom at this day 
 all the world gives up to reprobation and infamy. Gates 
 and Bedloe were the Maria Monk, the Jeffreys, the 
 Teodore, the Achilli, of their hour, on a larger field ; 
 they spoke then as Protestant champions speak now, to 
 the prejudices of the people ; they equalled our own 
 slanderers in falsehood and assurance, in success they 
 surpassed them. 
 
 We live in a happier age than our forefathers ; at least 
 let us trust that the habits of society and the self- 
 interest of classes and of sects will render it impossible 
 that blind prejudice and brute passion should ever make 
 innocence and helplessness their sport and their prey, as 
 they did in the seventeenth century. 
 
XECTURE VII. 
 
 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL INSTRU- 
 MENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 There is a great and a growing class in the commu- 
 nity, who wish to be fair to us, who see how cruelly we 
 are dealt with, who are indignant at the clamour, and see 
 through the calumnies, and despise the prejudice, which 
 are directed against us, who feel themselves to be supe- 
 rior to the multitude in their feelings and their judg- 
 ments, who aim at thinking well of all men, all persua- 
 sions, all schools of thought, and of Catholics in the 
 number, and to like each for what is good in it, though 
 they may not follow it themselves. Being thus candid, 
 and, in a certain sense, unbiassed, they readily acknow- 
 ledge the grandeur of the Catholic religion, both in his- 
 tory and in philosophy; they wish to be good friends 
 with it ; they delight to contemplate the great Catholic 
 heroes ; they recognize, perhaps with almost enthusiastic 
 admiration, the genius and other gifts of the intellect, 
 which in every age have been so profusely found among 
 
260 ASSUMED PEINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 its adherents. They know and they like individual 
 Catholics; they have every desire to like us in all re- 
 spects ; they set their minds to like us, our principles, 
 our doctrines, our worship, and our ways. As far as can 
 be said of men, they really have no prejudice. In this 
 interesting and excellent state of mind, they take up one 
 of our books, sincerely wishing to get on with it ; alas, 
 they are flung back at once ; they see so much, which 
 they cannot abide at all, do what they will. They are 
 annoyed at themselves, and at us ; but there is no help 
 for it ; they discover, they feel that between them and 
 us there is a gulf. So they turn from the subject in dis- 
 gust, and for a time perhaps are in bad humour with reli- 
 gion altogether, and have a strong temptation to believe 
 nothing at all. Time passes ; they get over the annoy- 
 ance, and perhaps make a second attempt to adjust their 
 own feelings with our doctrines, but with no better suc- 
 cess. They had hoped to have found some middle term, 
 some mode of reconciliation ; they did not expect agree- 
 ment, but at least peace ; not coincidence, but at least a 
 sort of good understanding and concurrence ; — whereas 
 they find antagonism. No ! it is impossible ; it is melan- 
 choly, as they feel, to say it, but it is no use disguising the 
 truth from themselves ; they cannot get over this or that 
 doctrine or practice ; nay, to be honest, there is no part 
 they can acquiesce in ; each separate portion is part of a 
 whole. They are disappointed, but they never can be- 
 lieve, they never can even approve ; if the Catholic sys- 
 tem be true, faith in it must be a gift, for reason does 
 not bear it out. 
 
 What are the things which so offend the candid and 
 kindly disposed persons in question? So many, that 
 they do not know where to begin, nor where to end. It 
 
INSTEOMEVT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 261 
 
 is the whole system of CathoHcism ; our miracles, and 
 our relics, and our legends of saints ; and then our doc- 
 trine of indulgences, and our purgatory ; and our views 
 of sin, and of the merit of celibacy ; and our strange 
 formalities in worship ; in a word, all is extravagant, 
 strained, unnatural, where it is not directly offensive, or 
 substantially impossible. They never could receive any 
 part of it, they are sure ; they would find it as hard to 
 receive one part as the whole. They must lose their 
 moral identity, and wake up with a new stock of thoughts, 
 principles, and argumentative methods, ere they could 
 even endure it. 
 
 If such is the feeling of even candid and kind men, 
 what will be the impression produced by Catholicism on 
 the prejudiced ? You see it is a cause of shrinking from 
 us quite independent of prejudice, for it exists among 
 those who are not prejudiced ; but it may be joined with 
 prejudice, and then the aversion and abhorrence enter- 
 tained towards us will be intense indeed. In that case, 
 reason (that is, what the person in question takes to be 
 such) — reason and passion will go together. 
 
 Further, consider that it is not individuals merely, 
 here and there, but vast multitudes who are affected 
 precisely in the same way at hearing our doctrines ; 
 millions, whole nations. Each member of them bears wit- 
 ness to the rest ; there is the consent, intimate, minute, 
 exact, absolute, of all classes, all ranks, all ages, all dis- 
 positions. All this is a fact, we see it before us : do we 
 require any more to account for the position we hold in 
 a Protestant country ? So strong does the persuasion 
 become, that Oathohcism is indefensible, that our op- 
 ponents become aggressive ; they not only spurn our 
 creed, and our worship themselves, but they are (as they 
 Y 2 
 
262 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTCAL 
 
 think) in a condition to maintain, that we in our hearts 
 despise both the one and the other as really as they. 
 They will not believe that educated men can sincerely 
 accept either ; tliey do not hold them, therefore no one 
 else can hold them. They conclude, therefore, that we dis- 
 heliem what we teach and practise ; and in consequence, 
 that we are hypocrites., as professing one thing, and think- 
 ing another. Next they come to a third conclusion, 
 that, since no one acts without objects, we must have an 
 object in professing without believing, and it must be a 
 bad ohject ; for instance, gain or power : accordingly we 
 are, first, unbelievers ; secondly, liars ; thirdly, swindlers 
 and robbers. And thus you have full-blown Priestcraft ; 
 here you have Popery simply detected and uncloked : 
 and observe the course of the argument : Catholic 
 Priests are infidels, are hypocrites, are rogues, why ! 
 because Protestants think Catholic doctrine and Catholic 
 worship irrational. 
 
 Here then, Brothers of the Oratory, you see I have 
 pointed out to your notice a cause of the feeling, which 
 is cherished towards us and our religion, altogether dis- 
 tinct from any other I have hitherto mentioned ; and 
 perhaps the most important of all. I say the most im- 
 portant, because it influences not only the multitude of 
 men, but the men of thought, of education, of candour, 
 those who are conscious they do wish to do us justice : 
 the instinctive rising of the mind, of the intellect, of the 
 reason (so they would say themselves, though, of course, 
 and, as you will see, I am not going to allow it), opposes 
 itself to the Catholic system. Is not our cause hopeless ! 
 how can we ever overcome so overwhelmingly formidable 
 a fact ! 
 
 I acknowledge its force is very great : this is the ar- 
 
INSTEOMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 263 
 
 gument to which men mean to point, when they talk of 
 education, light, progress, and so on, being the certain 
 destruction of Catholicism. They think our creed is so 
 irrational that it will fall to pieces of itself, when the sun 
 of reason is poured in upon the places over which at pre- 
 sent it is brooding. And, I repeat, (without of course 
 allowing that this spontaneous feeling, if so it may be 
 called, is synonymous with reason,) I acknowledge it is a 
 most tremeqdous obstacle in the way of our being fairly 
 dealt with. And our enemies, I say again, are in great 
 triumph about it : they say, " Let in education upon 
 them ; leave them to reason ; set the schoolmaster upon 
 them." Well, I allow this " reason" (to use for the 
 moment their own designation of it,) is a serious incon- 
 venience to us ; it is in our way : but I do not think it 
 so invincible a weapon as they consider it ; and for this 
 simple reason, — because, if it were, if it were so ready, so 
 safe, and so complete a method as they would have it, I 
 consider they would have been slower to take other 
 methods ; for instance, slower to hang, to embowel, to 
 quarter, to imprison, to banish. If this " reason" would 
 do their work for them so well, I do not think they would 
 have established their " reason," instead of leaving it to 
 fight its own battles; I do not think we should have 
 had so many laws passed in its favour and against us. If 
 this " reason," as they choose to call it, made such short 
 work with Catholicism, they would not have been so 
 frightened at what they call " Popish Aggression," or 
 have directed a stringent Act of Parliament against a 
 poor twentieth part of the population of England. If 
 this innate common sense, as they desire to consider it, 
 were so crushing, so annihilating to our claims, to our 
 existence, why the thousands of fables, fictions, false- 
 
264 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 hoods, fallacies, put out against us ? why Maria Monk, 
 and Jeffreys, and Teodore, and Achilli ? Allowing, then, 
 as I do, the importance of the phenomenon which I have 
 been mentioning, feeling most fully that it requires care- 
 ful consideration, granting that we may be fairly asked 
 what we have to say to it — ^that we ought to account for 
 its existence, nevertheless I do not think it is so decisive 
 an argument, as its own upholders would make it, else it 
 ought to have altogether superseded all others. 
 
 In truth, the spontaneous feeling against our doctrines 
 and worship, of which I have been speaking, exists far 
 more among educated men than among the many; it 
 is to the educated class what absurd fiction and false 
 witness are to the multitude : the multitude is credulous, 
 the educated classes are speculative ; the multitude is 
 sensitive of facts — true or false, the educated classes of 
 theories ; though I do not deny that the educated classes 
 are credulous too, and the multitude theorists. This is 
 pretty much the state of the case : and as in former 
 Lectures I have directed your attention, my Brothers, to 
 the fables and falsehoods circulated against us, as one 
 special cause of the odium which attaches to the Catholic 
 Name, so this evening I propose to give you some de- 
 scription of those views, theories, principles, or whatever 
 they are to be called, which imbue the educated and 
 active intellect, and lead it, as it were, instinctively and 
 spontaneously, first to pronounce the creed and worship 
 of Catholicism absurd, and next to pronounce its pro- 
 fessors hypocritical. 
 
 I fear I have got upon a dry subject ; I must make 
 some demand on your attention, yet I cannot help it. 
 All subjects are not equally amusing, equally easy ; still 
 it is too important a subject to omit. Did I do so, I 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 265 
 
 should be said to be evading the most diflScult part of 
 the whole controversy. It is, indeed, the most important 
 of all I have to treat ; so important, that I cannot do 
 justice to it in one Lecture, which is all I mean to give 
 to it. So I have a double difiSculty about it ; one lies 
 in my writing, the other in your attending ; but I must 
 do my best. 
 
 You may recollect, that, in my Lecture of last week, 
 in speaking of prejudice, I alluded to opinions and con- 
 clusions, which often went by the name of prejudices, 
 yet should more properly be called Prejudgments or Pre- 
 sumptions, for this reason, because they rest on argu- 
 mentative grounds, and are abandoned by their up- 
 holders when those grounds fail them, whereas a prejudice 
 is held tenaciously against reason. Thus a man may 
 hold as a general fact, that Blacks are inferior to Whites 
 in the gifts of intellect, and might thereby be led to 
 expect that a certain black, whom he met, would be un- 
 equal to play his part in English society ; but he might 
 yield at once, when evidence was brought in proof of the 
 ability of the particular individual in question ; or again, 
 he might yield to argument directed against his view 
 altogether. Here would be a presumption without a 
 prejudice. On the other hand, if he still persisted that 
 the Black was weak-minded and incapable, against fact, or 
 if he refused to reconsider his grounds, when invited to do 
 so, then certainly he would be justly called prejudiced. 
 
 There is no difficulty so far ; but, observe, there are 
 opinions and beUefs which do not depend on previous 
 grounds, which are not drawn from facts, for which no 
 reasons can be given, or no sufficient reasons, which pro- 
 ceed immediately from the mind, and which the holder 
 
266 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 considers to be, as it were, part of himself. If another 
 person doubts them, the holder has nothing to show for 
 their truth except that he is sure that they are true : he 
 cannot say, " I will reconsider my reasons," for he has 
 no reasons to consider. What, then, is to make him 
 abandon them 1 what is to touch them ? He holds them, 
 and continues to hold them, whatever is urged against 
 him to the contrary ; and thus these opinions and beliefs 
 look like prejudices, though they are not. They are 
 not prejudices, because prejudices are opinions formed 
 upon grounds, which grounds the prejudiced person refuses 
 to examine; whereas these opinions I am speaking of, 
 have from the first no grounds at all, but are simple per- 
 suasions or sentiments, which came to the holder he 
 cannot tell how, and which apparently he cannot help 
 holding, and they are in consequence commonly called 
 First Principles. For instance, that all Blacks are unin- 
 tellectual, would be a prejudice, if obstinately held against 
 facts ; whereas the obstinate belief that the Divine Being 
 is not moved by prayer, is rather a first principle than a 
 prejudice, because, (putting aside the authority of Reve- 
 lation,) it can hardly be said to come across facts at all. 
 From what I have said, it is plain that First Principles 
 may be false or true ; indeed this is my very point, as 
 you wiU presently see. Certainly they are not necessarily 
 true ; and, again, certainly there are ways of unlearning 
 them when they are false : moreover, as regards moral 
 and religious first principles which are false, of course a 
 OathoUc considers that no one holds them except by his 
 own fault : but these are further points, and some of them 
 beyond my present subject, which is not theological ; 
 however, I mention them to prevent misconception. 
 j Now that there must be such things as First Principles 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 267 
 
 — that is, opinions which are held without proof — as if self- 
 evident, and moreover that every one must have some or 
 other, who thinks at all, is evident from the nature of the 
 case. If you trace back your reasons for holding an opinion, 
 you must stop some where ; the process cannot go on for 
 ever ; you must come at last to something you cannot 
 prove, else life would be spent in inquiring and reasoning, 
 our minds would be ever tossing to and fro, and there 
 would be nothing to guide us. No man alive, but has some 
 First Principles or other. Even if he declares that 
 nothing can be known for certain, then that is his First 
 Principle. He has got his place in philosophy ready 
 marked out for him ; he is of the sect called Academics 
 or Pyrrhonists, as the case may be, and his dogma is 
 either " Nothing can be known in itself," or " Nothing 
 can be known even for practical purposes." Any one may 
 convince himself of the truth of what I am saying, who 
 examines his own sentiments ; for instance, supposing, 
 on meeting a particular person, you said you would have 
 nothing to do with him politically, and gave as your 
 reason, because he belonged to a certain political party. 
 And supposing, on being asked why you disliked that 
 party, you answered, because their very principle was to 
 stand upon their own rights; and then supposing you 
 were asked why it was wrong to stand on one's own 
 rights, and you answered again, because it was selfish and 
 proud ; and being asked once more, why selfishness and 
 pride were wrong, supposing you answered that selfishness 
 and pride were bad feelings, because the feelings of the 
 bad angels, who stood upon their supposed rights against 
 the Maker ; or, to sum up the whole in Dr. Johnson's 
 famous saying, that " the devil was the first Whig," why, 
 in that case, you see, you would have come to a First 
 
268 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 Principle, beyond which you could not get. I am not 
 saying whether your reasoning, or your First Principle, 
 was true or false ; that is quite another matter ; I am 
 but illustrating what is meant by a First Principle, and 
 how it is that all reasoning ultimately rests upon such. 
 It would be your First Principle, in the case supposed, 
 a principle for which no reason could be given, that the 
 bad angels are to be avoided ; thence it would follow that 
 what is like them is to be avoided ; and from that again, 
 it followed that pride and selfishness are to be avoided ; 
 and from that again, that the particular political party in 
 question is to be avoided. This, I repeat, is what is 
 called a First Principle, and you see what a bearing it 
 has both upon thought and upon action. 
 
 It is a First Principle that man is a social being ; a 
 First Principle that he may defend himself; a First 
 Principle that he is responsible ; a First Principle that 
 he is frail and imperfect ; a First Principle that reason 
 must rule passion. 
 
 I will set down one or two other instances of First 
 Principles by way of further illustration. 
 
 The celebrated Eoman patriot Cato stabbed himself 
 when besieged at Utica, rather than fall into the hands 
 of Caesar. He thought this a very great action, and so 
 have many others besides. In like manner Saul, in 
 Scripture, fell on his sword when defeated in battle ; and 
 there have been those who reproached Napoleon for not 
 having blown out his brains on the field of Waterloo. 
 Now, if these advocates of suicide had been asked why 
 they thought such conduct, under such circumstances, 
 noble, perhaps they would have returned the querist no 
 answer, as if it were too plain to talk about, or from 
 contempt of him, as if he were a person without any 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 269 
 
 sense of honour, any feeling of what becomes a gentleman, 
 of what a soldier, a hero owes to himself. That is, 
 they would not bring out their First Principle from 
 the very circumstance that they felt its power so in- 
 tensely ; that first principle being, that there is no evil 
 so great in the whole universe, visible and invisible, 
 in time and eternity, as humiliation. 
 
 Again, supposing a medical man were to say to his 
 patient that he could not possibly get well unless he 
 gave up his present occupation, which was too much for 
 his health ; supposing him to say, " As to the way of 
 your doing this, — how you are to make your livelihood if 
 you give it up ; or again, how you are to improve your- 
 self in your present trade, or art, or intellectual pur- 
 suit ; or again, how, if you take that step, you can keep 
 up your religious connexions ; all these questions I have 
 nothing to do with ; I am only speaking to you as a 
 medical man ;" — nothing could be kinder or more sen- 
 sible than such language ; he does not make his own 
 medical enunciations first principles ; he delivers his 
 opinion, and leaves it to the patient to strike the 
 balance of advantages. But it is just possible, to 
 take an extreme case, that he might take another 
 line. He might be so carried away by his love for 
 his own science (as happens commonly to men in any 
 department of knowledge), as to think that every 
 thing ought to give way to it. He might actually ridi- 
 cule religious scruples as absurd, and prescribe some- 
 thing which would be simply unlawful to a religious 
 man ; and he might give as a reason for such advice, 
 that nature required it, and there was an end of the 
 matter. In such case he would be going so far as to 
 make the principles of his own science First Principles 
 
270 ASSUMED PKINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 of conduct ; and he would pronounce it impossible that 
 moral duty ought in any case to interfere with or super- 
 sede the claims of animal nature. 
 
 I will take a third instance : — I believe that some 
 time ago various benevolent persons exerted themselves 
 in favour of the brute creation, who endure so much 
 wanton suffering at the hands of barbarous owners. 
 Various speculations were set afloat in consequence, and 
 various measures advocated. I think I have heard that 
 one doctrine was to the effect that it was wrong to eat 
 veal, lamb, and other young meat, inasmuch as you 
 killed creatures which would have enjoyed a longer life, 
 and answered the purpose of food better, if you let them 
 live to be beef and mutton. Again, shrimp sauce, it was 
 said, ought to give way to lobster ; for in the latter case 
 you took one life away, in the other a hundred. Now 
 the world laughed at all this, and would not condescend 
 to reason ; perhaps could not, though it had the best of 
 the question ; that is, perhaps it had not put its ideas 
 sufficiently in order to be able to reason. However it 
 liad reasons, and these reasons will be found traceable 
 up to this First Principle, which expresses the general 
 theory of mankind in their conduct towards the inferior 
 animals, viz., that the Creator has placed them absolutely 
 in our hands, that we have no duties to them, and that 
 there is as little sin, except accidentally, and in the par- 
 ticular case, in taking away a brute's life, as in plucking a 
 flower or eating an orange. This being taken for granted, 
 all questions are in their substance solved, and only acci- 
 dental difficulties remain. 
 
 I have said enough to show you what important, what 
 formidable matters First Principles are. They are the 
 means of proof, and are not proved ; they rule, and are 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 271 
 
 not ruled ; they are sovereign on the one hand, irrespon- 
 sible on the other : they are absolute monarchs, and if 
 they are true, they act like the best and wisest of fathers 
 to us ; but, if they are false, they are the most cruel and 
 baneful of tyrants. Yet, from the nature of our being, 
 there they are, as I have said ; there they must ever be. 
 They are our guides and standards in speculating, reason- 
 ing, judging, deliberating, deciding, and acting ; they 
 are to the mind what the circulation of the blood and 
 the various functions of our animal organs are to the 
 body. They are the conditions of our mental life ; by 
 them we form our view of events, of deeds, of persons, of 
 lines of conduct, of objects, of moral qualities, of religion. 
 They constitute the difference between man and man ; 
 they characterize him. According to his first principles, 
 is his religion, his creed, his worship, his political party, 
 his character, except as far as adventitious circumstances 
 interfere with their due and accurate development ; they 
 are in short the man. 
 
 One additional remark must be made, quite as im- 
 portant as the foregoing. I just now said that these 
 First Principles, being a man's elementary points of think- 
 ing, and the ideas he has prior to other ideas, might be 
 considered as almost part of his mind or moral being 
 itself. But, for this very reason, because they are so 
 close to him, if I may so speak, it is very likely he is not 
 aware of them. What is far off, your bodily eyes see ; 
 what is close up to you is no object for your vision. You 
 cannot see yourself ; and in somewhat the same way the 
 chance is, you are not aware of those principles or ideas 
 which have the chief rule over your mind. They are 
 hidden for the very reason they are so sovereign and 
 so engrossing. They have sunk into you ; they spread 
 
272 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 through you ; you do not so much appeal to them as act 
 
 upon them. And this in great measure is meant hy 
 
 ; saying that self-knowledge is so difficult ; that is, in 
 
 j other words, men commonly do not know their First 
 
 Principles. 
 
 Now to show you that they have this subtle and 
 recondite character. For instance, two persons begin to 
 converse ; they come upon some point on which they do 
 not agree ; they fall to dispute. They go on arguing 
 and arguing perhaps for hours ; neither makes way with 
 the other, but each becomes more certain his own opi- 
 nion is right. Why is this ? How is it to be explained ? 
 They cannot tell. It surprises them, the point is so very 
 clear ; so far they are agreed, but no further ; for then 
 comes the difference, that where one says yes, the other 
 says no, and each wonders that the other is not on his 
 side. How comes each to be so positive when each con- 
 tradicts the other ? The real reason is, that each starts 
 from some principle or opinion which he takes for 
 granted, which he does not observe he is assuming, and 
 which, even if he did, he would think too plain to speak 
 about or attempt to prove. Each starts with a first 
 principle, and they differ in first principles. 
 
 For instance, supposing two persons to dispute whe- 
 ther Milton was or was not a poet ; it might so happen, 
 that they both took for granted that every one knew 
 what a poet was. If so, they might go on arguing to 
 the end of time and never agree, because they had not 
 adjusted with each other the principles with which they 
 started. 
 
 Now here the mistake is very obvious ; it might, how- 
 ! ever, very easily be one which did not come so promi- 
 ' nently forward in the discussion. It might come in, by 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 273 
 
 the bye, neither party might see it come in at all, or even 
 recognize it to himself as a proposition which he held 
 in the affirmative or negative, and yet it might simply 
 turn the decision this way or that. 
 
 Thus again it happens, to take an instance of another 
 kind, that we cannot tell why we like some persons and 
 dislike others, though there are reasons, if we could 
 reach them ; according to the lines, 
 
 . " I do not like thee. Dr. Fell ; 
 
 The reason why, I cannot tell." 
 
 Or a person says, " I do not loiow how it is that this or 
 that writer so comes home to me, and so inspires me ; I 
 so perfectly agree with him, or I can so easily follow his 
 thoughts." Both feelings may be accounted for, at least 
 in many cases, by a difference or agreement in First Prin- 
 ciples between the speaker and the person spoken of, 
 showing itself in the words, or writings, or deeds, or life 
 of the latter, when submitted to the criticism of the 
 former. 
 
 Sometimes two friends live together for years, and 
 appear to entertain the same religious views ; at the end 
 of the time they take different courses ; one becomes an 
 unbeliever, the other a CathoHc. How is this? some 
 latent and hitherto dormant first principle, different in 
 each, comes into play, and carries off one to the East, 
 the other to the West. For instance, suppose the one 
 holds that there is such a thing as sin ; the other denies 
 it, — denies it, that is, really and in his heart, though at 
 first he would shrink from saying so, even to himself, 
 and is not aware he denies it. At a certain crisis, either 
 from the pressure of controversy or other reason, each 
 finds he must give up the form of religion in which he 
 
274 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 has been educated ; and then this question, the nature 
 of sin, what it is, whether it exists, comes forward as 
 a turning point between them ; he who does not believe 
 in it becomes an unbeliever; he who does, becomes a 
 Catholic. 
 
 I Such, then, are First Principles ; sovereign, irrespon- 
 ! sible, and secret ; — what an awful form of government 
 the human mind is under from its very constitution ! 
 
 There are many of these First Principles, as I have 
 called them, which are common to the great mass of 
 mankind, and are therefore true, as having been im- 
 printed on the human mind by its Maker. Such are the 
 great truths of the moral law, the duties, for instance, of 
 justice, truth, and temperance. Others are peculiar to 
 individuals, and are in consequence of no authority ; as, 
 for instance, to take a case which cannot often occur, the 
 opinion that there is no difference between virtue and 
 vice. Other principles are common to extended locali- 
 ties ; men catch them from each other, by education, by 
 daily intercourse, by reading the same books, or by 
 being members of the same political community. Hence 
 nations have very frequently one and the same set of 
 first principles, of the truth of which each individual is 
 still more sure, because it is not only his own opinion, 
 but the opinion of nearly everyone else about him. Thus, 
 for instance, it was the opinion of the ancient pagan 
 Romans, that every one should follow the religion of his 
 own country, and this was the reason they persecuted 
 the first Christians. They thought it exceedingly hard 
 that the Christians would take up a religion of their own, 
 and that an upstart religion, lately imported from Pales- 
 tine. They said, " Why cannot you be contented to be 
 as your ancestors? we are most liberal on the point 
 
INSTRUMEKT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 275 
 
 of religion ; we let a Jew follow Jewish rites, and an 
 Egyptian the rites of Egypt, and a Carthaginian the 
 Punic ; but you are ungrateful and rebellious, because 
 you will not be content with this ample toleration, but 
 will introduce into your respective countries a foreign 
 religion." They thought all this exceedingly sensible, 
 and, in fact, unanswerable ; statesmen of all parties and 
 all the enlightened men and great thinkers of the Em- 
 pire gave in their adhesion to it; and on this First 
 Principle they proceeded to throw our poor forefathers 
 to the beasts, to the flame, and to the deep, after first 
 putting them to the most varied and horrible tortures. 
 Such was the power of an imperial idea, and a popular 
 dogma ; such is the consequence of a First Principle 
 being held in common by many at once ; it ceases to be 
 an opinion ; it is at once taken for truth ; it is looked 
 upon as plain common sense ; opposite opinions are 
 thought impossible, they are absurdities and nonentities, 
 and have no rights whatever. 
 
