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Untitled Article
: In one of the numbers of the late series of the Monthly Repository , not many months ago , was given at full length one of the most appalling samples of modern Roman Catholic pretension which has been put forward for many years ; I mean the Pastoral of the renowned Bishop Doyle , commanding his clergy to abstain from all disputation with Protestants , not for 1
peacesake , as Mr . Plunkett would have it , ( vide Debates of March 2 , ) but , by a convenient refuge in the Holy Ghost , from an affected conviction that the truth having bsen already infallibly and irrevocably declared by the Italian Bishops at Trent , ( these were the vast majority , ) so much as to revive the mere question so complacently answered by our blessed Master , " How can these things be ? " would be in itself nothing short of apostacy and blasphemy !
And yet to that document , surrounded as the Repository was by all the talent , and all the energy , and all the freedom , of the Dissenting community of England , those " Hebrews of Hebrews , those Protestants with regard to Protestants , " as Mr . Aspland , in his admirable Charge , has strikingly expressed it , not one syllable of reply , not one whisper of indignation was opposed ! We had , it is true , a due supply of information as to Unitarian institutions , of lamentations and outcries against the occasional incivilities or petty oppressions which that class have experienced from the ministers of
the Establishment ; nay , we had the usual amount of aspirations in favour of religious liberty , and of triumph at its apparent progress throughout the land ; but the moment Bishop Doyle advances his towering front , and , heading , as he does , five millions of people who are perpetually before the country and the Legislature as applicants for political equality in their character of Christian brethren , puts forward a set of propositions which go to the annihilation of every shadow of religious right , then straightway the course is left free to him , and every trace of opposition retires , —as if from the very excess of his presumption he derived the power to intimidate and disperse
it ! This is inexplicable , but it is past . Let us see whether any thing of a similar tendency is discoverable in the vigorous and truly hopeful scion which the parent-work has thrown out , and to which it has resigned its place . I regret that my researches have been so easily arrested .
That Dr . Lingard is a very able man , I can have no doubt , nor am I less disposed to believe him a very amiable one . I have not , however , read his works , nor have I entered at all minutely into the charges by which the Edinburgh Review has sought to lower his historical reputation . I do not mean to do so , until I have received Dr . Lingard ' s much-extolled reply , which I have written for , together also with the reply to it .
But , arguing from the presumption which a very unexceptionable critical canon of your own has furnished , I must confess my entire inability to discover , abstracted from the most rigorous evidence of the particular point he would establish , why it is that I am to be charmed by Dr . Lingard ' s name , or forego my suspicions that I may not be quite safe under his direction , seeing that , as a Roman Catholic writer , English history can hardly be ex- * pected to meet with impartial consideration at his hands . You do not mean , I would suppose , Sir , to withdraw or to modify your canon whenever a case shall te brought to claim the admission of the truth which it has
affirmed . At page 117 of your Repository , " The time is not yet come , " you say , " for writing English history in characters of truth ; and it never can come while ' ( among other things ) " maa considers difference of opinion 39
Untitled Article
Tendency Cf the Catholic Religion , 341
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 341, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/29/
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