On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
gafd as a Catholic historian would have their utility , if they did no more than force us to think over again the impressions which the tales of our youth and the studies of our maturer years have so graven upon our memories , that the inquiry would never otherwise occur to us , whether these things be so or not . A candid mind must pause and review its prepossessions when it finds a good and learned man , whose inquiries would tend to reverse the epithets of good or bad , which Catholic or Protestant zeal have associated with the leaders on either side , and who would even venture so far as to
clothe the demon of cruelty and religious bigotry with some other form than that of " Bloody Mary . " It is impossible that English history should have run in one current so long without affecting its impartiality . The Reformed opinions have been too long connected with power , and power has made too good use ot opinions , for us to be likely to come at once to a correct conclusion about matters which we have been used to view through distorting mists . Ask an
Orangeman even of the present day , what he thinks of some honest neighbour who has the misfortune to be a Papist , ( or reverse the parties , if you will , ) and truth itself , backed by the strong evidence of a good life , will form no protection against the slanders of religious prejudice . How then are we to expect good faith from the testimony of many who , from various motives —some good , some bad—enlisted under the banners of the men who , two or three centuries ago , contended for the honour of imposing on us our state religion ?
1 he time is not yet come for writing English history in characters of truth ; and it never can come while bad passions and false zeal continue to lead us to deny justice to our neighbours ; while man considers difference of opinion as a moral blot , and heresy from his own creed a sufficient ground for the punishment of the presumptuous offender . To write and judge justly , we must act justly . In the meantime , however , Dr . Lingard deserves well , not merely of those of his own faith who feel a natural desire to vindicate forgotten worth or to repel calumny , but of every disinterested inquirer . The first lesson for him who tries to find the road to truth amidst the din of bad
passions , bigotry or slander , is to learn to mistrust the exaggerated tales of interest and fanaticism . The charitable heart will rejoice to nnd , that even in some of those whom history has stamped with the blackest hue , the deepness of the shade is the fiction of the artist , not the colouring of nature ; and he who has learned to dread no opinions but when linked with temporal power ,
and to distrust all when so allied , will find fresh confirmation for his opinion . He will see each in his day assuming the attributes which it is not given to man lawfully to possess ; he will find persecution no lovelier in the Protestant saint than in the Catholic , and will cling more closely to those principles which lead to separate religion from authority , and to expect mischief where there is capacity for doing it .
Dr . Lingard writes with zeal , but he possesses also great industry and strong sense . He will probably redeem many an injured name from a portion at least of its obloquy , and . will fix a blot on the escutcheon of many a smooth-faced knave , who has covered foul purposes with the cloak of religious zeal . He has , indeed , in the warmth of such a pursuit , sometimes
erred on the opposite side ; but he writes in an age when unfounded assertion or misrepresentation will do little ultimate harm to any but those who use them . Doubts may in some cases be unnecessarily raised , but sounder conviction will be the result of the process of dispelling them . Hia errors will find hosts of correctors , and it will do no one any harm to pierce a little
Untitled Article
Review .- > -Lingar < Ps Vindication . 117
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 117, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/37/
-