 In the instance I have mentioned, the folly and the 
 offence, in the eyes of the Romans, was proselytizing ; 
 but let us fancy this got over, would the Christian system 
 itself have pleased the countrymen of Cato at all better ! 
 On the contrary, they would have started with his First 
 Principle, that humiliation was immoral, as an axiom ; 
 they would not have attempted to prove it ; they would 
 have considered it as much a fact as the sun in heaven ; 
 they would not have even enunciated it, they would have 
 merely implied it. Fancy a really candid philosopher, 
 who had been struck with the heroic deaths of the Mar- 
 tyrs, turning with a feeling of good will to consider the 
 Christian ethics; what repugnance would he not feel 
 owards them ! to crouch, to turn the cheek, not to 
 
276 ASSUMED PEINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 resist, to love to be lowest ! Who ever heard of such a 
 teaching ? it was the religion of slaves, it was unworthy 
 of a man ; much more of a Roman ; yet that odious reU- 
 gion in the event became the creed of countless millions ; 
 what philosophers so spontaneously and instinctively con- 
 demned has been professed by the profoundest and the 
 noblest of men, through eighteen centuries ; so possible 
 is it for our First Principles to be but the opinions of a 
 multitude, not truths. 
 
 Now be quite sure, my Brothers, that I make clear to 
 you the point on which I am animadverting in these in- 
 stances. I am not blaming Cato and his countrymen for 
 using their First Principles, whatever they were, while 
 they believed them : every one must use such opinions 
 as he has ; there is nothing else to be done. What I 
 should blame in them, would be their utterly despising 
 another system with which they did not sympathize, 
 and being so sure that they were right; their for- 
 getting that the Christians might have First Principles, 
 as well as they, and opposite ones ; their forgetting that 
 it was a question of First Principles ; that the contest 
 was not ended — that it had not begun. They viewed 
 Christianity with disgust, at first sight. They were re- 
 pelled, thrown back, they revolted from the Religion, and 
 they took that mere feeling of theirs as an evidence that 
 the Religion really was wrong and immoral. No, it only 
 showed that either the Rehgion or they were wrong, which 
 of the two had still to be determined. Christians had 
 their First Principles also ; " blessed are the meek," 
 " blessed are the persecuted," " blessed are the pure- 
 hearted." These First Principles the Pagans had no 
 right to ignore. They chose to apply their own First 
 Principles as decisive tests, to the examination of the 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 277 
 
 precepts and practice of the Church, and by means of 
 them they condemned her; but if they had applied 
 Christian principles as the measure of her precepts and 
 her practice, they would, on the contrary, have been forced 
 to praise her. All depends on which set of principles 
 you begin by assuming. 
 
 The same thing takes place now. A dispassionate 
 thinker is struck with the beauty and the eloquence of 
 the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church ; he likes 
 to be present at them, but he says they are addressed of 
 course only to the imagination, not to the reason. They 
 are indefensible in the eye of reason. What does he 
 mean? Why this, when he explains himself: — he says 
 he cannot understand how the Divine Being needs pro- 
 pitiating — is He not good ? what can be the use of these 
 ceremonies ? why, too, such continual prayer ? why try 
 to get others to pray for you too, and for your object, 
 whatever it is ? what the use of novmas ? why betake 
 yourselves to saints ! what can they do for you ? So he 
 might go on, speaking against the whole system of 
 deprecatory and intercessory prayer, and we might be 
 grieved and perplexed at such a line of thought in so 
 candid a man, and we should ask ourselves how it came 
 to be. Now if it turned out at length that the said critic 
 disbelieved the virtue of prayer altogether, or that the 
 Divine Being was really moved by it, or that it was of 
 any good whatever beyond the peace and sereneness which 
 the exercise poured over the soul, I think you would con- 
 sider that this fact quite explained those criticisms of his 
 which distressed you ; you would feel that it was nugatory 
 to argue points of detail with one, who, however candid, 
 differed from you in principle ; and while you would not 
 quarrel with him for having his own First Principles 
 
 a 2 
 
278 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 (seriously as you thought of them theologically), your 
 immediate charge against him would be that he had for- 
 gotten that a Catholic has First Principles too, and 
 forgotten also that we have as much right to have our 
 theory of prayer as he to have his own. His surprise 
 and offence constitute no proof even to himself, that we 
 are wrong : they only show, that as we have our First 
 Principles, which we consider true, but which are not 
 capable of proof, so has he his. The previous question 
 remains — Which set of principles is true I He is a 
 theorist, using his theory against our practice, as if our 
 practice might not have its own theory also. But, in 
 fact, he does not dream that we have any intellectual 
 principles whatever as the basis of what we do : he 
 thinks he is the only intellectual man ; he has mind on 
 his side, it never came into our heads to have it ; we 
 do not know what mind is. Thus he imagines and de- 
 termines, knowing nothing whatever of our acute, pro- 
 found, subtle philosophers, except by name, and ridding 
 himself of the trouble of reading their works by nick- 
 naming them schoolmen or monks. 
 
 Now I have come to the point at which the mainte- 
 nance of private opinion runs into bigotry. As Prejudice 
 is the rejection of reason altogether, so Bigotry is the 
 imposition of private reason, — that is, of our own views 
 and theories, of our own First Principles, as if they were 
 the absolute truth, and the standard of all argument, in- 
 vestigation, and judgment. If there were any men in 
 the world who ought to abstain from bigotry, it is Pro- 
 testants. They, whose very badge is the right of private 
 judgment, should give as well as take, should allow others 
 what they claim themselves : but I am sorry to say, as I 
 hav^ had occasion to say again and again, there is very 
 
INSTEUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 279 
 
 little of the spirit of reciprocity among them ; they mo- 
 nopolize a liberty which they professed, when they set 
 out, was to be for the benefit of all parties. Not even 
 the intellectual, not even the candid-minded among them, 
 are free from inconsistency here. They begin by setting 
 up principles of thought and action for themselves ; then, 
 not content with applying them to their own thoughts 
 and actions, they make them the rule for criticizing and 
 condemning^ our thoughts and actions too : this, I repeat, 
 is Bigotry, Bigotry is the infliction of our own un- 
 proved First Principles on others, and the treating others 
 with scorn or hatred for not accepting them. There are 
 principles, indeed, as I have already said, not peculiar or 
 proper to the individual, but the rule of the world, such 
 as the First Principles of morals, because they come 
 from the Author of our being, and from no private fac- 
 tory of man. It is not bigotry to despise intemperance ; 
 it is not bigotry to hate injustice or cruelty ; but what- 
 ever is local, or national, or sectional, or personal, or 
 novel, and nothing more, to make that the standard of 
 judging all existing opinions, without an attempt at 
 proving it to be of authority, is mere ridiculous bigotry. 
 " In necessariis unitas, in duhiis lihertas^'' is ever the 
 rule of a true philosopher. And though I know in many 
 cases it is very difl&cult to draw the hue, and to decide 
 what principles are, and what are not, independent of 
 individuals, times, and places, eternal and divine, yet so 
 far we may safely assert, — that when the very persons 
 who hold certain views, confess, nay, boast, nay, are 
 jealously careful, that they come of their own private 
 judgment, they at least should be as jealous, and as careful 
 to keep them in their place, and not to use them as if 
 they came distinctly from heaven, or from the nature of 
 
280 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 things, or from the nature of man. Those persons surely 
 are precluded, if they would be consistent, from using their 
 principles as authoritative, who proclaim that they made 
 them for themselves. Protestants, then, if any men 
 alive, are, on their own showing, bigots, if they set up 
 their First Principles as oracles, and as judges of all 
 truth. 
 
 This being considered, have we not, my Brothers, a 
 curious sight before us? This is what we call an en- 
 lightened age: we are to have large views of things; 
 every thing is to be put on a philosophical basis ; reason 
 is to rule ; the world is to begin again ; a new and 
 transporting set of views is about to be exhibited to the 
 great human family. Well and good ; have them, 
 preach them, enjoy them, but deign to recollect the 
 while, that there have been views in the world before you; 
 that the world has not been going on up to this day 
 without any principles whatever ; that the Old Eehgion 
 was based on principles, and that it is not enough to 
 flourish about your " new lamps," if you would make us 
 give up our " old" ones. Catholicism, I say, had its 
 First Principles before you were born : you say they are 
 false : very well, prove them to be so : they are false, 
 indeed, if yours are true ; but not false merely because 
 yours are yours. While yours are yours, it is self- 
 evident, indeed, to you, that ours are false : but it is not 
 the way to carry on business in the world, to value Eng- 
 lish goods by French measures, or to pay a debt in paper 
 which was contracted in gold. Catholicism has its First 
 Principles ; overthrow them, if you can ; endure them, 
 if you cannot. It is not enough to call them effete 
 because they are old, or antiquated because they are 
 ancient. It is not enough to look into our Churches, and 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PEOTKSTANT VIEW. 281 
 
 cry " It is all a form, because divine favour cannot depend 
 on external observances;" or, " It is all a bondage, 
 became there is no such thing as sin ;" or " a blasphemy, 
 because the Supreme Being cannot be present in cere- 
 monies ; " or " a mummery, because prayer cannot move 
 Him ;" or " a tyranny, became vows are unnatural ;" or 
 " hypocrisy, because no rational man can credit it all." 
 I say here is endless assumption, unmitigated hypothesis, 
 reckless assertion : prove your, " because," " because," 
 " because :'' prove your First Principles, and if you 
 cannot, learn philosophic moderation. Why may not my 
 First Principles contest the prize with yours ? they have 
 been longer in the world, they have lasted longer, they 
 have done harder work, they have seen rougher service. 
 You sit in your easy chairs, you dogmatize in your 
 lecture-rooms, you wield your pens : it all looks well on ) 
 paper : you write exceedingly well : there never was an 
 age in which there was better writing ; logical, nervous, 
 eloquent, and pure, — go and carry it all out in the world. 
 Take your First Principles, of which you are so proud, 
 into the crowded streets of our cities, into the formidable 
 classes which make up the bulk of our population ; try to 
 work society by them. You think you can ; I say you 
 cannot — at least you have not as yet ; it is yet to be seen, 
 if you can. " Let not him that putteth on his armour 
 boast as he who taketh it off." Do not take it for 
 granted that that is certain, which awaits the test of 
 reason and experiment. Be modest until you are vic- 
 torious. My principles, which I believe to be eternal, 
 have at least lasted 1800 years ; let yours live as many 
 months. That man can sin, that he has duties, that the 
 Divine Being hears prayer, that He gives his favours 
 through visible ordinances, that He is really present in 
 
282 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 the midst of them, these principles have been the life of 
 nations ; they have shown they could be carried out : let 
 any single nation carry out yours, and you will have better 
 claim ' to speak contemptuously of Catholic rites, of Ca- 
 tholic devotions, of Catholic belief. 
 
 What is all this but the very state of mind, virhich we 
 ridicule, and call narrowness, in the case of those who 
 have never travelled ? We call them, and rightly, men of 
 contracted ideas, who cannot fancy things going on 
 differently from what they have themselves witnessed at 
 home, and laugh at every thing because it is strange. 
 They themselves are the pattern-men ; their height, their 
 dress, their manners, their food, their language, are all 
 founded in the nature of things ; and every thing else is 
 good or bad, just in that very degree in which it partakes 
 of them. All men ought to get up at half-past eight, 
 breakfast between nine and ten, read the newspapers, 
 lunch, take a ride or drive, dine. Here is the great 
 principle of the day — dine ; no one is a man who does 
 not dine ; yes, dine, and at the right hour ; and it must 
 he a dinner, with a certain time after dinner, and then in 
 due time bed. Tea and toast, port wine, roast beef ; mince- 
 pies at Christmas, lamb at Easter, goose at Michael- 
 mas, these are their great principles. They suspect 
 any one who does otherwise. Figs and maccaroni for 
 the day's fare, or Burgundy and grapes for breakfast ! — 
 they are aghast at the atrocity of the notion. And hence 
 you read of some good country gentleman, who, on 
 undertaking a Continental tour, was warned of the pri- 
 vations and mortifications that lay before him from the 
 difference between foreign habits and his own, stretching 
 his mind to a point of enlargement answerable to the 
 occasion, and making reply, that he knew it, that he had 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 283 
 
 dwelt upon the idea, that he had made up his mind to it, 
 and thought himself prepared for any thing, provided he 
 could hut bargain for a clean tablecloth, and a good 
 rump-steak every day. 
 
 Here was a man of one idea ; there are many men of 
 one idea in the world ; your unintellectual machine, who 
 eats, drinks, and sleeps, is a man of one idea. Such, too, 
 is your man of genius, who strikes out some new, or 
 revises some old view in science or in art, and would 
 apply it as a sort of specific or interpretation to all 
 possible subjects, and will not let the world alone, but 
 loads it with bad names if it will not run after him and 
 his darling fancy ; if it will not cure all its complaints by 
 chemistry or galvanism, or will not adopt the peaked 
 shoes of Edward III., or the steeple hats of the Puri- 
 tans. Such again are those benevolent persons who, 
 with right intentions, but yet, I think, narrow views, 
 wish to introduce the British constitution and British 
 ideas into every nation and tribe upon earth ; differing 
 how much ! from the wise man in the Greek epic, whose 
 characteristic was that he was " versatile '," for he had 
 known " the cities and the mind of many men." History 
 and travel expand our views of man and of society ; they 
 teach us that distinct principles rule in different coun- 
 tries and in distant periods; and, though they do not 
 teach us that all principles are equally true, or, which is 
 the same thing, that none are either true or false, yet 
 they do teach us that all are to be regarded with atten- 
 tion and examined with patience, which have prevailed to 
 any great extent among mankind. Such is the temper 
 of a man of the world, of a philosopher. He may hold 
 
 ' no\iirpo7ro£. 
 
284 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTDAL 
 
 principles to be false and dangerous, but he will try to 
 enter into them, to enter into the minds of those who 
 hold them ; he will consider in what their strength lies, 
 and what can be said for them ; he will do his best to 
 analyze and dissect them ; he will compare them with 
 others ; and he will apply himself to the task of exposing 
 and disproving them. He will not ignore them ; — now, 
 what I desiderate at the present day in so many even 
 candid men, and of course much more in the multitude 
 which is uncandid, is a recognition that Catholics have 
 principles of their own ; I desiderate a study of those 
 principles, a fair representation, a refutation. It is not 
 enough that this age has its principles too ; this does 
 not prove them true ; it has no right to put ours on one 
 side, and proceed to make its own the immediate touch- 
 stones and the sufficient tribunals of our creed, our 
 worship, our ecclesiastical proceedings, and our moral 
 teaching. 
 
 To show in how very many instances these remarks 
 apply to the criticisms and judgments passed by Pro- 
 testants upon the details of Catholic teaching and belief, 
 is simply impossible, on such an occasion as this. It 
 would be to write a book. I will take one instance, but 
 even to that I cannot hope to do full justice ; but it will 
 be something to have drawn your attention to what 
 seems to me an important line of thought, and to the 
 mode of using it in the controversy in which we are 
 engaged. 
 
 I will take, then, one of those subjects, of which 
 I spoke in the opening of this Lecture as offensive to 
 Protestants, viz., our belief in the miracles wrought by 
 the relics and the prayers of the saints, which has given 
 both occasion and scope to so many reports and narratives 
 
INSTRCMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 285 
 
 to their honour, true, doubtful, or unfounded, in the Ca- 
 thohc Church. I suppose there is nothing which prejudices 
 us more in the minds of Protestants of all classes than 
 this belief. They inspect our churches, or they attend 
 to our devotions, or they hear our sermons, or they open 
 our books, or they read paragraphs in the newspapers ; 
 and it is one and the same story — relics and miracles. 
 Such a belief, such a claim, they consider a self-evident 
 absurdity ; they are too indignant even to laugh ; they 
 toss the book from them in the fulness of anger and 
 contempt, and they think it superfluous to make one 
 remark in order to convict us of audacious imposture, 
 and to fix upon us the brand of indelible shame. I shall 
 show, then, that this strong feeKng arises simply from 
 their assumption of a First Principle, which ought to be 
 proved, if they would be honest reasoners, before it is 
 used to our disadvantage. 
 
 You observe, my Brothers, we are now upon a question 
 of controversy, in which the argument is not directly about 
 fact. This is what I noticed in the opening of this Lec- 
 ture. We accuse our enemies of untruth in most cases ; 
 we do not accuse them, on the whole, of untruth here. 
 I know it is very difficult for prejudice such as theirs to 
 open its mouth at all without some mis-statement or 
 exaggeration ; still, on the whole, they do bear true, 
 not false witness in the matter of miracles. We do 
 certainly abound, we are exuberant, we overflow with 
 stories which cause our enemies, from no fault of ours, 
 the keenest irritation, and kindle in them the most lively 
 resentment against us. Certainly the Catholic Church, 
 from east to west, from north to south, is, according to 
 our conceptions, hung with miracles. The store of relics 
 is inexhaustible ; they are multiplied through all lands, 
 
286 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 and each particle of each has in it at least a dormant, 
 perhaps an energetic virtue of supernatural operation. 
 At Eome there is the True Cross, tiie crib of Bethlehem, 
 and the chair of St. Peter ; portions of the crown of 
 thorns are kept at Paris ; the holy coat is shown at 
 Trfeves ; the winding-sheet at Turin ; at Monza, the iron 
 crown is formed out of a Nail of the cross ; and another 
 Nail is claimed for the Duomo of Milan ; and pieces of 
 our Lady's habit are to be seen in the Escurial. The 
 Agnus Dei, blest medals, the scapular, the cord of St. 
 Francis, all are the medium of divine manifestations and 
 graces. Crucifixes have bowed the head to the suppliant, 
 and Madonnas have bent their eyes upon assembled 
 crowds. St. Januarius's blood liquefies periodically at 
 Naples, and St. Winifred's well is the scene of wonders 
 even in an unbelieving country. Women are marked 
 with the sacred stigmata ; blood has flowed on Fridays 
 from their five wounds, and iheir heads are crowned with 
 a circle of lacerations. Kelics are ever touching the sick, 
 the diseased, the wounded, sometimes with no result at 
 all, at other times with marked and undeniable efficacy. 
 Who has not heard of the abundant favours gained by 
 the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and of the mar- 
 vellous consequences which have attended the invocation 
 of St. Anthony of Padua ? . These phenomena are some- 
 times reported of Saints in their life-time, as well as 
 after death, especially if they were evangelists or martyrs. 
 The wild beasts crouched before their victims in the 
 Roman amphitheatre ; the axe-man was unable to sever 
 St. Cecilia's head from her body, and St. Peter elicited a 
 spring of water for his jailor's baptism in the Mamertine. 
 St. Francis Xavier turned salt water into fresh for five 
 hundred travellers ; St. Raymond was transported over 
 
INSTKnMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 287 
 
 the sea on his cloak ; St. Andrew shone brightly in the 
 dark ; St. Scholastica gained by her prayers a pouring 
 rain ; St. Paul was fed by ravens ; and St. Frances saw 
 her guardian angel. I need not continue the catalogue ; 
 it is agreed to on both sides : the two parties join issue 
 over a fact ; that fact is the claim of miracles on the 
 part of the Catholic Church ; it is the Protestants' 
 charge, and it is our glory. 
 
 Observe then, we afifirm that the Supreme Being has 
 wrought miracles on earth ever since the time of the 
 Apostles ; Protestants deny it. Why do we affirm, why 
 do they deny ? we affirm it on a first principle, they deny 
 it on a first principle ; and on either side the first prin- 
 ciple is made to be decisive of the question. Our first 
 principle is contradictory of theirs ; if theirs be true, we 
 are mistaken ; if ours be true, they are mistaken. They 
 take for granted that their first principle is true ; we 
 take for granted that our first principle is true. Till 
 ours is disproved, we have as much right to consider it 
 true as they to consider theirs true ; till theirs is proved, 
 they have as little ground for saying that we go against 
 reason, as for boasting that they go according to it. 
 For our first principle is our reason, in the same sense 
 in which theirs is their reason, and it is quite as good a 
 reason. Both they and we start with the miracles of the 
 Apostles ' ; and then their first principle or presumption 
 against our miracles is this, " What God did once, He is 
 not likely to do again ;" while our first principle or pre- 
 sumption for our miracles is this ; " What God did once, 
 
 ^ I am arguing with Protestants ; if unbelievers are supposed, then 
 they use virtually Hume's celebrated argument, which still is a Pre- 
 sumption or First Principle : viz. it is impossible to fancy the order of 
 nature interrupted. 
 
288 ASSUMED PHINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 He is likely to do again." They say, It cannot be supposed 
 He will work many miracles ; we, It cannot be supposed 
 He will v/ovh/ew. 
 
 I am not aiming at any mere sharp or clever stroke 
 against them ; I wish to be serious, and to investigate 
 the real state of the case, and I feel what I am saying 
 very strongly. Protestants say, miracles are not likely 
 to occur often ; we say, they are likely to occur often. 
 The two parties, you see, start with contradictory 
 principles, and they determine the particular miracles, 
 which are the subject of dispute, by their respective 
 principles, without looking to the testimony, which may 
 be brought in their favour. They do not say, " St. 
 Francis, or St. Antony, or St. Philip Neri, did no mi- 
 racles, for the evidence for them is worth nothing ;" no, 
 but they say, " It is impossible they should have wrought 
 miracles." Bring before the Protestant the largest mass 
 of evidence and testimony in proof of the miraculous 
 liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood at Naples, let 
 him be urged by witnesses of the highest character, 
 chemists of the first fame, circumstances the most 
 favourable for the detection of imposture, coincidences 
 and confirmations the most close, and minute, and indi- 
 rect, he will not believe it; his First Principle bloch 
 belief. On the other hand, diminish the evidence ever so 
 much, provided you leave some, and reduce the number of 
 witnesses and circumstantial proof ; yet you would not 
 altogether wean the Catholic's mind from belief in it ; 
 for his First Principle encourages behef. Would any 
 amount of evidence convince the Protestant of the 
 miraculous motion of a Madonna's eyes ? is it not to him 
 in itself, prior to proof, simply incredible ? would he 
 even listen to the proof! His first principle settles 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 289 
 
 the matter ; no wonder then that the whole history of 
 Catholicism finds so little response in his intellect or 
 sympathy in his heart. It is as impossible that the 
 notion of the miracle should gain admittance into his 
 imagination, as for a lighted candle to remain burning, 
 when dipped into a vessel of water. The water puts it 
 out. 
 
 The Protestant, I say, laughs at the very idea of 
 miracles or supernatural powers as occurring at this day ; 
 his first principle is rooted in him ; he repels from him 
 the idea of miracles ; he laughs at the notion of evidence ; 
 one is just as likely as another ; they are all false. 
 Why ? because of his first principle, There are no mira- 
 cles since the Apostles. Here, indeed, is a short and 
 easy way of getting rid of the whole subject, not by 
 reason, but by a first principle which he calls reason. 
 Yes, it is reason, granting his first principle is true ; it 
 is not reason, supposing his first principle is false. It is 
 reason, if the private judgment of an individual, or of a 
 sect, or of a philosophy, or of a nation, be synonymous 
 with reason ; it is not reason, if reason is something not 
 local, nor temporal, but universal. Before he advances a 
 step in his argument, he ought to prove his first prin- 
 ciple true ; he does not attempt to do so, he takes it for 
 granted ; and he proceeds to apply it, gratuitous, per- 
 sonal, peculiar, as it is, to all our accounts of miracles 
 taken together, and thereupon and thereby triumphantly 
 rejects them all. This forsooth is his spontaneous 
 judgment, his instinctive feeling, his common sense, a 
 mere private opinion of his own, a Protestant opinion, a 
 lecture-room opinion, not a world-wide opinion, not an 
 instinct ranging through time and space, but an assump- 
 tion and presumption, which, by education and habit, he 
 
290 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 has got to think as certain, as much of an axiom, as that 
 two and two make four; and he looks down upon us, 
 and bids us consider ourselves beaten, all because the 
 savour of our statements, and narratives, and reports, 
 and legends is inconsistent with his delicate Protestant 
 sense, — all because our conclusions are different, not 
 from our principles and premisses, but from his. 
 
 And now for the structure he proceeds to raise on this 
 foundation of sand. If, he argues, in matter of fact, 
 there be a host of stories about relics and miracles 
 circulated in the Catholic Church, which, as a matter 
 of first principle, cannot be true, to what must we" 
 attribute them 1 indubitably to enormous stupidity on 
 the one hand, and enormous roguery on the other. This, 
 observe, is an immediate and close inference ; clever men 
 must see through the superstition ; those who do not see 
 through it must be dolts. Further, since religion is the 
 subject-matter of the alleged fictions, they must be what 
 are called pious frauds, for the sake of gain and power. 
 Observe, my Brothers, there is in the Church a vast tra- 
 dition and testimony about miracles ; how is it to be 
 accounted for ? If miracles 'can take place, then the 
 fact of the miracle will be a natural explanation of the 
 report, just as the fact of a man dying satisfactorily 
 accounts for the news that he is dead ; but the Pro- 
 testant cannot so explain it, because he thinks miracles 
 cannot take place ; so he is necessarily driven, by way of 
 accounting for the report of them, to impute that report 
 to fraud. He cannot help himself. I repeat it; the 
 whole mass of accusations which Protestants bring 
 against us under this head. Catholic creduhty, impos- 
 ture, pious frauds, hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and 
 varied superstructure of imputation, you see, all rests on 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 291 
 
 an assumption, on an opinion of theirs, for which they 
 offer no kind of proof. What then, in fact, do they say 
 more than this, If Protestantism be true, you Cathohcs 
 are a most awful set of knaves ! — Here, at least, is a 
 most sensible and undeniable position. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, let me take our own side of 
 the question, and consider how we ourselves stand re- 
 latively to the charge made against us. Catholics, then, 
 hold the mystery of the Incarnation ; and the Incarnation 
 is the most* stupendous event which ever can take place 
 on earth ; and after it and henceforth, I do not see how 
 we can scruple at any miracle on the mere ground of its 
 being unlikely to happen. No miracle can be so great 
 as that which took place in the Holy House of Nazareth; 
 it is indefinitely more difficult to believe than all the 
 miracles of the breviary, of the Martyrology, of Saints' 
 lives, of legends, of local traditions put together ; and 
 there is the grossest inconsistency, on the very face of 
 the matter, for any one so to strain out the gnat and 
 to swallow the camel, as to profess what is inconceivable, 
 yet to protest against what is surely within the limits of 
 intelligible hypothesis. If, through divine grace, we once 
 are able to accept the solemn truth that the Supreme 
 Being was born of a mortal woman, what remains to 
 offend us on the ground of its marvellousness ? Thus 
 you see it happens that, though First Principles are 
 commonly assumed, not proved, ours in this case admits, 
 if not of proof, yet of recommendation by that funda- 
 mental truth, which Protestants profess as well as we. 
 When we start with assuming that miracles are not 
 unlikely, we are putting forth a position, which lies im- 
 bedded, as it were, and involved in the great revealed 
 fact of the Incarnation. So much is plain on starting ; 
 
 A a 
 
292 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 but more is plain too. Miracles are not only not unlikely, 
 but they are positively likely ; and for this simple reason, 
 because, for the most part, when God begins, He goes 
 on. We conceive, that when He first did a miracle. He 
 began a series ; when He commenced, He continued : 
 what has been, will be. Surely this is good and clear 
 reasoning. To my own mind, certainly, it is incom- 
 parably more difficult to believe that the Divine Being 
 should do one miracle and no more, than that He should 
 do a thousand ; that He should do one great miracle only, 
 than that He should do a multitude of less besides. This 
 beautiful world of nature. His own work. He broke its 
 harmony ; He broke through His own laws which He had 
 imposed on it ; He worked out His purposes, not simply 
 through it, but in violation of it. If He did this only in 
 the life-time of the Apostles, if He did it but once, 
 eighteen hundred years ago and more, that isolated in- 
 fringement looks as the mere infringement of a rule ; if 
 Divine Wisdom would not leave an infringement, an 
 anomaly, a solecism on His work. He might be expected 
 to introduce a series of miracles, and turn the apparent 
 exception into an additional law of His providence. If 
 the Divine Being does a thing once, He is, judging by 
 human reason, likely to do it again. This surely is 
 common sense. If a beggar gets food at a gentleman's 
 house once, does he not send others thither after him ? 
 If you are attacked by thieves once, do you forthwith 
 leave your windows open at night ! If an acquaintance 
 were convicted of a fraud, would you let that be the 
 signal for reposing confidence in him, as a man who could 
 'not possibly deceive you ? Nay, suppose you yourselves 
 were once to see a miracle, would you not feel the occur- 
 rence to be like passing a line ? should you, in consequence 
 
INSTHHMENT OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 293 
 
 of it, declare, " I never will believe another if I hear of 
 one !" would it not, on the contrary, predispose you to 
 listen to a new report ? would you scoff at it and call it 
 priestcraft for the reason that you had actually seen one 
 with your own eyes ? I think you would not ; then I 
 ask what is the difference of the argument, whether you 
 have seen one or believe one ? You believe the Apos- 
 tohc miracles, therefore be inclined beforehand to believe 
 later ones. , Thus you see, our First Principle, that 
 miracles are not unlikely now, is not at all a strange one 
 in the mouths of those who believe that the Supreme 
 Being came miraculously into this world, miraculously 
 united Himself to man's nature, passed a life of miracles, 
 and then gave His Apostles a greater gift of miracles 
 than He exercised Himself. So far on the principle 
 itself; and now, in the next place, see what comes 
 of it. 
 
 This comes of it, — that there are two systems going 
 on in the world, one of nature, and one above nature ; 
 and two histories, one of common events, and one of mi- 
 racles ; and each system and each history has its own 
 order. When I hear the report of a miracle, my first 
 feeling would be of the same kind as if it were a report 
 of any natural exploit or event. Supposing, for instance, 
 I heard a report of the death of some public man ; it 
 would not startle me, even if I did not at once credit it, for 
 all men must die. Did I read of any great feat of valour, 
 I should believe it, if imputed to Alexander or Oceur de 
 Lion. Did I hear of any act of baseness, I should dis- 
 believe it, if imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. 
 And so in like manner were a miracle reported to me as 
 wrought by a member of Parliament, or a Bishop of the 
 Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate 
 Aa2 
 
294) ASSUMED PHINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 the notion : were it referred to a saint, or the relic of a 
 saint, or the intercession of a saint, I should not be startled 
 at it, though I might not at once believe it. And I cer- 
 tainly should be right in this conduct, supposing my First 
 Principle be true. Miracles to the Catholic are histo- 
 rical facts, and nothing short of this ; and they are to be 
 regarded and dealt with as other facts : and as natural 
 facts, under circumstances, do not startle Protestants, so 
 supernatural, under circumstances, do not startle the 
 Catholic'. They may or may not have taken place in 
 particular cases ; he may be unable to determine which ; 
 he may have no distinct evidence ; he may suspend his 
 judgment, but he will say " It is very possible ;" he never 
 will say " I cannot believe it." 
 
 Take the history of Alfred : you know his v?ise, mild, 
 beneficent, yet daring character, and his romantic vicis- 
 situdes of fortune. This great king has a number of 
 stories, or, as you may call them, legends told of him. Do 
 you believe them all ! no. Do you, on the other hand, 
 think them incredible ? no. Do you call a man a dupe or a 
 blockhead for believing them ? no. Do you call an author 
 a knave and a cheat who records them ? no. You go into 
 neither extreme, whether of imphcit faith or of violent 
 reprobation. You are not so extravagant ; you see that 
 they suit his character, they may have been. : yet this is 
 so romantic, that has so little evidence, a third is so 
 
 ' Douglas, succeeding Middleton, lays down the sceptical and Pro- 
 testant First Principle thus : " The history of miracles, (to make use of 
 the words of an author, whose authority you will think of some weight,) 
 is of a kind totally different from that of common events ; the one to be 
 suspected always of course, without the strongest evidence to confirm it ; the 
 other to be admitted of course, without as strong reason to sitspect it," &c. 
 — Criterion, p. 26. 
 
INSTEUMENT OF THE PROTESTAKT VIEW. 295 
 
 confused in dates or in geography, that you are in matter 
 of fact indisposed towards them. Others are probably 
 true, others certainly. Nor do you force every one to 
 take your view of particular stories ; you and your neighs 
 hours think differently about this or that in detail, and 
 agree to differ. There is in the museum at Oxford, a 
 jewel or trinket said to be Alfred's ; it is shown to all 
 comers : I never heard the keeper of the museum accused 
 of hypocrisy or fraud for showing, with Alfred's name 
 appended, what he might or might not himself believe to 
 have belonged to that great king: nor did I ever see 
 any piarty of strangers, who were looking at it with awe, 
 regarded by any self-complacent bystander with scornful 
 compassion. Yet the curiosity is not to a certainty 
 Alfred's. The world pays civil honour to it on the pro- 
 bability ; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on 
 the probability. Is the Tower of London shut against 
 sightseers, because the coats of mail or pikes there may 
 have half legendary tales connected with them ? why then 
 may not the country people come up in joyous companies, 
 singing and piping, to see the Holy Ooat at Treves? 
 There is our Queen again, who is so truly and justly 
 popular ; she roves about in the midst of tradition and 
 romance ; she scatters myths and legends from her as 
 she goes along ; she is a being of poetry, and you might 
 fairly be sceptical whether she had any personal existence. 
 She is always at some beautiful, noble, bounteous work 
 or other, if you trust the papers. She is doing alms- 
 deeds in the highlands ; she meets beggars in her rides 
 at Windsor; she writes verses in albums, or draws 
 sketches, or is mistaken for the housekeeper by some 
 blind old woman, or she runs up a hill, as if she were a 
 child. Who finds fault with these things? he would be 
 
296 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would have gall 
 for blood, who was not struck with this graceful, touching 
 evidence of the love her subjects bear her. Who could 
 have the head, even if he had the heart, who could be so 
 cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and perverse, 
 as to say that some of these stories may be simple lies, 
 and all of them might have stronger evidence than they 
 carry with them? Do you think she is displeased at 
 them \ Why, then, should He, the Great Father, who 
 once walked the earth, look sternly on the unavoidable 
 mistakes of His own subjects and children in their 
 devotion to Him and His ? Even granting they mistake 
 some cases in particular, from the infirmity of human 
 nature, and the contingencies of evidence, and fancy there 
 is or has been a miracle here or there when there is not ; 
 though a tradition, attached to a picture, or to a shrine, 
 or a well, be very doubtful, though one relic be some- 
 times mistaken for another, and St. Theodore stands for 
 St. Eugenius or St. Agathocles, still, once take into account 
 our First Principle, that He is likely to continue miracles 
 among us, which is as good as the Protestant, and I 
 do not see why He should feel much displeasure with us 
 on account of this, or should cease to work wonders in 
 our behalf. In the Protestant's view, indeed, who as- 
 sumes that miracles never are, our thaumatology is one 
 great falsehood; but that is Ms First Principle, as I 
 have said so often, which he does not prove but assume. 
 If /*«, indeed, upheld our system, or we held Ms principle, 
 in either case he or we should be impostors ; but though 
 we should be partners to a fraud, if we thought like 
 Protestants, we surely are not, if we think hke Ca- 
 tholics. 
 
 Such, then, is the answer which I make to those who 
 
INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 297 
 
 would urge against us the multitude of miracles recorded 
 in our Saints' Lives and devotional works, for many of 
 which there is little evidence, and for some next to none. 
 We think them true, in the same sense in which Protes- 
 tants think the history of England true. ^Vhen they say 
 that, they do not mean to say there are no mistakes, but 
 no mistakes of consequence, none which alter the general 
 course of history. Nor do they mean they are equally 
 sure of every part ; for evidence is fuller and better for 
 some things than for others. They do not stake their 
 credit on the truth of Froissart or Sully, they do not 
 pledge themselves for the accuracy of Doddington or 
 Walpole, they do not embrace as an Evangelist Hume, 
 Sharon Turner, or Macaulay. And yet they do not think 
 it necessary, on the other hand, to commence a religious 
 war against all our historical catechisms, and abstracts, 
 and dictionaries, and tales, and biographies, through the 
 country ; they have no call on them to emend and ex- 
 purgate books of archseology, antiquities, heraldry, archi- 
 tecture, geography, and statistics, to rewrite our in- 
 scriptions, and to establish a censorship on all new pub- 
 lications for the time to come. And so as regards the 
 miracles of the Catholic Church ; if, indeed, miracles 
 never can occur, then, indeed, impute the narratives to 
 fraud ; but till you prove they are not likely, we shall 
 consider the histories which have come down to us true 
 on the whole, though in particular cases they may be 
 exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, they can 
 certainly be proved to be false, there we shall be bound 
 to do our best to get rid of them ; but till that is clear, 
 we shall be liberal enough to allow others to use their 
 private judgment in their favour, as we use ours in their 
 disparagement. For myself, lest I appear in any way to 
 
298 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 be shrinking from a determinate judgment on the claims 
 of some of those miracles and relics, which Protestants are 
 so startled at, and to be hiding particular questions in what 
 is vague and general, I will avow distinctly, that, putting 
 out of the question the hypothesis of unknown laws of 
 nature (which >is an evasion from the force of any proof), 
 ' I think it impossible to withstand the evidence which is 
 brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius 
 at Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of 
 the Madonna in the Eoman States. I see no reason to 
 doubt the material of the Lombard crown at Monza ; 
 and I do not see why the Holy Coat at Treves may not 
 have been what it professes to be. I firmly believe that 
 portions of the True Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, 
 that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies 
 of St. Peter and St. Paul also. I believe that at Rome 
 too lies St. Stephen, that St. Matthew lies at Salerno, 
 and St. Andrew at Amalfi. I firmly believe that the relics 
 of the saints are doing innumerable miracles and graces 
 daily, and that it needs only for a Catholic to show devo- 
 tion to any saint in order to receive special benefits from 
 his intercession. I firmly, believe that saints in their 
 life-time have before now raised the dead to life, crossed 
 the sea without vessels, multiplied grain and bread, cured 
 incurable diseases, and stopped the operation of the laws 
 of the universe in a multitude of ways. Many men, when 
 they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute 
 the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncracy, or to imbe- 
 cility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanati- 
 cism, or to hypocrisy. They. have a right to say so, if 
 they will ; and we have a right to ask them why they do 
 not say it of those who bow down before the Mystery of 
 mysteries, the Divine Incarnation. If they do not believe 
 
INSTHUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 299 
 
 this, they are not yet Protestants ; if they do, let them 
 grant that He, who has done the greater may do the 
 
 And now, Brothers of the Oratory, I have come to the 
 end of a somewhat uninteresting, but a necessary dis- 
 cussion. Your lot is cast in the world ; you are not 
 gathered together, as we are, into the home and under 
 the shadow of St. Philip ; you mix with men of all opi- 
 nions. Where you see prejudice, there, indeed, it is no 
 use to argue ; prejudice thinks its first principles self- 
 evident. It can tell falsehoods to our dishonour by the 
 score, yet suddenly it is so jealous of truth, as to be 
 shocked at legends in honour of the saints. With pre- 
 judiced persons then, you will make no way ; they will 
 not look the question in the face ; if they condescend 
 to listen for a moment to your arguments, it is in order 
 to pick holes in them, not to ascertain their drift or to 
 estimate their weight. But there are others of a different 
 stamp, of whom I spoke in the opening of this Lecture, 
 candid, amiable minds, who wish to think well of our doc- 
 trines and devotions, but stumble at them. When you 
 meet with such, ask them whether they are not taking 
 their own principles and opinions for granted, and whether 
 all they have to say against us is not contained in the 
 proposition with which they start. Entreat them to con- 
 sider how they know their existing opinions to be true ; 
 whether they are innate and necessary;' whether they 
 are not local, national, or temporary ; whether they have 
 ever spread over the earth, ever held nations together ; 
 whether they have ever or often done a great thing. If 
 they say that penances are absurd, or images superstitious, 
 or infallibility impossible, or sacraments mere charms, or 
 
 Bb 
 
300 ASSUMED PRINCIPLES, &C. 
 
 a priesthood priestcraft, get them to put their ideas into 
 shape and to tell you the reasons for them. Trace up 
 their philosophy for them, as you have traced up their 
 tradition ; the fault lies in the root ; every step of it is 
 easy but the first. Perhaps you will make them Catholics 
 by this process ; at least you will make them perceive 
 what they believe and what they do not, and will teach 
 them to be more tolerant of a religion which unhappily 
 they do not see their way to embrace. 
 
.LECTURE VIII. 
 
 WANT OF INTEKCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS THE PRO- 
 TECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 
 
 Yon may have asked yourselves, Brothers of the Oratory, 
 why it was, that in exposing, as I did last week, the 
 shallowness of the philosophy on which our opponents 
 erect their structure of argument against us, I did not 
 take, as my illustration, an instance far more simple and 
 ready to my hand than that to which I actually directed 
 your attention. It was my object, on that occasion, to 
 show that Protestants virtually assume the point in de- 
 bate between them and us, in any particular controversy, 
 in the very principles with which they set out ; that those 
 first principles, for which they offer no proof, involve their 
 conclusions ; so that, if we are betrayed into the inad- 
 vertence of passing them over without remark, we are 
 forthwith defeated and routed even before we have begun 
 t6 move forward to the attack, as might happen to cavalry 
 who manoeuvred on a swamp, or to a guerilla force which 
 ventured on the open plain. Protestants and Catholics 
 
 c c 
 
302 WANT OF INTERCOUESE WITH C<\THOLICS 
 
 each have their own ground, and cannot engage on any 
 other ; the question in dispute is more elementary than 
 men commonly suppose ; it is about the ground itself, on 
 which the battle is legitimately and rightfully to be 
 fought ; the first principles assumed in the starting of the 
 controversy determine the issue. Protestants in fact do 
 but say, that we are superstitious, because it is super- 
 stitious to do as we do ; that we are deluded, because it is 
 a delusion to believe what we believe ; that we are knaves, 
 because it must be knavery to teach what we teach. A 
 short and pleasant argument, easier even and safer than 
 the extempore and improvisatore mode of fabricating and 
 fabling against us, of which I have said so much in former 
 Lectures ; easier and safer, inasmuch as, according to the 
 proverb, " great wits ought to have long memories," when 
 they deal with facts. In such cases, there must be con- 
 sistency, and speciousness, and proof, and circumstantial 
 evidence ; private judgment in short becomes subject to 
 sundry and serious liabilities when it deals in history and 
 testimony, from which it is comparatively free when it 
 expatiates in opinions and views. Now of this high a 
 priori mode of deciding the question, the specimen I ac- 
 tually took was the Protestant argument against relics 
 and miracles ; and I selected this instance for its own 
 sake, because I wished to bring out what I thought an 
 important truth as regarded them ; but a more obvious 
 instance certainly would have been the surprising obtuse- 
 ness, for I can use no other word, with which the Protest- 
 ant Eule of Faith, which Catholics disown, is so often 
 obtruded on us, as a necessary basis of discussion, which 
 it is thought absurd and self-destructive not to accept, in 
 any controversy about doctrine. 
 
 All the world knows, that Catholics hold that the 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 303 
 
 Apo8tles made over to the next generation the divine 
 revelation, not only in writing, but by word of mouth, 
 and in the ritual of the Church. We consider that 
 the New Testament is not the whole of what they 
 left us ; that they left us a number of doctrines, not in 
 writing at all, but living in the minds and mouths of the 
 faithful : Protestants deny this. They have a right to 
 deny it ; but they have no right to assume their denial 
 to be true jvithout proof, and to use it as self-evident, and 
 triumph over us as beaten, merely because we will not 
 admit it. Yet this they actually do : can any thing be 
 more preposterous ? however, men do this as innocently 
 and naturally as if it were the most logical of processes, 
 and the fairest and most unexceptionable of proceedings. 
 For instance, there was a country gentleman in this 
 neighbourhood, in the course of last year, who, having 
 made some essays in theology in his walks over his estate, 
 challenged me to prove some point, I am Yiot clear what, 
 but I think the infallibility of the Holy See, or of the 
 Church. Were my time my own, I should never shrink 
 from any controversy, having the experience of twenty 
 years, that the more Catholicism and its doctrines are 
 sifted, the more distinct and luminous will its truth ever 
 come out into view ; and in the instance in question I did 
 not decline the invitation. However, it soon turned out 
 that it was a new idea to the gentleman in question, that 
 I was not bound to prove the point in debate simply by 
 Scripture ; he considered that Scripture was to be the 
 sole basis of the discussion. This was quite another 
 thing. For myself, I firmly believe that in Scripture it 
 is contained; but, had I accepted this gratuitous and 
 officious proposition, you see I should have been simply 
 recognizing a Protestant principle, which I disown. He 
 c c 2 
 
304 WANT OF INTERCOUKSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 would not controvert with me at all, unless I subscribed 
 to a doctrine which I believe to be, not only a dangerous, 
 but an absurd error ; and, because I would not allow him 
 to assume what it was his business to prove, before he 
 brought it forward, and because I challenged him to 
 prove that Scripture was, as he assumed, the Kule of 
 Faith, he turned away as happy and self-satisfied as if he 
 had gained a victory. That all truth is contained in 
 Scripture was his first principle ; he thought none but an 
 idiot could doubt it, none but a Jesuit could deny it ; he 
 thought it axiomatic, and that proof was even a pro- 
 fanation of so self-evident a point ; but this, I repeat, 
 was no extraordinary instance of Protestant argumenta- 
 tion ; it occurs every other day. 
 
 The instance in controversy, to which I have been allud- 
 ing, leads by no very difficult nor circuitous transition to 
 the subject to which I mean to devote the present Lecture. 
 Let it be observed that the fallacy involved in the Pro- 
 testant Rule of Faith is this, — that its upholders fancy 
 most unnaturally, that the accidental and occasional 
 writings of an Apostle convey to them of necessity his 
 whole mind. It does not occur to them to ask them- 
 selves, whether possibly, as he has in part committed 
 his teaching to writing, so he may not have expressed it 
 through other channels also. Very different this from 
 their mode of acting in matters of this world, in which 
 nothing men are more distrustful of, or discontented with, 
 than mere writing, when they would arrive at the real 
 state of a case in which they are interested. When a 
 government, or the proprietors of a newspaper, would 
 gain accurate information on any subject, they send some 
 one to the spot, to see with his eyes. When a man of 
 business would bring a negotiation to a safe and satisfac- 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 305 
 
 tory conclusion, he exclaims that letters are endless, and 
 forthwith despatches a confidential person to transact 
 the matter with the parties with whom he is treating. 
 We know how unwilling heads of families are to take 
 servants by written characters, considering that writing 
 is not minute and real enough for their purpose. 
 Writing, of course, has special advantages, but it has its 
 defects ; and other methods of information compensate for 
 them. It must be recollected, too, as regards the New 
 Testament, that it is not a technical document, like an 
 act of Parliament, or a legal instrument, but is made up 
 of various compositions, containing, more or less, the free 
 and flowing course of thought of their respective writers. 
 It is not worded with the scientific precision of a formal 
 treatise, a creed, or a last will and testament. Now, 
 works written in this natural style are especially liable to 
 be interpreted by the reader, and to make an impression 
 on him, not corresponding to the writer's intention, but 
 to his own principles and feelings. The imagination 
 draws the unknown or absent author in lineaments alto- 
 gether different from the original. Did we suddenly see 
 St. Peter or St. Paul, and heard him converse, most of 
 us would not recognize, or even suspect him to be the 
 Apostle. How disappointed we sometimes are at the 
 sight of those of whom we have often heard, or whose 
 writings we have often read ! We cannot believe we 
 have the living author before us. Hence it is common 
 to hear it said of intemperate partisans, " If you knew 
 him, you really would like him ; he is so different from 
 his mode of writing or speaking ;" others, on the other 
 hand, meet with a person whom they have long admired 
 through the medium of his works, and are quite morti- 
 
306 WANT OF INTEKCODESE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 fied and annoyed that they like his conversation and his 
 manners so little. 
 
 Unless my memory fails me of what I read years ago, 
 a well-known authoress, lately deceased, supplies in her 
 tales one or two instances in point. I recollect the de- 
 scription of an old-fashioned, straightforward East Indian, 
 who had for years corresponded with the widow of a 
 friend in England, and from her letters had conceived a 
 high opinion of her good sense and propriety of feeling. 
 Then, as the story goes on to tell, he comes back to 
 England, becomes acquainted with her, and, to his disap- 
 pointment, is gradually made aware that she is nothing 
 else than a worldly, heartless, and manoeuvring woman. 
 The same writer draws elsewhere a very young lady, who, 
 in the spirit of romance, has carried on a correspondence 
 with another female, whom she never saw ; on the strength 
 of which, from a conviction of the sympathy which must 
 exist between them, she runs from home to join her, with 
 the view of retiring with her for life to some secluded 
 valley in Wales ; but is shocked to find, on meeting her, 
 that after all she is vulgar, unattractive, and middle-aged. 
 Were it necessary, numberless instances might be given 
 to the purpose ; of mistakes, too, of every kind ; of per- 
 sons, when seen, turning out different from their writings, 
 for the better as well as for the worse, or neither for the 
 better nor the worse, but still so different as to surprise 
 us and make us muse ; different in opinion, or in prin- 
 ciple, or in conduct, or in impression and effect. And 
 thus Scripture, in like manner, though written under a 
 supernatural guidance, is from the nature of the case, 
 from the defect of human language, and the infirmity of 
 the recipient, unable by itself to convey the real mind of 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 307 
 
 its writers to all who read it. Instead of its forcing its 
 meaning upon the reader, the reader forces his own 
 meaning upon it, colours it with his own thoughts, and 
 distorts it to his purposes ; so that something is evidently 
 needed besides it, such as the teaching of the Church, 
 to protect it from the false private judgment of the indi- 
 vidual. And if this be true, when the whole New Testa- 
 ment is contemplated, how much more certainly will it 
 take place, when Protestants contract their reading pro- 
 fessedly to'only a part of it, as St. Paul's Epistles ; and 
 then again, out of St. Paul, select the two Epistles to 
 the Romans and Galatians; and still further, as is so 
 common, confine themselves to one or two sentences, 
 which constitute practically the whole of the Protestant 
 written word ! Why, of course, it is very easy to put 
 what sense they please on one or two verses ; and thus 
 the religion of the Apostles may come in the event to 
 mean any thing or nothing. 
 
 Here, then, we are arrived at the subject on which I 
 mean to remark this evening. Protestants judge of the 
 Apostles' doctrine by " texts," as they are commonly 
 called, taken from Scripture, and nothing more ; and 
 they judge of our doctrine by " texts " taken from our 
 writings, and nothing more. Picked verses, bits torn 
 from the context, half sentences, are the vouchers of the 
 Prote^ant idea, on the one hand, of Apostolic truth, 
 and, on the other, of Catholic falsehood. As they have 
 their chips and fragments of St. Paul and St. John, so 
 have they their chips and fragments of Suarez and Bellar- 
 mine ; and out of the former they make to themselves their 
 own Christian rehgion, and out of the latter our Antichris- 
 tian superstition. They do not ask themselves sincerely 
 as a matter of fact and history. What did the Apostles 
 
308 WA-KT OF INTERCOUllSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 teach then ? nor do they ask sincerely and as a matter 
 of fact, What do CathoHcs teach now 2 they judge of the 
 Apostles and they judge of us by scraps, and on these 
 scraps they exert their private judgment, — that is, their 
 prejudice, as I described two Lectures back, and their 
 assumed principles, as I described in my foregoing Lec- 
 ture ; and the process ends in their bringing forth, out 
 of their scraps frOm the Apostles, what they call " Scrip- 
 tural Religion," and out of their scraps from our theolo- 
 gians, what they call Popery. 
 
 The first Christians were a living body; they were 
 thousands of zealous, energetic men, who preached, dis- 
 puted, catechised, and conversed from year's end to year's 
 end. They spoke by innumerable tongues, with one 
 heart and one soul, all saying the same thing; all this 
 multitudinous testimony about the truths of revelation, 
 Protestants narrow down into one or two meagre sen- 
 tences, which at their own will and pleasure they select 
 from St. Paul, and at their own will and pleasure they 
 explain, and call the Gospel. They do just the same 
 thing with us ; Catholics, at least, have a lively illustra- 
 tion and evidence of the absurdity of Protestant private 
 judgment as exercised on the Apostolic writings, in the 
 visible fact of its absurdity as exercised on themselves. 
 They, as their forefathers, the first Christians, are a living 
 body ; they, too, preach, dispute, catechise, converse 
 with innumerable tongues, saying the same thing, as our 
 adversaries confess, all over the earth. Well then, you 
 would think the obvious way was, if they would know 
 what we really teach, to come and ask us, to talk with 
 us, to try to enter into our views, and to attend to our 
 teaching. Not at all ; they do not dream of doing so ; 
 they take their " texts ;" they have got their cut and 
 
THE PROTECTION OK THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 309 
 
 dried specimens from our divines, which the Protestant 
 Tradition hands down from generation to generation ; 
 and, as by the aid of their verses from Scripture, they 
 thinl{ they understand the Gospel better than the first 
 Christians, so by the help of these choice extracts from our 
 works, they think they understand our doctrine better than 
 we do ourselves. They will not allow us to explain our 
 own books. So sure are they of their knowledge, and so su- 
 perior to us, that they have no difficulty in setting us right, 
 and in accounting for our contradicting them. Some- 
 times Catholics are evasive and shuffling, which, of course, 
 will explain every thing ; sometimes they simply have 
 never been told what their creed really is ; the priest keeps 
 it from them, and cheats them; as yet, too, perhaps they 
 are recent converts, and do not know the actual state of 
 things, though they will know in time. Thus Protestants 
 judge us by their " texts ;" and by " texts " I do not 
 mean passages from our writers merely, but all those 
 samples of whatever kind, historical, ecclesiastical, bio- 
 graphical, or political, carefully prepared, improved, and 
 finished off by successive artists for the occasion, which 
 they think so much more worthy of credit and reliance as 
 to facts, than us and our word, who are in the very com- 
 munion to which those facts relate. Some good personal 
 knowledge of us, and intercourse with us, not in the way 
 of controversy and criticism, but what is prior, viz., in 
 the way of sincere inquiry, in order to ascertain how 
 things really lie, such knowledge and intercourse would 
 be worth all the conclusions, however elaborate and subtle, 
 from rumours, false witnessings, suspicions, romantic 
 scenes, morsels of history, morsels of theology, morsels 
 of our miraculous legends, morsels of our devotional 
 writers, morsels from our individual members, whether 
 
310 WANT OF INTERCOUKSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 unlearned or intemperate, which are the " text " of the 
 traditional Protestant view against us. This, then, is the 
 last of the causes, which in the course of these Lectures 
 I shall assign, and on which this evening I shall insist, 
 by way of accounting for the hatred and contempt shown 
 towards the Catholics of England by their fellow-coun- 
 trymen, viz., that the Catholics of England, as a body, 
 are not personally known. 
 
 I have already observed, that, in matters of this world, 
 when a man would really get information on a subject, 
 he eschews reports, and mistrusts understandings, and 
 betakes himself to head-quarters. The best letters and 
 travels about a foreign people are tame and dead com- 
 pared with the view he gains by residence among them ; 
 and when that has continued for a sufficient time, he per- 
 ceives how unreal were even fhe first impressions, which, 
 on his arriving, were made upon him by the successive 
 accidents of the hour. Knowledge thus obtained cannot 
 be communicated to others : it is imbibed and appro- 
 priated by the mind as a personal possession ; an idea of 
 the people among whom he lives is set up within him ; he 
 may like them or not, but his perception is real, and, if 
 any one questions it, he can but appeal to the circum- 
 stance of his long residence in the country, and say he 
 has a right to an opinion, which nevertheless he can but 
 poorly and partially defend. He can but give his witness, 
 and must be believed on his reputation. And surely, if 
 he has a fair name for powers of observation and good 
 sense, he may be believed without proof. He has wit- 
 nessed what others argue about. He has contemplated 
 the national character in life and in action, as it is brought 
 out in its opinions, aims, sentiments, and dispositions in 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 311 
 
 the course of the day and the year ; he has heard the 
 words, seen the deeds, watched the manners, breathed 
 the atmosphere, and so caught the true idea of the peo- 
 ple; — in other words, he has mastered their Tradition. 
 This is what CathoHcs mean by Tradition, and why they 
 go so much by it. It does not prove our doctrines to an 
 observer, but it will tell him, in a way no other inform- 
 ant can tell him, what our doctrines are. It has a sub- 
 stance and a reality peculiar to itself; for it is not a 
 sample or specimen of us merely, but it is we, our think- 
 ing, speaking, acting self; our principles, our judgments, 
 our proceedings. What we hold, what we do not hold, 
 what we like, what we hate, cannot all be written down, 
 whether by us or by others ; you can have no daguerreo- 
 type of intellect, affection, and will ; at best you have but 
 a few bold strokes recorded for the benefit of others, ac- 
 cording to the skill of the individual artist. Those who 
 write books about a people or a school are hardly more 
 than extempore sketchers ; or they paint from memory ; 
 if you would have the real thing, what the men are, what 
 they think, what they do, close your books, take a ticket 
 by the first train, cross the channel, plunge in among 
 them, drink them in. This is what is called painting 
 from the life ; and what is here called hfe, the Catholic 
 calls Tradition, which eclipses and supersedes, when and 
 where it can be had, the amplest collection of "texts" 
 and extracts about our doctrine and polity ever put to- 
 gether by the ablest of compilers. 
 
 Now let me quote some words of my own on this sub- 
 ject, when I was a Protestant. As they are written in 
 controversy with Catholics, they are so much more to my 
 present purpose ; especially as I did not, when I wrote 
 them, see their bearing on the point I am now insisting 
 
■312 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 on. The passage is long, but its appositeness may ex- 
 cuse it. 
 
 " We hear it said," I then observed, " that they [the 
 Catholics] go by Tradition ; and we fancy in consequence 
 that there are a certain definite number of statements 
 ready framed and compiled, which they profess to have 
 received from the Apostles. One may hear the question 
 sometimes asked, for instance, where their professed 
 Traditions are to be found, whether there is any collection 
 of them, and whether they are printed and published. 
 Now, though they would allow that the Traditions of the 
 Church are in fact contained in the writings of her 
 Doctors, still this question proceeds on somewhat of a 
 misconception of their real theory, which seems to be as 
 follows : — By Tradition they mean the whole system of 
 faith and ordinances, which they have received from the 
 generation before them, and that generation again from 
 the generation before itself. And in this sense un- 
 doubtedly we all go by Tradition in matters of this world. 
 Where is the corporation, society, or fraternity of any 
 kind, but has certain received rules and understood prac- 
 tices, which are no where put down in writing ? How 
 often do we hear it said, that this or that person has 
 ' acted unusually ; ' that so and so ' was never done be- 
 fore ; ' that it is ' against rule,'' and the like ; and then, 
 perhaps, to avoid the inconvenience of such irregularity 
 in future, what was before a tacit engagement, is turned 
 into a formal and explicit order or principle. The want 
 of a regulation must be discovered before it is supplied ; 
 and the virtual transgression of it goes before its 
 adoption. At this very time, great part of the law of 
 the land is administered under the sanction of such a 
 Tradition : it is not contained in any formal or autho- 
 
THE I'ROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 313 
 
 ritative code, it depends on custom or precedent. There 
 is no explicit written law, for instance, simply declaring 
 murder to be a capital offence, unless, indeed, we have 
 recourse to the divine command in the ninth chapter of 
 the book of Genesis. Murderers are hanged by custom. 
 Such as this is the Tradition of the Church : Tradition 
 
 is uniform custom It is silent, but it lives. It is 
 
 silent, like the rapids of a river, before the rocks intercept 
 it. It is the Church''s .... habit of opinion and feeling, 
 which she reflects upon, masters and expresses, ac- 
 cording to the emergency. We see, then, the mistake 
 of asking for a complete collection of the Roman Tra- 
 ditions : as well might we ask for a collection of a man's 
 tastes and opinions on a given subject. Tradition in its 
 fulness is necessarily unwritten ; it is the mode in which 
 a society has felt or acted during a certain period, and it 
 cannot be circumscribed, any more than a man's counte- 
 nance and manner can be conveyed to strangers in any 
 set of propositions \" 
 
 I see nothing to alter in these remarks, written many 
 years before I became a Catholic ; and you see with 
 what force they tell against the system of judging any 
 body of men by extracts, passages, specimens, and say- 
 ings, nay, even by their documents, if these are taken to 
 be sufficient informants, instead of studying the living 
 body itself. For instance, there has been lately a good 
 deal of surprise expressed in some quarters, though it is 
 not likely to have attracted your attention, that the in- 
 fallibility of the Church has never been decreed, whether 
 in General Council or by other ecclesiastical authority, to 
 be a Catholic doctrine. This has been put about as a 
 
 • Prophetical Office, Lecture I. pp. 38—41. 
 
314 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 discovery, and an important one : and Catholics have 
 been triumphantly asked, how it is that the tenet which 
 is at the bottom of their whole system, is no where set 
 down in writing and propounded for behef. But, in truth, 
 there is neither novelty nor importance in the remark : 
 on the one hand, it has been made again and again " ; 
 and on the other, whenever it has been urged against us, 
 it has been simply urged from ignorance, as I have 
 already shown you, of the real state of the case. Is 
 nothing true but what has been written down I on the 
 contrary, the whole Catholic truth has ever lived, and 
 lived only, in the hearts and on the tongues of the Catholic 
 people: and, while it is one mistake to think written 
 documents sufficient, it is a second, as in this instance, 
 to think Tradition too much. It is one mistake in the 
 persons to whom I allude, to think that they know the 
 Catholic faith ; a second, to think that they can teach it 
 to us. Which party is more likely to be in possession of 
 what Catholics believe, they or we ? There is a maxim 
 commonly accepted, that " Every one is to be trusted in 
 his own art ;" from which it would follow, that, as 
 Frenchmen are the best masters of French, and pilots 
 the best steersmen on the river. Catholics ought to know 
 Cathohcism better than other men. Military men do 
 not show particular respect for the criticisms of civilians. 
 As for amateur physicians, I suppose most of us would 
 rather be doctored by the village nurse, who blindly goes 
 by tradition and teaching, than by a clever person, who, 
 among other things, has dabbled in family vade-mecums 
 and materia-raedicas, abounds in theories and views, and 
 
 ^ E. g. By myself, though not in objection, in the work above quoted. 
 Lecture X. p. 293. By Cressy, in Dr. Hammond's Works, vol. ii. p. 635, 
 two centuries ago. 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 315 
 
 has a taste for experiments. Again, I have heard able 
 men, who were not lawyers, impugn the institution of 
 Trial by Jury ; and the answer to them has been, " You 
 are not learned in the law, it works well." In like man- 
 ner, a great statesman says of Protestant Clergymen, 
 that they " understand least, and take the worst measure 
 of human affairs, of all mankind that can write and read." 
 Yet any one is thought qualified to attack, or to in- 
 struct a CathoHc in matters of his religion ; a country 
 gentleman, a navy captain, a half- pay officer, with time 
 on his hands, never having seen a Catholic, or a CathoHc 
 ceremonial, or a Catholic treatise, in his life, is competent, 
 by means of one or two periodicals, and a set of Protes- 
 tant extracts against Popery, to teach the Pope in his 
 own religion, and refute a Council. 
 
 Suarez, Vasquez, de Lugo, Lambertini, St. Thomas, 
 St. Buonaventura, a goodly succession of folios on our 
 shelves ! You would think the doctrine would take 
 some time to master, which has occupied the lives and 
 elicited the genius of some of the greatest masters of 
 thought whom the world has known. Our Protestant, 
 however, is sure there must be very little in such works, 
 because there is so much of them. He has not studied 
 our doctrines, he has not learned our terms ; he calls our 
 theological language jargon, and he thinks the whole 
 matter lies in a nutshell. He is ever mistaking one 
 thing for another, and thinks it does not signify. Igno- 
 rance in his case is the mother, not certainly of devotion, 
 but of inconceivable conceit and preternatural injustice. 
 If he is to attack or reply, up he takes the first specimen 
 or sample of our doctrine, which the Reformation Society 
 has provided, some dreadful sentiment of the Jesuit 
 Bellarmine, or the schoolman Scotus. He has never 
 
316 WANT OF INTEECOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 turned to the passage in the original work, never verified 
 it, never consulted the context, never construed its 
 wording ; he blindly puts his own sense upon it, or the 
 " authorized version" given to it by the Society in ques- 
 tion, and boldly presents it to the British public, which is 
 forthwith just as much shocked at it as he is. By means 
 of a few words he does wonders ; like the Englishman in 
 Sicily, who, when he could not get his mules by the ap- 
 pliance of all the Italian he could command, fair or rough, 
 at last effected his purpose by shouting out at the pitch 
 of his voice to his host, who had never heard a word of 
 English in his life, " Northumberland, Cumberland, 
 Westmoreland, and Durham.'" 
 
 Any thing is startling and grotesque, if taken out of 
 its place, and surveyed without reference to the whole to 
 which it belongs. The perfection of the parts lies in their 
 subserviency to a whole ; and they often have no meaning 
 except in their bearing upon each other. How can you 
 tell whether a thing is good or bad, unless you know 
 what it is intended for ? Protestants separate our state- 
 ments from their occasions and their objects, and then 
 ask the world what can be their meaning or their use. 
 This is evident to any one whose intellect is not fettered 
 to their particular party, and who does but take the trou- 
 ble to consider Catholic doctrines, not as they are torn 
 up by the roots or planted head downwards, but as they 
 are found in our own gardens. I am tempted to quote a 
 passage on the subject from a recent Review, which is as 
 far as possible from showing any leaning to Catholicism. 
 You will see how fully an impartial writer, neither Catholic 
 nor Protestant, bears me out in what I have said : 
 
 " A true British Protestant," he says, " whose notions 
 of ' Popery' are limited to what he hears from an Evan- 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PEOTESTANT VIEW. 317 
 
 gelical curate, or has seen at the opening of a Jesuit 
 Church, looks on the whole system as an obsolete mum- 
 mery, and no more believes that men of sense can seri- 
 ously adopt it, than that they will be converted to the 
 practice of eating their dinner with a Chinaman's chop- 
 sticks instead of the knife and fork Few even 
 
 of educated Englishmen have any suspicion of the depth 
 and solidity of the Catholic dogma, its wide and various 
 adaptation to wants ineffaceable from the human heart, 
 its wonderful fusion of the supernatural into the natural 
 life, its vast resources for a powerful hold upon the con- 
 science. . . . Into this interior view, however, the popular 
 polemics neither give, nor have the slightest insight. . . . 
 It is not among the ignorant and vulgar, but among the 
 intellectual and imaginative ; not by appeals to the senses 
 in worship, but by consistency and subtlety of thought, 
 that in our days converts will be made to the ancient 
 
 Church When a thoughtful man, accustomed to 
 
 defer to historical authority, and competent to estimate 
 moral theories as a whole, is led to penetrate beneath the 
 surface, he is unprepared for the sight of so much specu- 
 lative grandeur ; and if he have been a mere Anglican or 
 Lutheran, is perhaps astonished into the conclusion that 
 the elder system has the advantage in philosophy and 
 antiquity alike"." 
 
 You see how entirely this able writer, with no sort of 
 belief in Catholicism, justifies what I have been saying. 
 Fragments, extracts, specimens, convey no idea to the 
 world of what we are ; he who wishes to know us, must 
 condescend to study us. The Catholic doctrine is after all 
 too great to be comfortably accommodated in a Protestant 
 nutshell ; it cannot be surveyed at a glance, or refuted 
 ' Westminster Review, Jan. 1851. 
 
 Dd 
 
318 WANT OV INTEKCOUBSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 by a syllogism : and what this author says of Catholic 
 doctrine, applies to Catholic devotions also. Last week I 
 made some observations on our miracles ; and I said that 
 they would be scorned and rejected, or not, according as 
 this or that first principle concerning them was taken for 
 granted ; but now I am going to say more than this. I 
 really think that, putting aside first principles, no one 
 could read the lives of a number of our Saints, as St. 
 Francis Xavier, or St. Philip Neri, with seriousness and 
 attention, but would rise up from the perusal, — I do not 
 say converted to Catholicism (that is a distinct matter, 
 which I have kept apart throughout these Lectures), — 
 but indisposed to renew the ridicule and scorn in which 
 he had indulged previously. One isolated miracle looks 
 strange, but many interpret each other : this or that, 
 separated from the system of which they are a part, may 
 be perfectly incredible ; but when they are viewed as por- 
 tions of a whole, they press upon the inquirer a feeling, I 
 do not say of conviction simply, but of wonder, of per- 
 plexity, and almost of awe. When you consider the vast 
 number which are recorded, for instance, in the Life of 
 St. Philip, their variety, their exuberance in a short 
 space of time, the circumstantial exactness with which 
 they are recorded, the variety and multitude of witnesses 
 and attestations which occur in the course of the narra- 
 tive, the thought will possess you, even though you are 
 not yet able to receive them, that fraud or credulity is no 
 sufficient account of them. No skill could invent so 
 many, so rapidly, so consistently, and so naturally ; and 
 you are sensible, and you confess, that, whatever be the 
 truth of the matter, you have not got to the bottom of 
 it. You have ceased to contemn, you have learnt to 
 respect. 
 
THE PIIOTECTION OF THK PROTESTANT VIEW. 319 
 
 And so again I would say of any book, which lets you 
 into the private Hfe of personages who have had any great 
 deal to do with the government of the Church ; which 
 brings you, so to say, behind the scenes, where all pre- 
 tence is impossible, and where men appear what they 
 are, it is simply impossible, or at least it would be as 
 good as a miracle, for any one to study such works, and 
 still consider that the Pope was the man of sin, and the 
 Mother gf Saints a Jezebel. You see that Popes and 
 Cardinals and Prelates are not griffins and wiverns, 
 but men ; good men, or bad men, or neither one nor the 
 other, as the case may be ; bold men, or weak men, 
 worldly men or unworldly, but still men. They have 
 human feelings, human affections, human virtues, human 
 anxieties, human hopes and joys, whatever higher than 
 human excellences a Catholic of course would ascribe to 
 them. They are no longer, as before, the wild beasts, 
 or the frogs, or the locusts, or the plagues of the Apo- 
 calypse ; such a notion, if you have ever entertained 
 it, is gone for ever. You feel it to have been a ridiculous 
 illusion, and you laugh at it. For instance, I would take 
 such a book as Cardinal Pacca's Memoirs of Pope Pius 
 the VII. 's captivity. Here is a book of facts ; here is a 
 narrative, simple and natural. It does not give you the 
 history of a hero or of a saint ; but of a good, religious 
 man, who would have rather died any moment than 
 offend God ; who had an overpowering sense of his re- 
 sponsibility, yet a diffidence in his own judgment, which 
 made him sometimes err in his line of conduct. Here, 
 too, is vividly brought out before you, what we mean by 
 papal infallibility, or rather what we do not mean by it : 
 you see how the Pope was open to any mistake, as others 
 may be, in his own person, true as it is, that, whenever 
 Dd2 
 
320 WANT OF INTERCOUKSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 he spoke ex cathedra on subjects of revealed truth, he 
 spoke as its divinely ordained expounder. It is difficult 
 to bring this home to you by any extracts from a work 
 like this ; and I shall be perhaps falling into the very 
 fault I am exposing if I attempt to do so ; yet I can 
 hardly refrain to ask, whether passages such as the 
 followins: can be said to fit in with the received Pro- 
 testant Tradition of the Pope, as a sort of diabolical 
 automaton, spouting out sin and wickedness by the 
 necessity of his nature. 
 
 When Pope Pius and Cardinal Pacca were carried off 
 by the French from Kome, as they sat in the carriage, 
 " The Pope," says the Cardinal, " a few minutes after- 
 wards, asked me, whether I had with me any money : to 
 which I replied, ' Your Holiness saw that I was arrested 
 in your own apartments, so that I have had no opportu- 
 nity of providing myself.' We then both of us drew 
 forth our purses, and, notwithstanding the state of 
 affliction we were in at being thus torn away from Rome 
 and all that was dear to us, we could hardly compose our 
 countenances, on finding the contents of each purse to 
 consist, in that of the Pope of one papetto (about lOci.), 
 and in mine three grossi {^\d^. Thus the Sovereign of 
 Eome and his Prime Minister, set forth upon their jour- 
 ney, literally, without figure of speech or metaphor, in 
 true Apostolic style, conformable with the precept of our 
 Saviour addressed to his disciples : ' Take nothing for 
 your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, 
 neither money ; neither have two coats apiece.' We 
 were without eatables, and we had no clothes except 
 those we wore, not even a shirt ; and the habits, such as 
 
 they were, were most inconvenient for travelling 
 
 With regard to money, we had precisely thirty-five 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 321 
 
 baiocchi (halfpence) between us. The Pope, extending 
 his hand, showed his papetto to General Radet, saying, 
 at the same time, ' Look here ; this is all I possess, all 
 that remains of my principality *.' " 
 
 Or take again the account of the Pontiff's conduct 
 after having been betrayed into signing the unhappy 
 Concordat with Napoleon. " The Pope, so long as the 
 Emperor remained at Fontainebleau, manifested no out- 
 ward appearance of the feelings that agitated his heart, 
 with regarJ to what had happened ; but, so soon as 
 Napoleon was gone, he fell into a state of profound de- 
 spondency, and was attacked by fever. Conversing with 
 the Cardinals . . . and discussing the subject of the ar- 
 ticles to which he had just afiBxed his signature, he at 
 once saw by the undisguised expression of their counte- 
 nances, the fatal consequences likely to be the fruit of 
 that ill-advised deed, and became so horror-struck and 
 afflicted in consequence, that for several days he abstained 
 from the celebration of the holy sacrifice, under the im- 
 pression that he had acted unworthily. . , . Perceiving 
 the general disapprobation, and, as it were, shudder of 
 the public mind among all religious, well-conducted per- 
 sons, he fell into that hopeless state of deep melancholy, 
 which I before attempted to describe, on the occasion of 
 my arrival at Fontainebleau '." " At first sight of the 
 Holy Father, I was thoroughly shocked and astonished 
 to see how pale and emaciated he had become, how his 
 body was bent, how his eyes were fixed and sunk in his 
 head, and how he looked at me with, as it were, the glare 
 of a man grown stupid. . . . The solitude and silence of 
 the place, the expression of sadness that appeared on 
 
 * Head's Pacca,vol. i. p. 157. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 143. 
 
322 WANT OF INTERCOUESE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 every countenance, added to the recent spectacle of pro- 
 found grief I had witnessed in the person of the Pope, 
 and, above all, the unexpectedly cold reception I had ex- 
 perienced from his Holiness, occasioned me a degree of 
 surprise, and a sorrowful compression of heart, that it is 
 far more easy for an indifferent person to imagine than 
 for myself to describe. . . . He was . . overwhelmed by 
 a depression of spirits the most profound, so much so, 
 that in the course of speaking to me of what had hap- 
 pened, he frequently broke forth in the most plaintive 
 ejaculations, saying, among many other similarly inter- 
 jectional expressions, that the thought of what had been 
 done tormented him continually, that he could not get it 
 out of his mind, that he could neither rest by day, nor 
 sleep by night ; that he could not eat more than barely 
 sufficient to sustain hfe °." 
 
 Then observe the difference, after he had retracted the 
 deed which distressed him so much, though at the very 
 time he was anticipating the utmost fury of Napoleon in 
 consequence, whose prisoner he was. " There suddenly 
 appeared in his person and countenance an unexpected 
 alteration. Previously, the profound grief, in which, as I 
 have before stated, he was continually immersed, was 
 consuming him day by day, and was deeply imprinted on 
 his features, which now, on the contrary, became all at 
 once serene, and, as he gradually recovered his usual 
 gaiety of spirits, were occasionally animated by a smile. 
 Neither did he any longer complain of loss of appetite, 
 or of the inquietude and agitation that every night, for a 
 considerable time before, had interrupted his repose '.'" 
 
 These passages put one in mind of the beautiful story 
 
 " Head's Pacca, vol. i. p. 406. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 187. 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PEOTESTAXT VIEW. 323 
 
 told in the Breviary of a, far greater fault, the fall of Pope 
 Marcellinus. " In the monstrous Diocletian persecu- 
 tion," says the Lesson, " Marcellinus, overcome with 
 terror, sacrificed to the idols of the gods ; for which sin 
 he soon conceived so great repentance, that he came in 
 sackcloth to Sinuessa, to a full council of Bishops, 
 where, with abundant tears, he openly confessed his crime. 
 AVhom, however, none dare condemn, but all with one 
 voice cried out, Thy own mouth, not our judgment, be 
 thy judge, for the first See is judged by none. Peter, 
 too, by a like infirmity of mind, failed, and by like 
 tears obtained pardon from God. Then he returned 
 to Rome, went to the Emperor, severely reproached him 
 for tempting him to that impiety, and with three others 
 was beheaded." 
 
 Popes, then, though they are infallible in their office, 
 as Prophets and Vicars of the Most High, and though 
 they have generally been men of holy hfe, and many 
 of them actually saints, have the trials, and incur the 
 risks, of other men. Our doctrine of infallibility means 
 something very different from what Protestants think it 
 means. And so again, all the inconsistencies which they 
 think they find in what we say of the sanctity of the 
 Priesthood compared with the actual conduct of a portion 
 of the members of it, would vanish, if they understood 
 that a priest, in a Catholic sense, as also in St. Paul's, 
 is one " who can have compassion on the ignorant, and 
 on them that err, for that he himself also is encom- 
 passed with infirmity." Yet, strange to say, so little are 
 they aware of our real doctrine on the subject, that even 
 since these Lectures began, it has been said to me about 
 them, " A vulgar error in your Church is, that the Priests 
 are so divinely protected, that one of them can hardly 
 
324 WANT OF INTEECOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 err, can hardly sin. This notion is now at an end, as far 
 as you are concerned." Most marvellous ! This writer's 
 idea, and the idea of most Protestants is, that we profess 
 that all Priests are angels, but that really they are devils. 
 Neither the one nor the other ; if these Protestants came 
 to us and asked, they would find that we taught a differ- 
 ent doctrine, viz., that Priests were mortal men, who 
 were entrusted with high gifts for the good of the people, 
 that they might err as other men, that they would fall if 
 they were not watchful, that in various times and places 
 large numbers had fallen, so much so, that the Priest- 
 hood of whole countries had before now apostatized, as 
 happened in great measure in England three centuries 
 ago, and that at all times there was a small remnant 
 scattered about of priests who did not live up to their 
 faith and their profession ; still, that on the whole, they 
 had been, as a body, the salt of the earth and the light 
 of the world, through the power of divine grace, and, in 
 spite of the frailty of human nature, had fulfilled the 
 blessed purposes of their institution. 
 
 But not in one or two points merely, but in every thing 
 we think and say and do, as Catholics, were we but known, 
 what a reformation would there at once follow in the 
 national mind in respect to us ! British fair dealing and 
 good sense would then recover thejr supremacy ; and 
 Maria Monks and Teodores would find their occupation 
 gone. We should hear no more of the laity being led 
 blindfold, of their being forced to digest impossibilities 
 under menace of perdition, of their struggles to get loose 
 continually overmastered by their superstition, and of 
 their heart having no part in their profession. The 
 spectres of tyranny, hypocrisy, and fraud would flit away 
 with the morning light. There would be no more dread 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 325 
 
 of being burned alive by Papists, or of the gutters over- 
 flowing with Protestant blood. Dungeons, racks, pulleys, 
 and quick lime would be like the leavings of a yesterday's 
 revel. Nor would the political aims and plots and in- 
 trigues, so readily imputed to us, seem more substantial ; 
 and though, I suppose, there is lying, and littleness, and 
 over-reaching, and rivalry, to be found among us as among 
 other sons of Adam, yet the notion that we monopolized 
 these vile qualities, or had more than our share of them, 
 would be an' exploded superstition. This indeed would 
 be a short and easy way, not of making Protestants Catho- 
 lics, but of reversing their ridiculous dreams about us, — I 
 mean, if they actually saw what they so interminably 
 argue about. But it is not to be ; first comes in the way 
 that very love of arguing and of having an opinion, to 
 which my last words have alluded. Men would be sorry 
 indeed that the controversy should be taken from the 
 region of argument and transferred to that of fact. They 
 like to think as they please ; and, as they would by no 
 means welcome St. Paul, did he come from heaven to tell 
 them what his " text" in Romans iii. or Galatians ii. ac- 
 tually did mean, so they would think it a hardship to be told 
 that they must not continue to maintain and to prove that 
 we were what their eyes then would tell them we were not. 
 And then, too, dear scandal and romancing put in their 
 claim ; how would the world go on, and whence would 
 come its staple food and its cheap luxuries, if Catholicism 
 were taken from the market ? Why, it would be like the 
 cotton crop failing, or a new tax put upon tea. And 
 then, too, comes prejudice, " like the horseleech, crying. 
 Give, give ;" how is prejudice to exist without Catholic 
 iniquities and enormities ? prejudice, which could not fast 
 for a day, which would be in torment inexpressible, and 
 
826 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 call it Popish persecution, to be kept on meagre for a 
 Lent, and would shake down Queen and Parliament with 
 the violence of its convulsions, rather than it should 
 never suck a Catholic's sweet bones and drink his blood 
 any more. 
 
 Prejudice and hatred, political party, animosities of race 
 and country, love of gossip and scandal, private judgments, 
 resentments, sensitive jealousies, these and a number 
 of bad principles besides, extending through the country, 
 present an almost insuperable obstacle to our obtaining 
 a fair hearing and receiving a careful examination. There 
 are other feelings, too, not so bad, I would trust, for be- 
 fore now I have participated in them myself, but equally 
 drawing a cordon between Catholics and the rest of the 
 population. One, for instance, is the motive frequently 
 influencing those who really feel a great drawing towards 
 the Catholic Church, though they are unable to accept 
 her doctrines, and who, wishing to act, not by affection 
 or liking or fancy, but by reason, are led to dread lest the 
 impulses of love, gratitude, admiration, and devotion 
 which they feel within them, should overcome in their 
 hearts the claims of truth and justice, and decide the 
 matter peremptorily for them, if they subjected them- 
 selves to an intercourse with Catholics. And another 
 consideration weighs with Protestants who are in a re- 
 sponsible situation in their own communion, or are its 
 ministers and functionaries. These persons feel that, while 
 they hold office in a body which is at war with Catholics, 
 they are as little at liberty to go among them, even with 
 the open avowal of their differing from them, as an 
 English officer or a member of Parliament may lawfully 
 correspond with the French Government during a time 
 of hostilities. These various motives, and others besides. 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 327 
 
 better and worse, are, I repeat, almost an insuperable 
 barrier in the way of any real and familiar intercourse 
 between Protestants and ourselves; and they act, in 
 consequence, as the means of perpetuating what may 
 be considered the chief negative cause, and the simplest 
 explanation, of the absurdities so commonly enter- 
 tained about us by all classes of society. Personal 
 intercourse, then, being practically just as much out of 
 the question with us, as with the Apostles themselves or 
 the Jewish pfophets, Protestantism has nothing left for 
 it, when it would argue about us, but to have recourse to 
 its " texts," its chips, shavings, brickbats, potsherds, and 
 other odds and ends of the Heavenly City, which form the 
 authenticated and ticketed specimens, of what Catholics 
 are, in its great national Museum. 
 
 I am complaining of nothing which I do not wish 
 myself to avoid in dealing with my opponents. I wish 
 them to be judged by their traditions ; and in these 
 Lectures I have steadily kept in view the Elizabethan 
 Tradition, and wished to consider it the centre and the life 
 of all they say and do. If I select their words or their 
 acts, I wish to throw myself into them, and determine 
 what they mean by the light of this informing principle. 
 And I have means of doing so, which many others have 
 not, having been a Protestant myself. I have stood on 
 their ground; and would always aim at handling their 
 arguments, not as so many dead words, but as the words 
 of a speaker, in a particular state of mind, which must 
 be experienced, or witnessed, or explored, if it is to be 
 understood. Calvin, for instance, somewhere calls his 
 own doctrine, that souls are lost without their own free 
 will by the necessity of divine predestination, horrible ; 
 at least, so he is said to do, for I do not know his writ- 
 
S28 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 ings myself. Now I conceive he never can really say 
 this ; I conceive he uses the Latin word in the sense of 
 fearful or awful, and that to make him say " horrible" is 
 the mere unfairness of some Lutheran adversary, who 
 will not enter into his meaning. This is to go by the 
 letter, not by the spirit ; by the text, not by the tradi- 
 tion. The lawyers, again, as I noticed in my first Lec- 
 ture, speak of the " Omnipotence of Parliament ;" I 
 never will be so unjust to them as to take them literally. 
 I am perfectly sure that it never entered into the head 
 of any Speaker, or Prime Minister, or Serjeant-at-Arms, 
 to claim any blasphemous prerogative for the Two 
 Houses. Those officials all feel intensely, I am sure, that 
 they are but feeble and imperfect creatures, and would 
 laugh at any one who shuddered at their use of a phrase 
 which has a parliamentary sense as well as a theological. 
 Now I only claim to be heard in turn with the same can- 
 dour which I exemplify so fully, when I speak myself 
 of the omnipotence of the Blessed Virgin. When such 
 an expression is used by a Catholic, he would be as in- 
 dignant as a member of Parliament to find it perverted 
 by an enemy from the innocent sense in which he used 
 it. Parliament is omnipotent, as having the power to do 
 what it will, not in France, or in Germany, or in Russia, 
 much less all over the earth, much less in heaven, but 
 within the United Kingdom ; and in like manner the 
 Blessed Virgin is called omnipotent, as being able to 
 gain any thing she desires by prayer. Prayer is called 
 omnipotent in Scripture ; and she in consequence, as 
 being the chief intercessor among creatures, is called 
 omnipotent too. And the same remark applies to a great 
 number of other words in Catholic theology. When the 
 Church is called " holy," it is not meant that her autho- 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 329 
 
 rities are always good men, though nothing is more com- 
 mon with Protestants than so to suppose. " Worship," 
 again, is another term, which is commonly misunder- 
 stood ; " indulgence" is another ; " merit," " intention," 
 " scandal," " religion," " obedience," all have their own 
 senses, which our opponents must learn from Catholics, 
 and cannot well find out for themselves. 
 
 I have a good old woman in my eye, who, to the 
 great amusement of all hearers, goes about saying that 
 her priest has given her " absolution for a week." What 
 a horrid story for Exeter Hall ! Here is a poor crea- 
 ture, with one foot in the grave, who is actually assured 
 by her confessor, doubtless for some due pecuniary consi- 
 deration, that, for a week to come, she may commit 
 any sort of enormity to which she is inclined with im- 
 punity. Absolution for a week ! then, it seems, she has 
 discounted, if I may so speak, her prospective confes- 
 sions, and may lie, thieve, drink, and swear for a whole 
 seven days with a clear conscience ! But now what does 
 she really mean ? I defy a Protestant to get the mean- 
 ing out of the words, even if he wished to be fair ; he 
 must come to us for it. She means, then, that she has 
 leave to communicate for a week to come, on her usual 
 days of communion, whatever be their number, without 
 coming to confession before each day. But how can her 
 words have this meaning ! in this way, as you know, my 
 Brothers, well. Catholics are not bound to come to con- 
 fession before communion, (unless they have committed 
 some greater sin,) nor are they commonly advised by their 
 priests to come every time, though they often do come. 
 When, then, she said she had got absolution for a week, 
 she meant to express, that the priest had told her that 
 her once going to confession would be often enough, in 
 
330 WANT OF IMTERCOUUSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 spite of her many communions during a week to come, 
 supposing (which was not to be expected in so pious a 
 woman) she fell into no great sin. You see how many 
 words it takes duly to unfold the meaning of one fami- 
 liar expression. 
 
 This instance of Popish profligacy has not yet got into 
 the Protestant prints ; but there are others, not unlike 
 it, which before now have made a great noise in the 
 world. I will give you an instance of a mistake, not, 
 indeed, as to a colloquialism, but as to the force of a 
 technical phrase. When forms are often repeated, at 
 length they are shortened ; every schoolboy knows this 
 in learning geometry, where at first every word of the 
 process of proof is supplied with formal exactness, and 
 then, as the treatise advances, the modes of expressions 
 are abbreviated. Many of our familiar words are abbre- 
 viations of this sort ; such is an " omnibus ;" again, a 
 " stage," in the sense of a stage coach ; we talk of the 
 "rail," when we mean the "railroad;" we speak of 
 " laying the table" for dinner, when we mean " laying the 
 cloth on the table ;" and a king's levy, properly means 
 his " rising in the morning," but is taken to mean his 
 showing himself to his nobles and others who come to 
 pay him their respects. And so in Catholicism the word 
 " penance," which properly means repentance, often 
 stands for the punishment annexed to the repentance. 
 And in like manner " to absolve from sin" is a phrase 
 which sometimes means one of two things quite distinct 
 from real absolution. Sometimes it means nothing else 
 but to remit the punishment of sin; and sometimes it 
 means to absolve externally or to reconcile to the Church, 
 in the sense in which I explained the phrase in a previous 
 Lecture. Now you know an Indulgence does one of 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 331 
 
 these two things ; it is either an outward reconciliation, 
 or the remission of the punishment remaining after pardon 
 of the sin ; but it never is absolution, or pardon itself. 
 At the same time it is quite certain that, as far as words 
 go. Indulgences have sometimes been drawn up in such a 
 form, as conveys to a Protestant reader the idea of real 
 pardon, which they always presuppose or precede, and never 
 convey. To a person who is not pardoned, and pardoned 
 he cannot be without repentance, an Indulgence ' does no 
 good whatever; an Indulgence supposes the person re- 
 ceiving it to be absolved and in a state of grace, and then 
 it remits to him the punishment which remains due to his 
 past sins of whatever kind, but that this is really the 
 meaning, a Protestant will as little gather from the form 
 of words in which it has been sometimes drawn up, as 
 he would gather from the good old souFs words cited 
 just now, that " absolution" means " leave to go to com- 
 munion." If Protestants will not take their information 
 from Catholics on points such as this, but are determined 
 to judge for themselves and to insist on the letter, there 
 is no help for it. 
 
 And the same remark in a measure applies to another 
 expression to be found in Indulgences. In TetzeFs 
 famous form at the beginning of the Eeformation, we 
 read as follows : " shouldest thou not presently die, let 
 this grace remain in full force, and avail thee at the point 
 of death." On this Dr. Waddington, ordinarily a cau- 
 tious as well as candid writer, observes ; " [it cannot] be 
 disputed that it conferred an entire absolution, not only 
 
 ' i. e. Indulgence in the second of the two senses, which is the common 
 one, of a remission of punishment. In the former sense, which is un- 
 usual (vid. Ferraris, Biblioth., art. Indulg., App. § 6.), it has been con- 
 sidered in Lecture III. 
 
332 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 from all past, but also from all future sins. It is impos- 
 sible with any shadow of reason to affix any other 
 meaning to the concluding paragraph '," which is the one 
 I have quoted. Eeason ; how can reason help you here ? 
 could you have found out that " absolution " meant 
 " leave for communion" by reason ? Some things are 
 determined by reason, others by sense, and others by 
 testimony. We go to dictionaries for information of one 
 kind, and to gazetteers for information of another. No 
 one discovers the price of stocks, ministerial measures, 
 or the fashions of the year, by reason. Whatever is 
 spontaneous, accidental, variable, self-dependent, whatever 
 is objective, we must go out of ourselves to determine. 
 And such, for instance, is the force of language, such 
 the use of formulas, such the value of theological terms. 
 You learn pure English by reading classical authors and 
 mixing in good society. Go then, to those with whom 
 such terms are familiar, who are masters of the science 
 of them, and they will read the above sentence for you, 
 not by reason, but by the usage of the Church ; and 
 they will read it thus. " If thou diest not now, but time 
 hence, this Indulgence will then avail thee, that is, in 
 that case in which alone an Indulgence ever can avail, 
 i. e. provided that thou then art in a state of grace." 
 There is no prospective pardon in the words so ex- 
 plained ; an indulgence has nothing to do with pardon ; 
 it is an additional remission upon and after pardon, being 
 the remission of the arrears of suffering due from those 
 who are already pardoned. If on receipt of this Indul- 
 gence, the recipient rushed into sin, the benefit of the 
 Indulgence would simply be suspended till he repented, 
 
 ' Reformation, vol. i. p. 27. 
 
THE PEOTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 333 
 
 went to confession, and gained a new spirit. If he was 
 found in this state of pardon and grace at the point of 
 death, then it would avail him at the point of death. Then, 
 that pardon, which his true repentance would gain him in 
 the sacrament of penance, would be crowned by the 
 further remission of punishment through the Indulgence, 
 not otherwise. If, however, a controversialist says that 
 a common Catholic cannot possibly understand all this, 
 that is a question of fact, not of reason ; it does not 
 stand to reason that he cannot ; reason does not come 
 in here. I do not say he will express himself with 
 theological accuracy, but he knows perfectly well that 
 an Indulgence is no pardon for prospective sin, no 
 standing pardon for a state of sin. If you think he does 
 not, come and see. That is my key note from first to 
 last ; come and see, instead of remaining afar ofi:, and 
 judging by reason. 
 
 There are Protestant books, explaining difficult pas- 
 sages of the Old Testament by means of present manners 
 and customs among the Orientals ; a very sensible pro- 
 ceeding, and well deserving of imitation by Protestants 
 in the case before us ; let our obscure words and forms be 
 interpreted by the understandings and habits of the 
 Catholic people. On the other hand, in Dean Swift's 
 well-known tale, you have an account of certain philo- 
 sophers of Laputa, who carried their head under their 
 arm. These sagacious persons seldom made direct use 
 of their senses, but acted by reason ; a tailor, for 
 instance, who has to measure for a suit of clothes, I 
 think, is described not as taking out his measures, but 
 his instruments, quadrant, telescope, and the like. He 
 measured a man as he would measure a mountain or a 
 bog; and he ascertained his build and his carriage, as 
 
 E e 
 
334 WANT OF INTERCOUESE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 he might determine the right ascension of Syrius or the 
 revolution of a comet. It was but a vulgar way to handle 
 and turn about the living subject who was before him ; so 
 our Laputan retreated, pulled out his theodolite instead 
 of his slips of paper, and made an observation from a 
 distance. It was a grand idea to make a coat by private 
 judgment and a theodoUte ; and, depend upon it, when 
 it came home, it did not fit. Our Protestants wield the 
 theodolite too ; they keep at a convenient distance from 
 us, take the angles, calculate the sines and cosines, and 
 work out an algebraic process, when common sense 
 would bid them ask us a few questions. They observe 
 latitude and longitude, the dip of the needle, the state 
 of the atmosphere ; our path is an orbit, and our locus 
 is expressed by an equation. They communicate with 
 us by gestures, as you talk to the deaf and dumb ; 
 and they are more proud of doing something, right or 
 wrong, by a ceremony of this kind, than of having the 
 learning of the Benedictines or the BoUandists, if they 
 are to go to school for it. 
 
 Open their tracts or pamphlets at random, and you 
 will not have long to look for instances ; — a priest is 
 told one afternoon, that a parishioner wishes to go to 
 confession. He breaks off what he is doing, disappointed, 
 perhaps, at the interruption, rushes into Church, takes 
 up his stole, and turns his ear towards his penitent. It 
 is altogether a matter of routine work with him, with a 
 lifting up indeed of the heart to his Maker and Lord, 
 but still a matter too familiar to make any great impres- 
 sion on him, beyond that of his knowing he is called to 
 a serious duty, which he must discharge to the best of 
 his ability. A scripture reader, or some such personage 
 opens the door, and peeps in ; he perceives what is going 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 335 
 
 on, and stands gazing. What is his comment ? I wish 
 I had kept the paragraph, as I read it ; but it was to 
 this effect, — " I saw a priest with a poor wretch at his 
 feet — how like a god he looked ! " Can any thing, my 
 Brothers, be more unreal, more fantastic ? Yet all this 
 comes of standing gazing at the door. 
 
 How many are the souls, in distress, anxiety, or lone- 
 liness, whose one need is to find a being to whom they 
 can pour out their feelings unheard by the w»rld ? Tell 
 them they must, they cannot tell them to those whom they 
 see every hour. They want to tell them and not to tell 
 them ; and they want to tell them out, yet be as if they 
 had not told ; they wish to tell them to one who is strong 
 enough to bear them, yet not too strong to despise them ; 
 they wish to tell them to one who can at once advise and 
 can sympathize with them ; they wish to relieve them- 
 selves of a load, to gain a solace, to receive the assurance 
 there is one who thinks of them, and one to whom in 
 thought they can recur, to whom they can betake them- 
 selves, if necessary, from time to time, while they are in 
 the world. How many a Protestant's heart would leap 
 at the news of such a benefit, putting aside all distinct 
 ideas of a sacramental ordinance, or of the grant of par- 
 don, and the conveyance of grace ! If there is a heavenly 
 idea in the Catholic Church, looking at it simply as an 
 idea, surely, next after the Blessed Sacrament, such is 
 Confession. And such is it ever found in fact ; the very 
 act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the 
 cross hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low, and 
 the words of peace and blessing. 0, what a soothing 
 charm is there, which the world can neither give nor take 
 away ! what piercing, heart-subduing tranquillity, pro- 
 voking tears of joy, is poured, almost substantially and 
 Ee2 
 
336 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 physically upon the soul, the oil of gladness, as Scripture 
 calls it, when the penitent at length rises, his God recon- 
 ciled to him, his sins rolled away for ever ! This is con- 
 fession as it is in fact ; as those bear witness to it, 
 who know it by experience ; what is it in the language of 
 the Protestant ? His language is, I may say, maniacal ; 
 listen to his ravings, as far as I dare quote them, about 
 what he knows just as much of as the blind of colours : 
 "If I could-foUow my heart wherever it would go," he cries 
 about the priest, " I would go into his dark and damnable 
 confessional, where my poor Roman Catholic countrymen 
 intrust their wives and daughters to him, under the awful 
 delusion of false religion ; and, while the tyrant is press- 
 ing his . . . infernal investigation, putting the heart and 
 feeling of the helpless creature on the moral rack, till she 
 sink enslaved and powerless at his feet, I would drag the 
 victim forth in triumph from his grasp, and ring in the 
 monster's ear, No Popery." 
 
 These are the words of a fanatic; but grave, sober men 
 can in their own way say things quite as absurd, quite as 
 opprobrious. There is a gentleman ', who, since these 
 Lectures began, has opened a public correspondence with 
 me ; I quoted from him just now. One of his principal 
 points, to which he gave his confident adhesion, was 
 this, that at least one in twelve of our Priests in large 
 towns doubts or disbeUeves. How did he prove it ? A 
 conscientious person does not advance grave charges 
 against others, much less the gravest possible, without the 
 best of reasons. Even to think ill of others, without suffi- 
 
 ' Mr. Sealey, the reputed author of several able works. The wider 
 his name and his charge against us are circulated, the better for the 
 cause of truth. Neither the one nor the other should be hushed up. 
 
THE PEOTECTION OF THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 337 
 
 cient cause, is, in a Catholic's estimation, an offence ; but 
 to speak out to the world a proposition such as this, dis- 
 tinctly to accuse his neighbour of the worst of crimes, is 
 either a great duty or a great sin. The proof, too, should 
 be proportionate to the imputation. And that the more, 
 because he went further than I have yet said ; he actually 
 singled out a place ; he named Birmingham, and he in- 
 sinuated that such inRdels or sceptics were found among 
 the priests pf this very town. Well then, we must sup- 
 pose he speaks on the best authority ; he has come to 
 Birmingham, he knows the priests, he has some distinct 
 evidence. He accuses us of a sin which includes blas- 
 phemy, sacrilege, hypocrisy, fraud, and virtually immo- 
 rality, besides its own proper heinousness, which is of the 
 first order, and he must have, of course, reason for what 
 he says. What then is his method of proof! simply the 
 Laputan. He brandishes his theodolite, he proves us 
 proud rebels against our God and odious impostors to- 
 wards men by mathematics ; he draws out a rule of three 
 sum on paper, and leaves us to settle with it as we may. 
 He argues, that, because France had a body of infidel 
 priests in last century, who did not disguise themselves, 
 because Spain had a knot of infidels who did, for /ear of 
 the Inquisition, therefore now in England, where nothing 
 is heard of infidelity and where there is nothing to frighten 
 it into silence, it exists in every large town. Moreover, 
 because there were infidel priests in the special 1 8th cen- 
 tury, therefore there are infidel priests in the 19th. Fur- 
 ther, because there were in France fifty or sixty or a hun- 
 dred infidels among 380,000 ecclesiastics, and a sprinkling 
 in Spain among 125,000, that there are in England 
 infidels now in the proportion of one to twelve. To this 
 evidence, he added a few cases, true or false, at home or 
 
338 WANT OF INTEKCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 abroad, which it was impossible to examine or refute, of 
 a professedly recent date ; and on these grounds he ven- 
 tured forth with his definite assertion, simply satisfied of 
 its truth, its equity, and its charitableness. 
 
 And now for something, if not more wonderful, at least 
 more observable still. After thus speaking, he was sur- 
 prised I should consider it "a charge,'''' and a charge against 
 the priests of Birmingham. He complains, that is, that 
 I have given a personal turn to his assertion. Ah, true ; 
 I ought to have remembered that Catholic priests, in the 
 judgment of a good Protestant, are not persons at all. 
 I had forgotten, what I have already said, in the First 
 of these Lectures ; we are not men, we have not charac- 
 ters to lose, we have not feelings to be wounded, we have 
 not friends, we have not penitents, we have not congre- 
 gations ; we have nothing personal about us, we are not 
 the fellow-creatures of our accusers, we are not gentle- 
 men, we are not Christians ; we are abstractions, we are 
 shadows, we are heraldic emblazonments, we are the 
 grifiins and wiverns of the old family picture, we are stage 
 characters with a masque and a dagger, we are mummies 
 from Egypt or antediluvian ornithorynchi, we are unresist- 
 ing ninepins, to be set up and knocked down by every 
 mischievous boy ; we are the John Doe and Richard Koe 
 of the lawyers, the Titius and Bertha of the canonists, 
 who come forth for every occasion, and are to endure 
 any amount of abuse or of misfortune. Did the figures 
 come down from some old piece of tapestry, or were a lion 
 rampant from an inn door suddenly to walk the streets, 
 a Protestant would not be more surprised than at the 
 notion that we have nerves, that we have hearts, that 
 we have sensibilities. For we are but the frogs in the 
 fable ; " What is your sport," they said to the truant 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 339 
 
 who was pelting them, " is our destruction :" yes, it is our 
 portion from the beginning, it is our birthright, though 
 not quite our destruction, to be the helots of the pride 
 of the world. 
 
 But more remains to be said. It often may happen, 
 in matters of research, not indeed when the rule of charity 
 comes in, but in philosophical subjects and the like, that 
 we are obliged to make use of indirect reasonings, in de- 
 fault of testimony and fact. That was not so here. 
 There was evidence, to a considerable extent, the other 
 way. Now observe this, my Brothers. You know how 
 anxious the Protestant world is to get hold of any priest 
 who has left the Catholic body ; why ? because he would 
 tell them facts about it ; certainly, Protestants are not 
 always indifferent about facts ; that is, when they hope 
 they will tell against us. Well, they go to this priest or 
 that monk, who has transferred himself to Protestantism, 
 in order to get all the information about us they can. 
 Now are Protestantizing priests and monks the only 
 evidence of the kind which they could get on the sub- 
 ject \ Frenchmen who come from France are evidence 
 about France ; but are not Englishmen who go to 
 France evidence too \ If some persons come from 
 Rome, have none gone to Rome ? and have not they 
 too something to offer in the way of evidence? Yes, 
 surely, they have much to say about Catholic priests. 
 It was offered to the gentleman of whom I am speak- 
 ing ; it was offered, and it was not accepted. He 
 who could argue by wholesale from the instance of a 
 Catholic priest doubting of Catholicism, would learn no- 
 thing from the direct word of a Protestant who had 
 become a Catholic Priest. The one was the pregnant 
 
340 WANT OF INTEKCO0ESE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 germ of an arbitrary deduction, the other was no credible 
 testimony to a fact. 
 
 Now, my Brothers, I should not insist on all this, if it 
 merely related to any personal matter of mine ; but, you 
 see, it affords a very observable illustration of the point 
 on which I am insisting, viz., that to know Catholics is the 
 best refutation of what is said against them. You are 
 aware, then, that a number of highly educated Protestants 
 have of late years joined the Catholic Church. If their 
 former co-religionists desired to have some real and good 
 information what Catholics are like, they could not have 
 better than that which these persons had to offer. They 
 had belonged to a system which allowed of the largest 
 private judgment, and they had made use of their liberty. 
 They had made use of it first to reject the Protestantism 
 of the day, and to recur back to another form of Protes- 
 tantism which was in some repute two hundred years ago. 
 Further, they used their liberty to attack the See of 
 Eome, so firmly were they persuaded that the Popedom 
 was not a divine institution. No one can say they did 
 not enter into the feelings of suspicion and jealousy which 
 Protestants entertain towards Eome. For myself, though 
 I never, as I believe, spoke against individuals, I felt and 
 expressed this deep suspicion about the system ; and it 
 would be well indeed for Catholicism in this country, if 
 every Protestant but studied it with a tenth part of the 
 care which I have bestowed on the examination and ex- 
 pression of Protestant arguments and views. Well, their 
 private judgment went on acting, for a Protestant can 
 have no guide but it ; and to their surprise, as time pro- 
 ceeded, they found it bringing them nearer to the Cathohc 
 Church, and at length it fairly brought them into it. 
 
THE PBOTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 341 
 
 What did Protestants say then ? Why, they said that 
 the same private judgment which had led them into the 
 Catholic Church, would, in course of time, lead them out 
 of it. They said, too, that these new Catholics, when 
 they came to see what Catholics were like, would be un- 
 able to stop among them. Mind, they put it to this test; 
 this was their issue ; they left the decision of the ques- 
 tion to the event ; they knew that the persons of whom 
 they spoke were honest men ; they knew that they had 
 given up a great deal to become Catholics ; they were 
 sure that they would not take part in an imposition ; and 
 therefore they said, " Let them go, they will soon come 
 back ; let them go to Rome itself, they are sure to be dis- 
 gusted ; they will meet at Rome, and in France, and in 
 England, and every where, infidel priests by the bushel, 
 and will tire of their new religion. And besides, they wUl 
 soon begin to doubt about it themselves ; their private 
 judgment will not submit to all they will have to believe, 
 and they will go out of Catholicism as they came into it."" 
 You observe then, my Brothers, that our testimony is 
 not a common one, it has a claim to he heard ; it has 
 been appealed to by anticipation, let it then be heard 
 after the event. There is no doubt that the whole Pro- 
 testant world would have made a great deal of our drop- 
 ping off from the Catholic body ; why, then, ought it not 
 to be struck by the fact of our continuing in it, being 
 dutiful and loyal to it, and finding our rest in it ? You 
 know perfectly well, it would have listened greedily, if we 
 had left and borne witness against it ; why, then, ought 
 it not in consistency to listen seriously, when we glory in 
 it, and bear witness for it? Who in the whole world 
 are likely to be more trustworthy witnesses of the fact, 
 whether or not one in twelve of our town priests, dis- 
 
342 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 believes or doubts, than these converts, men of education, 
 of intelligence, of independent minds, who have their eyes 
 about them, who are scattered to and fro all through the 
 country, who are, some of them, priests themselves ? Is 
 there any one who knows us personally, who will dare to 
 say we are not to be believed, not to be trusted ? no : 
 only those who know us not. But so it is to be ; our 
 evidence is to be put aside, and the Laputan method to 
 carry the day. Catholics are to be surveyed from with- 
 out, not inspected from within : texts and formulas are 
 to prevail over broad and luminous facts. There is a 
 story of a logician at some place of learning, who, as he 
 was walking one evening past the public library, was 
 hailed by an unfortunate person from one of its windows, 
 who told him he had been locked in by mistake when it 
 closed, and begged him to send to his relief the official 
 who kept the keys. Our logician is said to have looked 
 at him attentively, pronounced the following syllogism, 
 and walked away : " No man can be in the library after 
 14 o^clock p.m. You are a man : Therefore, you are not 
 jin the library." And thus Catholic priests are left duly 
 locked up by Barbara or Oelarent, because forthwith one 
 grain of Protestant logic is to weigh more than cart- 
 loads of Catholic testimony. 
 
 No, if our opponents would decide the matter by tes- 
 timony, if they would submit their assertions to the 
 ordeal of facts, their cause is lost ; so they prefer much 
 to go by prejudices, arbitrary principles, and texts. 
 Evidence they can have to satiety for the asking ; but 
 what boots it to pipe and sing to the deaf, or to convince 
 the self-satisfied heart against its will ? One there was 
 who left the Protestant religion under circumstances 
 different from any to which I have hitherto alluded. 
 
THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 34)3 
 
 He never joined in the religious movement which has 
 brought so many to the Church ; nay, he wrote against 
 it ; he wrote, not in bitterness and contempt, as many 
 have done and do, but as a gentleman and a man of 
 serious principle, he wrote against myself. But, though 
 he started from so different a point, he, too, came near 
 the Church, he, too, entered it. He did so at a great 
 sacrifice ; he had devoted great part of his fortune to the 
 building of a Protestant Church. It was all but finished, 
 when the call came ; he rose and obeyed it, and had to 
 leave his means of subsistence behind him, turned into 
 stone. He came into the Catholic Church, and he re- 
 mains a layman in it. See, then, here is a witness alto- 
 gether different : ought not this to content our enemies? 
 or are the boys in the market-place still to cry to them, 
 " We have piped to you, and you have not danced ; we 
 have lamented, and you have not mourned." Are they 
 suspicious of those who belonged to a certain movement 
 before they became Catholics 1 here is one who opposed 
 it : are they suspicious of a convert priest ? here is a 
 convert layman. Now he happens some years after his 
 conversion, to have written an account of his experience 
 of the Catholic religion ; how many of our enemies have 
 had the grace — I can use no lighter term — have had the 
 grace to look into it I Yet what possible reason can 
 they give for having neglected to study and to profit by 
 it ! It is the grave testimony of one, in whom, as in that 
 illustrious witness of old in a heathen country, " no cause 
 nor suspicion" can be found, " unless concerning the law 
 of his God." 
 
 " I came," he says, and he shall conclude this Lec- 
 ture for me, " forced by my convictions, and almost 
 against my will, into this mighty community, whose 
 
344 WANT OF INTERCOUKSE WITH CATHOLICS 
 
 embrace I had all my life dreaded as something para- 
 lyzing, enslaving, and torturing. No sooner, however, 
 could I look around me, and mark what presented 
 itself to my eyes, than I saw that I was in a world, where 
 all was as satisfying as it was new. For the first time I 
 met with a body of men and women, who could talk and 
 act as Christians, without cant, without restraint, with- 
 out formality, without hypocrisy. After years and years 
 of disappointment, in which the more deeply I saw into 
 the hearts and lives of Protestants of every class, the 
 more clearly I perceived that the religion they professed 
 had not become their second nature, but was a thing put 
 on, which did not fit them, which confined their move- 
 ments, and gave them an outward look, while it was not 
 wrought into the depth of their being, — after years and 
 years of this disappointment, in which the contrast be- 
 tween the Bible, which they praised, and the spirit of 
 their own lives, and the doctrines they preached, struck 
 me more bitterly each succeeding day, at length I found 
 myself in the midst of a race, with whom Christianity 
 was not a rule, but a principle ; not a restraint, but a 
 second nature ; not a bondage, but a freedom ; in which 
 it had precisely that effect which it claims to produce 
 upon man ; in which, not a few hours, or an occasional 
 day, was set apart for religion, but in which life was reli- 
 gious : in which men spoke at all hours, and in all occu- 
 pations, of religious things, naturally, as men speak of 
 secular things in which they are deeply interested ; in 
 which religious thoughts and short prayers were found not 
 incompatible with the necessary duties and pleasures 
 which fill up the road of existence ; and in which, the more 
 deeply I was enabled to penetrate below the surface, the 
 more genuine was the goodness which I found, and the 
 
THE PKOTKCTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 345 
 
 more inexhaustible I perceived to be those treasures of 
 grace, which Divine goodness places at the disposal (so 
 to say) of every soul that seeks them within this favoured 
 communion. 
 
 " And now, when so long a period has elapsed since 
 my first submission to the Church, that every thing like 
 a sense of novelty has long passed away, and I have 
 tested experimentally the value of all that she has to 
 offer ; now that I can employ her means of grace, and 
 take a part in the working of her system, with all that 
 ease and readiness which long practice alone can bestow ; 
 the more profound is my sense of her divine origin, of 
 the divine power which resides in her, and of the bound- 
 less variety and perfection of the blessings she has to 
 bestow. The more I know her, the more complete do I 
 perceive to be her correspondence to what she professes 
 to be. She is exactly what the one Church of Christ is 
 proclaimed to be in Scripture, and nothing less, and 
 
 nothing more Truly can 1 say with the patriarch, 
 
 ' The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. This is 
 no other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.'' 
 The Catholic Church can be nothing less than the spi- 
 ritual Body of Jesus Christ. Nothing less than that 
 adorable Presence, before which the Angels veil their 
 faces, can make her what she is, to those who are within 
 her fold. Argument is needed no longer. The scoffings 
 of the infidel, the objections of the Protestant, the sneers 
 of the man of the world, pass over their heads, as clouds 
 over a mountain peak, and leaves them calm and undis- 
 turbed, with their feet resting upon the Rock of ages. 
 They Jcnow in whom they have believed. They have 
 passed from speculation to action, and found that all is 
 real, genuine, life-giving, and enduring I know only 
 
346 WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS, &C. 
 
 one fear — the fear that my heart may be faithless to 
 Him who has bestowed on me this unspeakable blessing ; 
 I know only one mystery, which the more I think upon 
 it, the more incomprehensible does it appear, — the mys- 
 tery of that calling which brought me into this house of 
 rest, while millions and millions are still driven to and 
 fro in the turbulent ocean of the world, without rudder 
 and without compass, without helmsman and without 
 anchor, to drift before the gale upon the fatal shore '." 
 
 2 " Four Years' Experience of the Catholic Religion : Burns, London, 
 1849,"pp. 92— 95. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 DUTIES Of catholics towards the PROTESTANT 
 VIEW. 
 
 In this concluding Lecture, my Brothers of the Oratory, 
 I shall attempt, in as few words as possible, to sum up 
 what I have been showing in those which preceded it, 
 and to set before you what I have proposed to myself in 
 the investigation. 
 
 You know, then, that at this time we are all in con- 
 siderable anxiety, and some risk, as regards the future 
 prospects of Catholicism in England. Open threats in 
 the most influential quarters are put forward, as if we 
 might even lose the rights of British subjects, and be 
 deprived of the free exercise of our religion. There has 
 been an attempt to put our convents, in the eye of the 
 law, on a level with mad houses ; and one of the An- 
 glican Prelates in Parliament has constituted himself 
 judge, whether the dimensions of our Churches were sufii- 
 cient or too large for the " accommodation," to use the 
 Protestant word, of our people. A bill too has been 
 passed, about which all of us know enough, without my 
 having the trouble to give it any designation. 
 
 The duty of the Catholic Church is to preach to the 
 
 Ff 
 
348 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 world; and her promise and prerogative is success in 
 preaching; but this is a subject which has not come into 
 the scope of our discussions in this place. What I have 
 been saying has no direct reference to any such end. I 
 have not urged it on you, as I well might, as knowing you 
 to be of their numbers who love their religion so well, that 
 they wish others to enjoy the benefit of it with them. What 
 I have said does not presuppose this ; it has not sprung out 
 of any duty we have of extending the limits of the Catholic 
 pale ; it would not have been superseded, if we had no 
 such duty. I have not been aiming at the conversion of 
 any persons, who are not Catholics, who have heard me ; 
 I have not been defending Catholic, or attacking Pro- 
 testant doctrines, except indirectly and incidentally. The 
 condition or hypothesis, on which I have been entering 
 into the discussion, has been the present Anti-Catholic 
 agitation ; and my object has been that of self-defence. 
 In the present state of things Catholics must, from the 
 mere instinct of self-preservation, look about them ; they 
 are assailed by a very formidable party, or power, as I 
 should rather call it, in the country ; by its Protestant- 
 ism. In the Protestantism of the country, I do not in- 
 clude, of course, aU who are not Catholics. By Pro- 
 testants I mean the heirs of the traditions of Elizabeth ; 
 I mean the country gentlemen, the Whig political party, 
 the Church Establishment, and the Wesleyan Con- 
 ference ; I cannot over-estimate their power ; they and 
 their principles are estabhshed ; yet I should be unjust, 
 on the other hand, to whole classes in the community, if 
 I made Protestantism, thus explained, synonymous with 
 the mind and the philosophy of the whole country. Well, 
 I say we are menaced by this tremendous power ; this is 
 the condition of things; what must we do? put our- 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW, 349 
 
 selves on the defensive ; this then has heen my scope. 
 I have not been aggressive but on the defensive ; and 
 what is the first step of those who are getting ready for 
 their defence against a foe ? to reconnoitre him. It is 
 simply this that I have been doing in these Lectures. 
 
 This, I say, has been my object, a reconnoitring or 
 survey of a strong and furious enemy, undertaken with a 
 view to self-defence. And I report as follows : — 
 
 I find he is in a very strong position, but that he takes 
 a very incorrect view of us, and that this is his strength 
 and our danger. Different from the case of actual war- 
 fare, in which ignorance is weakness, here ignorance is 
 power ; and in truth he does know as little about us as 
 well can be conceived. He has got old pictures and old 
 maps made years and years ago, which have come down 
 to him from his fathers ; and, instead of deigning to 
 look at us, and learn any thing about us, he adheres to 
 them as if it were a point of faith to do so. This was 
 the subject of my first Lecture ; I showed that the Eng- 
 lish Protestant had a view of our monks, Jesuits, and 
 Church quite his own ; unUke that of his more learned 
 brethren abroad ; and moreover that he was apparently 
 ignorant of the existence of any view besides it, or that 
 it was possible for any sane man to doubt it, or any 
 honest man to deny it. 
 
 Next came the cause of this phenomenon, and it was 
 this : — Protestantism is established in the widest sense 
 of the word ; its doctrine, religious, political, ecclesias- 
 tical, moral, is placed in exclusive possession of all the 
 high places of the land. It is forced upon all persons in 
 station and ofiice, or almost all, under sanction of an 
 oath ; it is endowed with the amplest estates, and with 
 revenues supplied by Government and by chartered and 
 
 Ff2 
 
350 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 other bodies. It has innumerable fine churches, planted 
 up and down in every town, and village, and hamlet in 
 the land. In consequence every one speaks Protestant- 
 ism, even those who do not in their hearts love it ; it is 
 the current coin of the realm. As English is the natural 
 tongue, so Protestantism is the intellectual and moral 
 language of the body politic. The Queen ex officio speaks 
 Protestantism ; so does the court, so do her ministers. 
 All but a small portion of the two Houses of Parliament ; 
 and those, who do not, are forced to apologize for not 
 speaking it, and to speak as much of it as they consci- 
 entiously can. The Law speaks Protestantism, and the 
 lawyers ; and the state Bishops and clergy of course. 
 All the great authors of the nation, the multitudinous 
 literature of the day, the public press, speak Protes- 
 tantism. Protestantism the Universities ; Protestantism 
 the schools, high, and low, and middle. Thus there is an 
 incessant, unwearied circulation of Protestantism all over 
 the whole country, for 365 days in the year from morning 
 till night ; and this for nearly three centuries, has been 
 almost one of the functions of national life. As the pulse, 
 the lungs, the absorbents, the nerves, the pores of the 
 animal body, are ever at their work, as that motion is its 
 life, so in the political structure of the country there is 
 an action of the life of Protestantism, constant and 
 regular. It is a vocal life ; and in this consists its per- 
 petuation, its reproduction. What it utters, it teaches, 
 it propagates by uttering; it is ever impressing itself, 
 diffusing itself all around ; it is ever transmitting itself 
 to the rising generation ; it is ever keeping itself fresh, 
 and young, and vigorous by the process of a restless 
 agitation. This, then, is the elementary cause of the 
 view which Englishmen are accustomed to take of Oa- 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 351 
 
 tholicism and its professors. They survey us in the 
 light of their Tradition ; and this was the subject of my 
 second Lecture. 
 
 Well, but you will ask, Have Catholics nothing to say 
 for themselves ? yes, a great deal, but we have no oppor- 
 tunity of saying it. The public will not recognize us ; 
 it interrupts and puts us down. Men close their ears 
 and throw up dust in the air, when we begin to speak ; 
 they close their eyes, when we come forward, and begin 
 pelting us at random. Far less will they come near us, 
 and ask us questions, and hsten to our answers. This 
 was my subject in my foregoing or eighth Lecture ; in 
 which I had not time to say nearly as much as I had 
 intended. I could have shown you, how first, Protestants 
 got rid of Catholicism from the kingdom as a worship ; 
 how next, the Catholics who remained they put under 
 crushing laws ; how every priest who said mass or ex- 
 ercised any function on English ground was Jiable to 
 perpetual imprisonment, and any foreign priest, who was 
 subject to the crown of England, coming into England 
 was guilty of high treason, and all who harboured him, 
 of felony. I could have told you how that converting or 
 being converted to Catholicism was high treason ; how no 
 Catholic was allowed to inherit or purchase land ; no 
 Catholic could hear mass without fine and imprisonment ; 
 no Catholic might keep school under pain of imprison- 
 ment for life ; nor, in default of schools at home, send a 
 child abroad for education^ without forfeiting all his 
 estates, goods, and chattels, and incurring a civil out- 
 lawry ; moreover, how, if a Catholic did not attend the 
 established worship, he was not allowed to come within 
 ten miles of London, nor could travel five miles from 
 home, or bring any action at law ; and how he might not 
 
352 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 be married or buried, or have his children baptized, by 
 any but ministers of the Estabhshed Church. I am not 
 quoting these laws with a view to expose their wholesale 
 cruelty and injustice, though I might well do so ; but in 
 order to show you how impossible it was for Catholics to 
 defend themselves, when they were denied even to speak. 
 You see, the Protestant Tradition had it all its own way ; 
 Elizabeth and her great men, and her preachers, killed 
 and drove away all the Catholics they could ; knocked 
 down the remainder, and then at their leisure proved un- 
 answerably and triumphantly the absurdity of Popery, 
 and the heavenly beauty and perfection of Protestantism. 
 Never did we undergo so utter and complete a refutation ; 
 we had not one word to utter in our defence. When 
 she had thus beaten the breath out of us, and made us 
 simply ridiculous, she put us on our feet again, thrust us 
 into a chair, hoisted us up aloft, and carried us about as 
 a sort of , Guy Faux, to show to all the boys and riff-raff of 
 the towns, what a Papist was hke. Then, as if this were 
 not enough, lest any one should come and ask us any 
 thing about our religion, she and her preachers put it 
 about that we had the plague, so that scarce a soul had 
 the courage to look at us, or breathe the same air with 
 us. 
 
 This was a fair beginning for the Protestantizing of 
 the people, and every thing else that was needed followed 
 in due time as a matter of course. Protestantism being 
 taught every where, Protestant principles were taught 
 with it, which are necessarily the very reverse of Catholic 
 principles. The consequence was plain ; viz. that even 
 before the people heard a Cathohc open his mouth, they 
 were forearmed against what he would say, for they had 
 been taught something as a precious truth, belief in 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 353 
 
 which was ipso facto the disbelief and condemnation of 
 some Catholic doctrine or other. When a person goes to 
 a fever ward, he takes some essence with him to prevent 
 his catching the disorder ; and of this kind are the Anti- 
 Catholic principles in which Protestants are instructed 
 from the cradle. For instance, they are taught to get 
 by heart, without any sort of proof, as a kind of alphabet 
 or spelling lesson, such propositions as these : — " mira- 
 cles have ceased long ago ;" " all truth is in the Bible ;" 
 "anyone can understand the Bible;" "all penance is 
 absurd ;" " a priesthood is pagan, not Christian," and a 
 multitude of others. These are universally taught and 
 accepted as equally true and equally important, as such 
 principles as " it is wrong to murder or thieve," or " there 
 is a judgment to come." When then a person sets out 
 in life with these maxims as a sort of stock in trade in 
 all religious speculations, and encounters CathoHcs, whose 
 opinions hitherto he had known nothing at all about, you 
 see he is quite proof against them, and unsusceptible of 
 their doctrines, their worship, and their reasoning, by 
 the preparation to which he has been subjected. He 
 feels an instinctive repugnance to every thing Catholic, 
 by reason of these arbitrary principles, which he has 
 been taught to hold, and which he thinks identical with 
 reason. " What ? you have priests in your religion ;" 
 he says ; " but do you not know, are you so behind the 
 world as not to know, that priests are pagan, not Chris- 
 tian 1 " And sometimes he thinks that, directly he has 
 uttered some such great maxim, the Catholic will turn 
 Protestant at once, or, at least, ought to do so, and, 
 if he does not, is either dull or hypocritical. And so 
 again, " You hold saints are to be invoked, but the prac- 
 
854 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 tice is not in the Bible, and nothing is true that is not 
 there." And again, " they say that in Ireland and else- 
 where the priests impose heavy penances ; but this is 
 against common sense, for all penances are absurd."" 
 Thus the Protestant takes the whole question for granted 
 on starting;— and this was the subject of my seventh 
 Lecture. 
 
 This fault of mind I call Assumption or Theory ; and 
 another quite as great, and far more odious, is Prejudice ; 
 and this came into discussion in the sixth Lecture. The 
 perpetual talk against Catholicism, which goes on every 
 where, in the higher classes, in literary circles, in the 
 public press, and in the Protestant Church and its vari- 
 ous dependencies, makes an impression or fixes a stain, 
 which it is continually deepening, on the minds which are 
 exposed to its influence ; and thus, quite independent of 
 any distinct reasons and facts for thinking so, the mul- 
 titude of men are quite certain that something very 
 horrible is going on among Catholics. They become 
 convinced, as they say, that we are all but fiends, so 
 that there is no doubt at all, even before going into the 
 matter, that all that is said against us is true, and all 
 that is said for us is false. 
 
 These, then, are the two special daughters, as they may 
 be called, of the Protestant Tradition, Theory or As- 
 sumption on the one hand, and Prejudice on the other ; 
 Theory which scorns us, and Prejudice which hates us ; 
 yet, though coming of one stock, they are very different 
 in their constitution ; for Theory is of so ethereal a nature, 
 that it needs nothing to feed upon ; it hves on its own 
 thoughts, and in a world of its own, whereas Prejudice is 
 ever craving for food, victuals are in constant request for 
 
TOWARDS THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 355 
 
 its consumption every day ; and, accordingly, they are 
 served up in unceasing succession, Titus Gates, Maria 
 Monk, and Jeffreys, being the purveyors, and platform 
 and pulpit speakers being the cooks. And this formed 
 the subject of the third, fourth, and fifth Lectures. 
 
 Such, then, is Popular Protestantism, considered in its 
 opposition to Cathohcs. Its truth is establishment by 
 law ; its philosophy is theory ; its faith is prejudice ; 
 its facts are fictions ; its reasonings fallacies ; and its 
 security is ignorance of those whom it is opposing. The 
 Law says that white is black ; Ignorance says, why not ? 
 Theory says it ought to be; Fallacy says it must be, 
 Fiction says it is, and Prejudice says it shall be. 
 
 And now what are our duties at this moment towards 
 this enemy of ours I How are we to bear ourselves 
 towards it ? what are we to do with it ! what is to come 
 of the survey we have taken of it ? with what practical 
 remark and seasonable advice am I to conclude this 
 attempt to determine our relation to it ? The lesson we 
 gain is obvious and simple, but as difficult, you will say, 
 as it is simple ; for the means and the end are almost 
 identical, and in executing the one, we have already 
 reached the other. Protestantism is fierce, because it 
 does not know you ; ignorance is its strength ; error is 
 its life. Therefore bring yourselves before it, press your- 
 selves upon it, force yourselves, into notice against its 
 will. Oblige men to know you ; persuade them, impor- 
 tune them, shame them into knowing you. Make it so 
 clear what you are, that they cannot affect, not to see 
 you, nor refuse to justify you. Do not even let them off 
 with silence, but give them no escape from confessing 
 that you are not what they have thought you were. 
 
356 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 They will look down, they will look aside, they will look 
 in the air, they will shut their eyes, they will keep them 
 shut. They will do all in their power not to see you ; 
 the nearer you come, will they close their eyelids all the 
 tighter; they will be very angry and frightened and give the 
 alarm as if you were going to murder them. They will do 
 any thing but look at you. They are, many of them, half 
 conscious they have been wrong, but fear the consequences 
 of learning it ; they will think it best to let things alone, 
 and to persist in injustice for good and all, since they are 
 for so long a time committed to it ; they will be too 
 proud to confess themselves mistaken ; they prefer a safe 
 cruelty to an inconvenient candour. I know it is a most 
 grave problem how to touch so intense an obstinacy, but 
 observe if you once touch it, you have done your work. 
 There is but one step between you and success. It is a 
 steep step, but it is one. It is a great thing to know 
 your aim, to be saved from wasting your energies in 
 wrong quarters, to be able to concentrate them on a 
 point. You have but to ainj at making men look steadily 
 at you ; when they do this, I do not say they will become 
 Catholics, but they will cease to have the means of 
 making you a by- word and a reproach, of inflicting on 
 you the cross of unpopularity. Wherever Catholicism is 
 known it is respected, or at least endured, by the people. 
 Politicians and philosophers, and the established clergy, 
 would be against you, but not the people, if it knew 
 you. A religion, which comes from God, approves itself 
 to the conscience of the people, wherever it is really 
 known. 
 
 Your one, and almost sole object, then will be, to make 
 yourselves known. This is what will do every thing for 
 you ; it is what your enemies will try by might and main 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 357 
 
 to hinder. They begin to have a suspicion that Catho- 
 licism, known to be what it really is, will be their over- 
 throw. They have hitherto cherished a most monstrous 
 idea about you. They have thought, not only that you 
 were the vilest and basest of men, but that you were fully 
 conscious of it yourselves, and conscious, too, that they 
 knew it. They have fancied that you, or at least your 
 priests, indulged in the lowest sensuality, and practised 
 the most impudent hypocrisy, and were parties to the most 
 stupid and brutish of frauds ; and that they dared not 
 look a Protestant in the face. Accordingly they have con- 
 sidered, and have thought them quite aware themselves, 
 that they were only in the country on sufferance ; that 
 they were like reputed thieves and other bad characters, 
 who, for one reason or another, are not molested in their 
 dens of wickedness, and enjoy a contemptuous toleration, 
 if they keep within bounds. And so, in like manner, they 
 have thought, that there was evidence enough at any mo- 
 ment, to convict us, if they were provoked to it. What 
 would be their astonishment, if the infamous persons, 
 I have supposed, stood upon their rights, or obtruded 
 themselves into the haunts of fashion and good breeding ? 
 Fancy, then, how great has been their indignation, that 
 we Catholics should pretend to be Britons ; should affect 
 to be their equals ; should dare to preach, nay, to con- 
 trovert ;• should actually make converts, nay, worse and 
 worse, not only to point out their mistakes, but, pro- 
 digious insolence, absolutely to laugh at the absurdity of 
 their assertions, and the imbecility of their arguments. 
 They are at first unable to believe their ears, when they 
 are made sensible that we, who know so well our own 
 worthlessness, and know that they know it, who deserve 
 at the very least the hulks or transportation, talk as 
 
358 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 loudly as we do, refuse to be still, and say that the more 
 we are known, the more we shall be esteemed. We, 
 who ought to go sneaking about, to crouch at their feet, 
 and to keep our eyes on the ground, from the conscious- 
 ness of their hold upon us, — is it madness, is it plot, 
 what is it, which inspires us with such unutterable pre- 
 sumption ? They have the might and the right on their 
 side. They could confiscate our property, they could 
 pack us all out of the kingdom, they could bombard 
 Eome, they could fire St. Peter's, they could batter down 
 the Coliseum, they could aboUsh the Papacy, if they 
 pleased. Passion succeeds, and then a sort of fear, such 
 as a brutal master might feel, who breaks into fury at 
 the first signs of spirit in the apprentice he has long ill- 
 treated, and then quails before him as he gets older. 
 And then how white becomes their emotion, when men 
 of their own rank, men of intelligence, men of good con- 
 nexions, their relations or their friends, leave them to 
 join the despised and dishonoured company ! And when, 
 as time goes on, more and more such instances occur, 
 and others are unsettled, and the old land-marks are 
 removed, and all is in confusion, and new questions and 
 parties appear in the distance, and a new world is coming 
 in, — when what they in their ignorance thought to be ' 
 nothing turns out to be something, they know not what, 
 and the theodolite of Laputa has utterly failed, they 
 quake with apprehension at so mysterious a visitation, 
 and they are mad with themselves for having ever qua- 
 lified their habitual contempt, with some haughty gene- 
 rosity towards us. A proud jealousy, a wild hate, and a 
 cold dismay, almost choke them with emotion. 
 
 All this, because they have not taken the trouble to 
 know us as we are in fact : however, you would think that 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 359 
 
 they at last had gained an opening for information, when 
 those, whom they have known, become the witnesses of 
 what we are. Never so Httle ; the friends who have left 
 them, are an embarrassment to them, not an illumination; 
 an embarrassment, because they do but interfere with 
 their received rule and practice of dealing with us. It is 
 an easy thing to slander those who come of the old 
 Catholic stock, because such persons are unknown to the 
 world. They have lived all their days in tranquil fidelity 
 to the creed of their forefathers, in their secluded estate, 
 or their obscure mission, or their happy convent ; they 
 have no relations with the affairs or the interests of the 
 day, and have never come to the public throng of men to 
 gain a character. They are known, in their simplicity 
 and innocence and purity of heart, and their conscien- 
 tiousness of life, to their God, to their neighbour, and to 
 themselves, not to the world at large. If any one would 
 defame them, he may do it with impunity ; their name is 
 not known till it is slandered, and they have no ante- 
 cedents, to serve as matter for an appeal. Here, then, is 
 the fit work for those prudent slanderers, who would 
 secure themselves from exposure, while they deal a blow 
 in defence of the old Protestant Tradition. Were a 
 recent convert, whose name is before the world, accused 
 of some definite act of tyranny or, baseness, he knows 
 how to write and act in his defence, and he has a known 
 reputation to protect him ; therefore, ye Protestant 
 champions, if there be an urgent call at the moment for 
 some instance of Catholic duplicity or meanness, be sure 
 to shoot your game sitting ; keep yourselves under cover, 
 choose some one, who can be struck without striking, 
 whom it is easy to overbear, with whom it is safe to play 
 the bully. Let it be a prelate of advanced age and of 
 
360 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 retired habits, or some gentle nun, whose profession and 
 habits are pledges that she cannot retaliate. Triumph 
 over the old man and the woman. Open your wide 
 mouth, and collect your rumbling epithets, and round 
 your pretentious sentences, and discharge your concen- 
 trated malignity, on the defenceless. Let it come down 
 heavily on them, to their confusion ; and a host of 
 writers, in print and by the post, will follow up the out- 
 rage you have commenced. But beware of the converts, 
 for they are known ; and to them you will not be safe in 
 imputing more than the ordinary infirmities of humanity. 
 With them you must deal in the contrary way. Men of 
 rank, men of station, men of ability, in short, men of 
 name, what are we to do with them ? Cover them up, 
 bury them ; never mention them in print, unless a chance 
 hint can be dropped to their disadvantage. Shake your 
 heads, whisper about in society, and detail in private 
 letters, the great change which has come over them. 
 They are not the same persons ; they have lost their fine 
 sense of honour ; and so suddenly, too ; they are under the 
 dominion of new and bad masters. Drop their acquaint- 
 ance ; meet them and pass them by, and tell your friends 
 you were so pained you could not speak to them : be sure 
 you do nothing whatever to learn from them any thing 
 about the Catholic faith ; know nothing at all about their 
 movements, their objects, or their life. Eead none of 
 their books ; let no one read them who is under your in- 
 fluence : however, you may usefully insert in your news- 
 papers, half sentences from their writings, or any passing 
 report, which can be improved to their disadvantage. 
 Not a word more ; let not even their works be adver- 
 tised. Ignore those who never can be ignored, never 
 can be forgotten ; and all for this, — that by the violation 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 361 
 
 of every natural feeling, and every sacred tie, you may 
 keep up that profound ignorance of the Catholic reli- 
 gion which the ascendancy of Protestantism requires. 
 
 These are but snatches and glimpses, my Brothers of 
 the Oratory, of the actual state of the case; of the 
 intense determination of Protestants to have nothing to 
 do with us, and nothing true to say of us, and of the 
 extreme arduousness of that task to which I think we 
 should all direct our exertions. The post must be car- 
 ried ; in it lies the fortune of the day. Our opponents 
 are secretly conscious of it too ; else why should they so 
 strenuously contest it ? They must be made to know us 
 as we are ; they must be made to know our religion as it 
 is, not as they fancy it ; they must be made to look at 
 us, and they are overcome. This is the work which lies 
 before you in your place and in your measure, and I would 
 advise you about it thus : — 
 
 Bear in mind, then, that, as far as defamation and 
 railing go, your enemies have done their worst. There 
 is nothing which they have not said, which they do not 
 daily say, against your rehgion, your priests, and your- 
 selves. They have exhausted all their weapons, and you 
 have nothing to fear, for you have nothing to lose. They 
 call your priests distinctly liars ; they can but cry the old 
 fables over and over again, though they are sadly worse 
 for wear. They have put you beyond the pale of civilized 
 society ; they have made you the outlaws of public 
 opinion ; they serve you, in the way of reproach and 
 slander, worse than the convict or the savage. You 
 cannot in any way move them, by smiles, or by tears, or 
 by remonstrance. You can show them no attention ; 
 you can give them no scandal. Court them, they are not 
 milder ; be rude to them, they cannot be more violent. 
 
362 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 You cannot make them think better of you, or worse. 
 They hold no terms with you ; you have not even the 
 temptation to concede to them. You have not the tempta- 
 tion to give and take ; you have not the temptation to dis- 
 guise or to palter. You have the strength of desperation, 
 and desperation does great things. They have made you 
 turn to bay. Whatever occurs, if there be a change at 
 all, it must be a change for the better : you cannot be 
 disadvantaged by the most atrocious charges, for you are 
 sure to be the marks for them, whatever you do. You 
 are set loose from the fear of man ; it is of no use to say 
 to yourselves, " What will people say?" No, the Su- 
 preme Being must be your only Fear, as He is your only 
 Reward. 
 
 Next, look at the matter more closely ; it is not so bad 
 as it seems. Who are these who so obstinately refuse 
 to know you? When I say, " They have done their 
 worst," what is their " worst," and who are " they ?" 
 This is an all-important question ; perhaps I shall have 
 some difficulty in bringing out what I mean, but, when 
 you once get into my idea, there will be no degrees in your 
 understanding it. Consider, then, that " they" means, 
 in the main, certain centres of influence in the metropolis : 
 first, a great proportion of members of both Houses of 
 Parliament; next, the press; thirdly, the Societies, 
 whose haunt or home is Exeter Hall ; fourthly, the pul- 
 pits of the establishment, and of a good part of the Dissen- 
 ters. These are our accusers ; these spread abroad their 
 calumnies ; these are meant by " they." Next, what is 
 their "worst?" whom do they influence? They influ- 
 ence the population of the whole of Great Britain, and 
 the British Empire, so far as it is British, and not 
 CathoUc; and they influence it to beheve that Catho- 
 
TOWARDS THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 363 
 
 licism, and all Catholics, are professed and habitual 
 violators of the moral law, of the precepts of truth, 
 honesty, purity, and humanity. If this be so, you may 
 ask me what I can mean by saying that the " worst" is 
 not so bad as it looks ? but after all, things might be 
 much worse. 
 
 Think a moment : what is it to me what people think 
 of me a hundred miles off, compared with what they 
 think of me at home 1 It is nothing to me what the four 
 ends of thS world think of me ; I care nought for the 
 British Empire more than for the Celestial, in this matter, 
 provided I can be sure what Birmingham thinks of me. 
 The question, I say, is, what does Birmingham think of 
 me ? and if I have a satisfactory answer to that, I can 
 bear to be without a satisfactory answer about any other 
 town or district in England. This is a great principle to 
 keep in view. 
 
 And now I am coming to a second. I grant the 
 whole power of the Metropolis is against us, and I grant 
 it is quite out of the question to attempt to gain it over 
 on our side. It is true, there are various individual 
 members of Parliament who are our co-religionists or 
 our friends, but they are few among many; there are 
 newspapers which act generously towards us, but they form 
 a small minority ; there are a few Protestant clergy, who 
 would be not quite carried away by the stream if left to 
 themselves. Granted: but still, I am forced to allow 
 that the great metropolitan intellect cannot be reached 
 by us, and for this simple reason, because you cannot 
 confront it, you cannot make it know you. I said your 
 victory was to lie in forcing upon others a personal know- 
 ledge of you, in your standing before your enemies face 
 to face. But what face has a metropolitan journal ? how 
 
S64 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 are you to get at it ? how are you to look into it ? whom 
 are you to look at ? who is to look at you ? No one is 
 known in London ; it is the realm of the incognito and 
 the anonymous ; it is not a place, it is a region or a 
 state. There is no such thing as local opinion in the 
 metropolis ; mutual personal knowledge, there is none ; 
 neighbourhood, good fame, bad repute, there is none ; no 
 house knows the next door. You cannot make an im- 
 pression on such an ocean of units ; it has no disposition, 
 no connexion of parts. The great instrument of propa- 
 gating moral truth is personal knowledge. A man finds 
 himself in a definite place ; he grows up in it and into it; 
 he draws persons around him ; they know him, he knows 
 them ; thus it is that ideas arise which are to live, that 
 works begin which are to last'. It is this personal 
 knowledge of each other which is true public opinion ; 
 local opinion is real public opinion ; but there is not, 
 there cannot be such in London. How is a man to show 
 what he is, when he is but a grain of sand out of a mass, 
 without relations to others, without a place, without his- 
 tory, without distinctiveness? Crowds pour along the 
 streets, and, though each has his own character written 
 on high, they are one and all the same to men below. 
 And this impersonality, as it may be called, pervades the 
 whole metropolitan system. A man, not known, writes 
 a leading article against what ? — things ? no ; but ideas. 
 He writes against Catholicism : what is Catholicism 1 
 can you touch it ? point at it ? no ; it is an idea before 
 his mind. He clothes it with certain attributes, and 
 forthwith it goes all over the country, that a certain idea 
 or vision, called Catholicism, has certain other ideas, bad 
 
 ' Vide the University Sermons of the Author, No. IV. 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 365 
 
 ones, connected with it. You see it is all a matter of 
 ideas, and abstractions, and conceptions. Well, this lead- 
 ing article goes on to speak of certain individual Catholic 
 priests ; still, does it see them ? point at them ? no, it 
 does but give their names ; it is a matter not of persons, 
 but of names ; and those names, sure enough, go over 
 the whole country and empire, as the names of rogues, 
 or as liars, or as tyrants, as the case may be ; while they 
 themselves, in their own persons, are not at all the worse 
 for it, but eat, sleep, pray, and do their work, as freely 
 and as easily as before. London cannot touch them, for 
 words hurt no one ; they cannot hurt us till — till when I 
 till they are taken up, believed, in the very place where we 
 individually dwell. Ah ! this is a very different kind of 
 public opinion ; it is local opinion ; I spoke of it just 
 now, and it concerns us very nearly. 
 
 I say, it is quite another thing, when the statements 
 which a metropolitan paper says, and the Empire believes, 
 are actually taken up in the place where I live. It is a 
 very different thing, and a very serious matter ; but, ob- 
 serve the great principle we have arrived at ; it is this : — 
 that popular opinion only acts through local opinion. 
 The opinion of London can only act on an individual 
 through the opinion of his own place ; metropolitan opi- 
 nion can only act on me through Birmingham opinion. 
 London abuses Catholics. " Catholic" is a word : where 
 is the thing ? in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Birming- 
 ham, in Leeds, in Sheffield, in Nottingham. Did all the 
 London papers prove that all Catholics were traitors, 
 where must this opinion be carried out ? Not in the air, 
 not in leading articles, not in editors' studies ; but in 
 Liverpool, in Manchester, in Birmingham, in Leeds, in 
 Sheffield, in Nottingham. So, in order to carry out your 
 
 Gg2 
 
366 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 London manifesto, you must get the people of Birming- 
 ham, Manchester, and the rest, to write their names 
 after it ; else, nothing comes of its being a metropolitan 
 opinion, or an imperial opinion, or any other great idea 
 whatever. You must get Birmingham to believe it of 
 Birmingham Catholics, and Manchester to believe it of 
 Manchester Catholics : so, you see, these great London 
 leading articles have only done half their work, or rather, 
 have not begun it, by proving to the world that all 
 Catholics are traitors, till they come out of their abstrac- 
 tions and generalities, and for the " world," substitute 
 Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool ; and for " all 
 Catholics," substitute Catholics of Birmingham, Man- 
 chester, and Liverpool ; and get each place in particular 
 to accept what the great metropolis says, and the Empire 
 believes, in the general. 
 
 And now comes another important consideration : it 
 is not at all easy to get a particular place, at the word 
 of London, to accept about its own neighbourhood in 
 particular what London says of all places in the general. 
 Did London profess to tell us about the price of iron 
 generally, if it gained its information from Birmingham 
 and other iron markets in particular, well and good ; but 
 if it came forward with great general views of its own, I 
 suspect that Birmingham would think it had a prior 
 voice in the question, and would not give up its views at 
 the bidding of the metropolitan journal. And the case 
 is the same as regards Catholicism : London may declaim 
 about Catholics in general, but Birmingham will put in 
 a claim to judge of them in particular ; and when Bir- 
 mingham becomes the judge, London falls into the mere 
 office of accuser, and the accused may be heard in his 
 defence. Thus a Catholic of Birmingham can act on 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 367 
 
 Birmingham, though he cannot act on London, and this 
 is the important practical point to which I have been 
 coming ail along. I wish you to turn your eyes on that 
 local opinion, which is so much more healthy, English, 
 and Christian than popular or metropolitan opinion ; for 
 it is an opinion, not of ideas, but of things ; not of words, 
 but of facts ; not of names, but of persons ; it is per- 
 spicuous, real, and sure. It is little to me, as far as my 
 personal well-being is concerned, what is thought of 
 Catholicism through the empire, or what is thought of 
 me by the metropolis, if I know what is thought of me 
 in Birmingham. London cannot act on me except 
 through Birmingham, and Birmingham indeed can act 
 on me, but I can act on Birmingham. Birmingham can 
 look on me, and I can look on Birmingham. This is a 
 place of persons, and a place of facts ; there is far more 
 fairness in a place like this than in a metropolis, or at 
 least fairness is uppermost. Newspapers are, from the 
 nature of the case, and almost in spite of themselves, 
 conducted here on a system more open and fairer than 
 the metropolitan system. A Member of Parliament in 
 London might say that I had two heads, and refuse to 
 retract it, though I denied it upon my word ; it would not 
 be believed in Birmingham. All the world might believe 
 it ; it might be the theme of county meetings ; the 
 Prime Minister might introduce it into the Queen's 
 speech; it might be the subject of most eloquent de- 
 bates, and most exciting divisions ; it might be formally 
 communicated to all the European courts; the stocks 
 might fall, a stream of visitors set in from Russia, 
 Egypt, and the United States, at the news; it would 
 not be believed in Birmingham ; local opinion would 
 carry it hollow against popular opinion. 
 
368 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 You see, then, Brothers of the Oratory, where your 
 success lies, and how you are to secure it. Never mind 
 the London press ; never mind Exeter Hall ; never mind 
 perambulating orators or solemn meetings ; let them 
 alone, they do not affect local opinion. They are a blaze 
 amid the stubble ; they glare and they expire. Do not 
 dream of converting the public opinion of London ; you 
 cannot, and you need not. Look at home, there lies 
 your work ; what you have to do, and what you can do, 
 are one and the same. Prove to the people of Birming- 
 ham, as you can prove to them, that your priests and 
 yourselves are not without conscience, or honour, or 
 morality ; prove it to them, and it matters not though 
 every man, woman, and child, within the London bills of 
 mortality, were of a different opinion. That metro- 
 politan opinion would be powerless, when it attempted to 
 bear upon Birmingham ; it would not work ; there would 
 be a hitch and a block ; you would be a match where you 
 were seen, for a whole world where you were not. I do 
 not undervalue the influence of London ; many things its 
 press can do ; some things it cannot do ; it is imprudent 
 when it impinges on facts. If, then, a battle is coming 
 on, stand on your own ground, not on that of others ; 
 .take care of yourselves ; be found where you are known ; 
 make yourselves and your religion known more and more, 
 for in that knowledge is your victory. Truth will out ; 
 truth is mighty and will prevail. We have an instance 
 of it before our eyes ; why is it that a few persons here 
 have the hardihood to be maintaining Maria Monk's 
 calumnies ? because those calumnies bear upon a place 
 over the ocean ; why did they give up Jeffreys? because 
 he spoke of a place close at hand. You cannot go to 
 Montreal ; you can go to Whitwick ; therefore, as 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 369 
 
 regards Whit wick, the father of lies eats his words and 
 gives up Jeffreys, to get some credit for candour, when 
 he can get nothing else. Who can doubt, that, if that 
 same personage went over to Canada, he would give up 
 Maria Monic as false, and take up Jeffreys as true ? 
 Yes, depend on it, when he next ships off to New York, 
 he will take the veritable account of the persecuted 
 Jeffreys in his pocket with an interesting engraving of 
 his face as a frontispiece. So certain, so necessary is all 
 this, my Brothers, that I do not mind giving you this 
 advice in public. An enemy might say in his heart, 
 " Here is a priest fool enough to show his game ! " I 
 have no game ; I have nothing to conceal ; I do not 
 mind who knows what I mark out for you, for nothing 
 can frustrate it. I have an intense feeling in me about 
 the power and victoriousness of truth. It has a blessing 
 from God on it. Satan himself can but retard its ascen- 
 dancy, he cannot prevent it. 
 
 This, I would say. Brothers of the Oratory, not only 
 to you, but, if I had a right to do so, to the Catholics of 
 England generally. Let each stand on his own ground ; 
 let each approve himself in his own neighbourhood ; if 
 each portion is defended, the whole is secured. Take 
 care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of them- 
 selves. Let the London press alone ; do not appeal to 
 it ; do not expostulate with it ; do not flatter it ; care 
 not for popular opinion, cultivate local. And then if 
 troubled times come on, and the enemy rages, and his 
 many voices go forth from one centre all through Eng- 
 land, threatening and reviling us, and muttering, in his 
 cowardly way, about brickbats, bludgeons, and lighted 
 brands, why in that case the Birmingham people will say, 
 " Catholics are, doubtless, an infamous set, and not to be 
 
370 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 trusted, for the ' Times' says so, and Exeter Hall, and 
 the Prime Minister, and the Bishops of the Estabhsh- 
 ment ; and such good authorities cannot be wrong, but 
 somehow an exception must certainly be made for the 
 CathoUcs of Birmingham. They are not like the rest ; 
 there are indeed a shocking set at Manchester, Preston, 
 Blackburn, and Liverpool ; but, however you account for 
 it, they are respectable men here. Priests in general 
 are perfect monsters, but here they are certainly un- 
 blemished in their lives and take great pains with their 
 people. Bishops are tyrants, and, as Maria Monk says, 
 cut-throats, always excepting the Bishop of Birmingham, 
 who affects no state or pomp, is simple and unassuming, 
 and always in his work." And in like manner, the Man- 
 chester people will say, " 0, certainly. Popery is horrible, 
 and must be kept down. Still, let us give the devil his 
 due, they are a remarkably excellent body of men here, 
 and we will take care no one does them any harm. It is 
 very different at Birmingham ; there they have a Bishop, 
 and that makes all the difference ; he is a Wolsey all 
 over ; and the priests, too, in Birmingham are at least 
 one in twelve infidels. We do not recollect who ascer- 
 tained this, but it was some most respectable man, who 
 was far too conscientious and too charitable to slander 
 any one." And thus, my Brothers, the charges against 
 Oathohcs will become a sort of hunt the slipper, every 
 where and no where, and end in " sound and fury, signi- 
 fying nothing." 
 
 Such is that defensive system, which I think is espe- 
 cially the duty of Catholics at this moment. You are 
 attacked on many sides ; do not look about for friends on 
 the right hand or on the left. Trust neither Assyria nor 
 Egypt ; trust no body of men. Fall back on yourselves, 
 
TOWARDS THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 371 
 
 and trust none but yourselves. I do not mean you must 
 not be grateful to individuals who are generous to you, 
 but beware of parties ; all parties are your enemies ; 
 beware of alliances. You are your own best, and sure, 
 and sufficient friends; no one can really hurt you but 
 yourselves, no one can succour you but yourselves. Be 
 true to yourselves, and success is in your hands. Be 
 content to have your conscience clear, and your God on 
 your side. 
 
 Your strength lies in your God and your conscience ; 
 therefore it lies not in your number. It lies not in your 
 number, more than in intrigue, or combination, or worldly 
 wisdom. God saves whether by many or by few ; you 
 are to aim at showing forth His light, at diffusing " the 
 sweet odour of His knowledge in every place :" numbers 
 would not secure this. On the contrary, the more you 
 grew, the more you might be thrown back into yourselves, 
 by the increased animosity and jealousy of your enemies. 
 You are enabled in some measure to mix with them 
 while you are few; you might be thrown back upon 
 yourselves, when you became many. The line of demar- 
 cation might be more strictly observed ; there might be 
 less intercourse and less knowledge. It would be a 
 terrible state of things, to be growing in material power, 
 and growing too in a compulsory exclusiveness. Grow 
 you must ; I know it ; you cannot help it ; it is your 
 destiny ; it is the necessity of the Catholic Name, it is 
 the prerogative of the Apostolical heritage ; but a mate- 
 rial extension without a corresponding moral manifesta- 
 tion, it is almost awful to anticipate ; awful, if there 
 should be the sun of justice within you, with so little 
 power to cast the illumination of its rays upon the mul- 
 titudes without. On the other hand, even if you did not 
 
372 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 grow, you might dispense on all sides of you the royal 
 light of Truth, and exert an august moral influence upon 
 the world. This is what I want ; I do not want growth, 
 except of course for the sake of the souls of those who 
 are the increment ; but I want you to rouse yourselves 
 to what you are, to know yourselves. I would aim pri- 
 marily at organization, edification, cultivation of mind, 
 growth of the reason. It is a moral force, not a material, 
 which will vindicate your profession, and will secure your 
 triumph. It is not giants who do most. How small 
 was the Holy Land ! yet it subdued the world. How 
 poor a spot was Attica ! yet it has formed the intellect. 
 Moses was one, Elias was one, David was one, Paul 
 was one, Athanasius was one, Leo was one. Grace ever 
 works by few ; it is the keen vision, the intense convic- 
 tion, the indomitable resolve of the few, it is the blood 
 of the martyr, it is the prayer of the saint, it is the 
 heroic deed, it is the momentary crisis, it is the concen- 
 trated energy of a word or a look, which is the instru- 
 ment of heaven. Fear not, little flock, for He is mighty 
 who is in the midst of you, and will do for you great 
 things. 
 
 As troubles and trials circle round you. He will give 
 you what you want at present, — " a mouth and wisdom, 
 which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and 
 gainsay." " There is a time for silence, and a time to 
 speak ;" the time for speaking is come. What I desi- 
 derate in Catholics is, the gift of bringing out what they 
 are, what their religion is ; it is one of those " better 
 gifts," of which the Apostle bids you be " zealous." 
 You must not hide your talent in a napkin, or your light 
 under a bushel. I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash 
 in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 373 
 
 religion, who enter into it, who know just where they 
 stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, 
 who know their creed so well, that they can give an ac- 
 count of it, and who know enough of history to defend it. 
 I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity ; I am not de- 
 nying you are such ; but I mean to be severe, and, as some 
 would say, exorbitant in my demands. I wish you to en- 
 large your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an 
 insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view 
 things as they are, to understand how faith and reason 
 stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of 
 Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistencies and 
 absurdities of the Protestant theory. I have no appre- 
 hension you will be worse Catholics for familiarity with 
 these subjects, provided you cherish a vivid sense of God 
 above, and that you have a soul to be judged and to be 
 saved. In all times the laity have been the measure of 
 Catholicism ; they saved the Irish Church three centuries 
 ago, and they betrayed it in England. Our rulers here 
 were true, our people were cowards. You ought to be 
 able to bring out what you feel and what you mean, as 
 well as feel and mean it ; to expose to the comprehension 
 of others the fictions and fallacies of your opponents; 
 and to explain the charges brought against us, to the 
 satisfaction, not, indeed, of bigots, but of men of sense, 
 of whatever cast of opinion. And one immediate effect 
 of your being able to do all this, will be your gaining that 
 proper confidence in self which is so necessary for you. 
 You will then not even have the temptation to rely on 
 others, to court political parties or particular men; 
 they will rather have to court you. You will no longer 
 be disspirited or irritated, (if such is at present the case,) 
 at finding difficulties in your way, in being called names, 
 
374 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 in not being believed, in being treated with injustice. 
 You will fall back upon yourselves ; you will be calm, 
 you will be patient. Ignorance is the root of all little- 
 ness : he who can realize the laws of moral conflicts, and 
 the incoherence of falsehood, and the issue of perplexities, 
 and the end of all things, and the Presence of the Judge, 
 becomes, from the very necessity of the case, philoso- 
 phical, long-suffering, and magnanimous. 
 
 Cultivation of mind, I know well, is not the same thing 
 as religious principle, but it contributes much to remove 
 from our path the temptation to many lesser forms of 
 moral obliquity. Human nature, left to itself, is sus- 
 ceptible of innumerable feehngs, more or less unbecoming, 
 indecorous, petty, and miserable. It is, in no long time, 
 clad and covered by a host of little vices and disgraceful 
 infirmities, — jealousies, slynesses, cowardices, frettings, 
 resentments, obstinacies, crookedness in viewing things, 
 vulgar conceit, impertinence, and selfishness. Mental 
 cultivation, though it does not of itself touch the greater 
 wounds of human nature, does a good deal for these lesser 
 defects. In proportion as our intellectual horizon re- 
 cedes, and we mount up in the knowledge of men and 
 things, so do we make progress in those qualities and 
 that character of mind, which we denote by the word 
 " gentleman ;" and, if this apphes in its measure to the 
 case of all men, whatever their religious principles, much 
 more is it true of a Catholic. Your opponents, my 
 Brothers, are too often emphatically not gentlemen : but it 
 will be for you, in spite of whatever provocations you may 
 meet with, to be manly and noble in your bearing towards 
 them ; to be straightforward in your dealings with them; 
 to show candour, generosity, honourable feeling, good 
 sense, and forbearance, in spite of provocation ; to refrain 
 
TOWARDS THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 375 
 
 from taking unfair or small advantages over them ; to 
 meet them half way, if they show relentings ; not to fret 
 at insults, to bear imputations, and to interpret the ac- 
 tions of all in the best sense you possibly can. It is not 
 only more religious, not only more becoming, not only 
 happier, to have these excellent dispositions of mind, but 
 it is far the most likely way, in the long run, of per- 
 suasion and success. You see I am speaking to you 
 almost in a worldly way ; I do not speak to you of Chris- 
 tian charity, lest I should adopt a tone too high for the 
 occasion. 
 
 Men, when they see this, may attempt other weapons ; 
 and the more serious you are, will make the greater 
 efforts to pour contempt and ridicule upon you. But 
 ridicule will not hurt you, as it hurts other religious 
 bodies ; they hate and fear Catholicism — they cannot 
 really laugh at it. They may laugh at individuals or at 
 details connected with it, but not at Catholicism itself. 
 Indeed, I am disposed, in one sense, to allow the maxim 
 of the unbeliever, which has before now given rise to so 
 much discussion, viz., that ridicule is the test of truth. 
 Methodism is ridiculous, so is Puritanism : it is not so 
 with the Catholic Religion ; it may be, and is, maligned 
 and defamed ; ridiculed it cannot be. It is too real, too 
 earnest, too vigorous, to have ought to fear from the 
 most briUiant efforts of the satirist or the wit. 
 
 You will not be able to silence your opponents ; do 
 not be surprised at it ; that will not show that they do not 
 secretly respect you. Men move in parties ; what shows 
 on the surface is no index of what is felt within. When 
 they have made assertions, they cannot withdraw them, 
 the shame is so great; so they go on blustering, and 
 wishing themselves out of the awkward position in which 
 
376 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 they stand. Truth is great : a blow is struck within 
 them ; they are unnerved with the secret consciousness 
 of failure ; they are angry with themselves ; and, though 
 they do not like you at all the better for it, they will be 
 more cautious another time. They speak less confidently 
 henceforth ; or, even if they harden themselves, and are 
 as bold as before, others do not go with them ; public 
 opinion does not respond to them ; and a calumny, 
 which at first was formidable, falls on closed hearts and un- 
 willing ears, and takes no root in the community at large. 
 This is what I think probable ; I will not anticipate it 
 can be otherwise ; but still supposing there is that pre- 
 judice existing, which, like a deep soil, will receive any 
 amount of false witness, of scurrility, of buffoonery, of 
 sophistry, when directed against the Catholic Religion, 
 and that the contempt and hatred, at present felt against 
 its adherents, is kindled, by their increasing strength and 
 intelligence, into a fiercer, prouder, feeling, — what then ? 
 noli wmulari, be not jealous, fret not. You are not as 
 others ; you have that in you which others have not. 
 You have in you an unearthly gift ; the gift, not only of 
 contending boldly, but of suffering well. It will not hap- 
 pen, it must not be expected ; and yet I confess I have 
 not that confidence on the subject, which I had a year 
 since, when I said that Catholics never could be perse- 
 cuted again in England. It will not be so : yet late 
 events have shown, that, though I never have under- 
 rated the intense prejudice which prevails against us, I 
 did over-rate that Anglo-Saxon love of justice and 
 fair dealing which I thought would be its match. Alas ! 
 that I should have to say so, but it is no matter to the 
 Catholic, though much matter to the Englishman. It is 
 no matter to us, because, as I have said, " Greater is He 
 
TOWAIIDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 377 
 
 that is in you than hfi that is in the world." I do not, 
 cannot think, a time of serious trial is at hand : I would 
 not willingly use big words, or provoke what is so dread- 
 ful, or seem to accomplish it by suggesting it. And for 
 myself, I confess I have no love of suffering at all ; I am 
 not of a time of life which commonly loves to risk it. To 
 be quiet and to be undisturbed, to be at peace with all, 
 to live in the sight of my brethren, to meditate on the 
 future, and to die, — such is the prospect which is rather 
 suitable to such as me. Yet, my Brothers, I have no 
 dou.bt at all, either about myself or about Catholics 
 generally, if trial came. I doubt not we should suffer 
 any trial well, not from nature, but from grace ; not from 
 what we are in ourselves, but from the wonder-working 
 power which is among us, and which fills us as vessels, 
 according to our various dimensions. 
 
 Every age is not the age of Saints, but no age is 
 not the age of martyrs. Look into the history of the 
 Church ; you find many instances of men trained up by 
 laborious courses of discipline through a long life, or a 
 period of many years. Slowly, silently, perseveringly, 
 often opposed by their own people, for a while looked on 
 with suspicion even by good Catholics, lest they should 
 be extravagant, or intemperate, or self-willed, (for time 
 is necessary, as the proof of things,) setting about heroic 
 works, acting, suffering with superhuman faith, with 
 superhuman patience, with superhuman love, and then at 
 length dying, not by violence, but in peace, — these are 
 what I have called by pre-eminence Saints, being the 
 great specimens of their kind, as contrasted with Martyrs. 
 They are the produce, generally speaking, of the pros- 
 perous times of the Church, I mean, when the Church is 
 in the favour of the world, and is in possession of riches, 
 
378 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 learning, power, and name. The first in history of these 
 great creations of God, is that glorious name, St. Atha- 
 nasius : then they follow so thick, I cannot enumerate 
 them ; St. Chrysostom, almost a martyr ' too, St. Basil, 
 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, . 
 St. Jerome ; in very distinct spheres of religious duty, 
 but all heroes. Such, too, was St. Benedict, such St. 
 Leo, such St. Gregory the First, St. Romuald, St. 
 Gregory the Seventh, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. 
 Thomas of Aquinum, St. Ignatius, St. Vincent of Paul. 
 As far as human eyes can see, we have none such on earth 
 at present; nor again, is our age like theirs. Ours is not 
 an age of temporal glory, of dutiful princes, of loyal 
 governments, of large possessions, of ample leisure, of 
 famous schools, of learned foundations, of well-stored 
 libraries, of honoured sanctuaries. Rather, it is like the 
 first age of the Church, when there was little of station, 
 of nobility, of learning, of wealth, in the holy heritage ; 
 when we were chiefly of the lower orders, when we were 
 poor and ignorant, when we were despised and hated by 
 the great and philosophical, as a low rabble, or a stupid 
 and obstinate association, or a foul and unprincipled con- 
 spiracy. It is like that first age, in which no Saint is 
 recorded in history who fills the mind as a great idea, as 
 St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Ignatius, and when the ablest 
 so-called Christian writers, belonged to heretical schools. 
 We certainly have little to show for ourselves ; and the 
 words of the Psalm are fulfilled in us, — " They have set 
 fire to Thy sanctuary; they have defiled the dwelling- 
 place of Thy Name on the earth. Our signs we have not 
 seen ; there is now no Prophet, and He will know us no 
 more. How long shall the enemy reproach ? is the ad- 
 versary to provoke Thy Name for ever ?" So was it in 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 379 
 
 the first age too ; they were scorned and hated as we 
 are ; they were without the effulgence and the celebrity 
 of later times. Yet had they nothing at all to show ? 
 were they without their glory ? it was emphatically the 
 age of martyrs. The most horrible tortures which ima- 
 gination can fancy, the most appalling kinds of death, 
 were the lot, the accepted portion, the boast and joy, of 
 those abject multitudes. Not a few merely, but by 
 thousands, and of every condition of life, men, women, 
 boys, girls, children, slaves, domestics, they willingly 
 offered their life's blood, their limbs, their senses, their 
 nerves, to the persecutor, rather than soil their faith and 
 their profession, with the slightest act which implied the 
 denial of their Lord. 
 
 Such was the fruit of the Mother of Saints in her 
 valley of humiliation, when she seemed to have hardly 
 any great thought, or spirit, or intellect, or cultivation of 
 mind. And who were these her children who made this 
 sacrifice of blood so freely 1 what had been their previous 
 lives ? how had they been trained ? were they special men 
 of fasting, of prayer, and of self-control ? No, I repeat 
 it, no ; they were for the most part common men ; it was 
 not they, who did the deed, it was not what was matured 
 in them, it was that unfathomable ocean of faith and 
 sanctity, which flowed into, and through, and out of 
 them into those tremendous manifestations of divine 
 power. It was the narrow-minded slave, the untaught 
 boy, the gentle maid, as well as the Bishop or the 
 Evangelist, who took on them their cross, and smiled as 
 they entered on their bloody way. It was the soldier of 
 the ranks, it was the jailor or hangman suddenly con- 
 verted, it was the spectator of a previous martyrdom, 
 nay, it was even the unbaptized heathen, who with a joy- 
 
 Hh 
 
380 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 ful song rose up and washed their robes, and made them 
 white in the blood of the Lamb. Nay, strange to say, 
 in the case of those of them who had been Christians 
 before the persecution, good and rehgious as they were, 
 yet still we read of disorder, and extravagance, and other 
 lesser offences, even while in prison and in expectation of 
 their doom, clearly showing that all of them had not that 
 subdued and disciplined spirit, which has distinguished 
 those great lights of after times of whom I was just now 
 speaking. Or take particular instances of Martyrdom, 
 or what resembles it, from the first age to the present 
 time ; — what was St. Justin ? a philosopher, with great 
 secular accomplishments, but assuredly not better 
 grounded in Christian truth than the bulk of our own 
 laity. What was our own St. Alban, again, but a 
 Roman officer, who did a generous action, sheltered a 
 priest, was converted by him, made confession and went 
 out to die I And then, again, St. Hermenegild, several 
 centuries later; a brave youth, who by his glorious 
 death, not only gained the crown of martyrdom, but 
 wiped out some rash acts which history imputes to him 
 in the course of the trial which led to it. Who was our 
 own St. Thomas ? one who with a true heart had served 
 his Lord and led an ascetic life even when he lived in the 
 world, but who, before his elevation to the Primacy, had 
 indulged in a pomp and magnificence unsuitable to the 
 condition, not only of a priest, which he was not, but of 
 the inferior orders of the sacred ministry. And so, 
 again, in recent times, contemplate the heroic deaths of 
 the martyr-priests of France during the excess of the first 
 bloody Eevolution ; yet they, although men of clear con- 
 science and good life before, seem to have had no special 
 notes of sanctity on their characters and histories. And 
 
TOWAEDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 381 
 
 SO, again, the latest martyr, as he may be called, of the 
 French Church, the late Archbishop of Paris; he, in- 
 deed, had in every way adorned and sustained his high 
 dignity, by holiness of conversation and a reputation 
 beyond reproach ; and the last glorious act of his life was 
 but in keeping with all which had gone before it. True ; 
 but it is to my point to observe that this bright ex- 
 ample of self-devotion and paternal tenderness for his 
 flock, is conynonly said to have shrunk in anticipation, 
 by reason of the very gentleness and sweetness of his 
 natural disposition, from such rough contests as that to 
 which he was ultimately called ; yet, when his Lord's 
 word came, he calmly went forth into the ranks of his 
 infuriated people, stood between the mortal combatants, 
 with the hope of separating them, and received the 
 wound which suddenly took him off to his eternal re- 
 ward. This, then, may be said, as a general rule, of the 
 individual members of the white-robed army ; they have 
 been, for the most part, men of noble zeal and chivalrous 
 prowess, who startled the world, startled their friends, 
 startled themselves by what the grace that is in the 
 Church enabled them to do. They shot up at once to 
 their high stature, and " being perfected in a short 
 space," as the Wise man says, "they fulfilled a long 
 time." Thus they shone forth, and " ran to and fro like 
 sparks among the reeds," like those keen and sudden 
 fires which dart forth from some electric mass, on due 
 provocation, and intimate to us the power and intensity 
 of the awful elements which lie concealed within it. 
 
 The Church of God cannot change ; what she was that 
 she is. What our forefathers were, such are we : we 
 look like other men, but we have that in us, which none 
 Hh2 
 
382 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 others have, — the latent element of an indomitable forti- 
 tude. This may not be the age of saints, but all times 
 are the age of martyrs. The arrow is on the string, and 
 the arm is drawn back, and, " if the Lord give the word," 
 great will be the multitude of His champions. Oh, my 
 Brothers, it is difficult for you and me to realize this ; it 
 is difficult for us to believe that ne have it in us, being 
 what we are, — but we have. And it is difficult for us 
 to believe that this can be a time for testing it, nor do I 
 say it is ; I think it cannot be : I only say, that if it 
 were to be a time for calling out the martyr's spirit, you 
 and I, through God's grace, have it in us. I only mean, 
 that it is profitable in such lesser trials as may easily 
 come upon us, to reflect that we may trust we have that 
 in us, which can sustain the greatest. And it would be 
 profitable also for our opponents, high and low, if they 
 too would lay this to heart. It would be well for them 
 to recollect, that there is a certain principle, which we 
 call zeal, and they call fanaticism. Let them beware of 
 awaking what they would, in scoffing, call the fanatical 
 spirit of the Catholic. For years and years the Catholics 
 of England have borne personal slander, and insult, and 
 injustice. In their own persons, and not merely in their 
 religious profession, have they been treated, as the ad- 
 herents of no other creed have been treated, with scorn, 
 hatred, and cruelty. Men have shrunk from coming 
 near them, and have almost discarded from their society 
 those who did ; as if inflicting on them the greater ex- 
 communication, as upon those who were the extremest 
 reprobates and blasphemers on the face of the earth. 
 They have borne, and they bear, an ill-usage, which in 
 its mildest and most amiable form, has never risen higher 
 
TOWARDS THE PKOTESTANT VIEW. 383 
 
 than pity and condescension. They have borne, and they 
 bear, to 
 
 " Sit in the gate, and be the heathen's jest. 
 Silent and self-possessed," 
 
 waiting till the morning breaks, and a happier day 
 begins. 
 
 So has it been with us up to this hour ; but let our 
 enemies remember that, while they have their point of 
 honour, we Ijave ours. They have stripped us of power, 
 wealth, name, and station ; they have left us nothing but 
 our Apostolical inheritance. And now they wish to take 
 from us the " little ewe-lamb," which is our only treasure. 
 There was a saying of old, " Let alone Gamarina, for 'tis 
 best let alone." Let them, as sensible men, — I do not 
 say, accept Catholicism as true, but admit it into their 
 imagination as a fact. A story goes about of a sagacious 
 statesman and monarch of our own time, who, when 
 urged by some of his advisers to come to an open rupture 
 with the Holy See, made answer, " If you can put your 
 finger upon the page of history, and point out any one 
 instance, in which any civil power quarrelled with Rome 
 with honour and success in the event, I will accede to 
 your wishes." And it has lately been given to the world, 
 how that profound politician, apostate priest as he was. 
 Prince Talleyrand, noted it, as one of Napoleon's three 
 great political mistakes, that he quarrelled with the 
 Pope. There is only one way of success over us, possible 
 even in idea, — a wholesale massacre. Let them exter- 
 minate us, as they have done before, kill the priests, 
 decimate the laity ; they have for a while defeated the 
 Pope. They have no other way ; they may gain a mate- 
 rial victory, never a moral one. 
 
384 DUTIES OF CATHOLICS 
 
 These are thoughts to comfort and sustain us, what- 
 ever trial lies before us. I might pursue them farther, 
 but it is enough to have suggested them. Nothing more 
 remains for me to do, but, in commending myself to your 
 good thoughts, my Brothers, to thank those also, who, 
 though not of our communion, have honoured me with 
 their attendance. If I might take the liberty of ad- 
 dressing them directly, I would anxiously entreat them to 
 think over what I have said, even though they have not 
 been altogether pleased at my manner of saying it. 
 Minds, and judgments, and tastes, are so very different, 
 that I cannot hope to have approved myself to all, even 
 though they be well disposed towards me, nay, to any 
 one at all so fully, but that he may have thought that 
 some things might have been said better, and some things 
 better omitted altogether. Yet I entreat them to believe 
 that I have uttered nothing at random, but have had 
 reasons, both for what I said and my manner of saying it. 
 It is easy to fancy better ways of doing things, but 
 very difficult to find them : and often the best way is, in 
 the very nature of things, not positively good, but what 
 happens to be better than others. And really in the 
 present state of things, it is difficult to say any thing in 
 behalf of Catholicism, if it is to make any impression, 
 without incurring grave criticism of one kind or another; 
 and quite impossible so to say it, as not grievously to 
 offend those whom one is opposing. But, after all, in 
 spite of all imperfections, which are incident to the 
 doings of every mortal man, and in spite of the differences 
 of judgments, which will make those imperfections greater 
 than they are, I do trust there is a substance of truth in 
 what I have said, which will last, and produce its effect 
 
TOWARDS THE PROTESTANT VIEW. 385 
 
 some where or other. Good is never done except at the 
 expense of those who do it : truth is never enforced 
 except at the sacrifice of its propounders. At least, they 
 expose their inherent imperfections, if they incur no other 
 penalty ; for nothing would be done at all, if a man 
 waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find 
 fault with it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, then, what can I do but 
 this 2 — hope that what I have said well may be blest to 
 those who have heard it ; and that what I might have 
 said better, may be blest to me by increasing my dis- 
 satisfaction with myself, by leading me to resign myself 
 to such trouble or such anxiety as necessarily befals any 
 one who has spoken boldly on an unpopular subject in a 
 difficult time ; — and feel a sure confidence that such 
 trouble and anxiety must bring some real good with it in 
 the event, to those who have acted in sincerity, and by 
 no unworthy methods and with no selfish aim. 
 
386 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE onf. 17. 
 
 The following is the passage as it stands in Mr. Blanco White's work, 
 a portion of which is extracted in Lecture I. 
 
 " The Jesuits, till the abolition of that order, had an almost unrivalled 
 influence over the better classes of Spaniards. They had nearly mono- 
 polized the instruction of the Spanish youth, at which they toiled without 
 pecuniary reward ; and were equally zealous in promoting devotional 
 feelings both among their pupils and the people at large. It is well known 
 that the most accurate division of labour was observed in the allotment 
 of their various employments. Their candidates, who, by a refinement 
 of ecclesiastical policy, after an unusually long probation, were bound by 
 vows which, depriving them of liberty, yet left a discretionary power of 
 ejection in the Order, were incessantly watched by the penetrating eye 
 of the Master of Novices ; a minute description of their character and 
 peculiar turn was forwarded to the superiors, and at the end of the no- 
 viciate. they were employed to the advantage of the community, without 
 ever thwarting the natural bent of the individual, or diverting his natural 
 powers by a multiplicity of employments. Wherever, as in France and 
 Italy, literature was in high estimation, the Jesuits spared no trouble to 
 raise among themselves men of eminence in that department. In Spain 
 their chief aim was to provide their houses with popular preachers, and 
 zealous, yet prudent and gentle, confessors. Pascal, and the Jansenist 
 party of which he was the organ, accused them of systematic laxity in 
 their moral doctrines ; but the charge, I believe, though plausible in 
 theory, was perfectly groundless in practice. If, indeed, ascetic virtue 
 could ever be divested of its connatural evil tendency — If a system of 
 moral perfection, that has for its basis, however disavowed and disguised, 
 the Manichsean doctrine of the two principles, could be applied with any 
 partial advantage as a rule of conduct, it was so in the hands of the 
 Jesuits. The strict, unbending maxims of the Jansenists, by urging 
 persons of all characters and tempers on to an imaginary goal of per- 
 fection, bring quickly their whole system to the decision of experience. 
 They are like those enthusiasts who, venturing upon the practice of some 
 Gospel sayings, in the literal sense, have made the absurdity of that in- 
 terpretation as clear as noonday light. A greater knowledge of mankind 
 made the Jesuits more cautious in the culture of devotional feelings. 
 They well knew that but few can prudently engage in open hostility with 
 what. In ascetic language, is called the world. They now and then 
 
NOTES. 387 
 
 ti-ained up a sturdy champion, who, like their founder Loyola, might 
 provoke the enemy to single combat with honour to his leaders ; but the 
 crowd of mystic combatants were made to stand upon a kind of jealous 
 truce, which, in spite of all care, often produced some jovial meetings 
 of the advanced parties on both sides. The good fathers came forward, 
 rebuked their soldiers back into the camp, and filled up the place of 
 deserters by their indefatigable industry in engaging recruits. 
 
 " The influence of the Jesuits on Spanish morals, from every thing I 
 have learned, was undoubtedly favorable. Their kindness attracted the 
 youth from their schools to their company ; and though it must be ac- 
 knowledged that many arts were practised to decoy the cleverest and 
 the wealthiest into the order, they also greatly contributed to the pre- 
 servation of virtue in that slippery age, both by the ties of affection and 
 the gentle check of example. Their churches were crowded every 
 Sunday with regular attendants, who came to confess and receive the 
 sacrament. The practice of choosing a certain priest, not only to be the 
 occasional confessor, but director of the conscience, was greatly encouraged 
 by the Jesuits. The ultimate effects of this surrender of the judgment 
 are indeed dangerous and degrading ; but in a country where the darkest 
 superstition is constantly impelling the mind into the opposite extremes 
 of religious melancholy and profligacy, weak persons are sometimes pre- 
 served from either by the friendly assistance of a prudent director, and 
 the Jesuits were generally well qualified for that office. Their conduct 
 was correct and their manners refined. They kept up a dignified inter- 
 course with the middling and higher classes, and were always ready to 
 help and instruct the poor, without descending to their level. Since 
 the expulsion of the Jesuits, the better classes for the most part avoid 
 the company of monks and friars, except in an official capacity ; while 
 the lower ranks, from which these professional saints are generally taken, 
 and where they re-appear, raised, indeed, into comparative importance, 
 but grown bolder in grossness and vice, suffer more from their influence 
 than they would by being left without any religious ministers." 
 
 Note on the Extract. 
 
 " The profligacy now prevalent among the friars, contrasted with the 
 conduct of the Jesuits, as described by the most credible Hving wit- 
 nesses, is excessively striking. Whatever we may think of the political 
 delinquencies of their leaders, their bitterest enemies have never ven- 
 
 I i 
 
388 NOTES. 
 
 tured to charge the order of Jesuits with moral irregularities. The 
 internal policy of that body precluded the possibility of gross misconduct. 
 No Jesuit could step out of doors without calling on the superior for 
 leave and a companion, in the choice of whom great care was taken to 
 vary the couples. Never were they allowed to pass a single night out of 
 the convent, except when attending a dying person ; and even then they 
 were under the strictest injunctions to return at whatever hour the soul 
 departed." — Doblado's Letters in the New Monthly Magazine, 1821, 
 vol. ii., pp. 157, 158. 
 
 Note on p. 107. 
 
 The notice promised here. Lecture III., p. 107, on the doctrine of In- 
 dulgences, in connection with Absolution, has been anticipated in Lecture 
 VIII., pp. 330—333. 
 
 1 may add that 1 have been informed since I published Lecture III., 
 that Mr. Hallam, in a later edition than mine of his Middle Ages, has 
 explained what he said about St. Eligius. Nothing less could be ex- 
 pected from a person of his great reputation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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