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a moral blot , and heresy from his own creed a sufficient ground for the punishment of the presumptuous offender . " Exactly in this predicament Dr . Lingard stands ; in proportion , at least , to his sincerity ( and I have never heard that he has given occasion to question it ) as a divine of the Roman Catholic church .
I will not weary you by introducing authorities in confirmation of this remark : the controversy on the tenets of that church has been too rife , within a recent period , to render that either a difficult or a necessary task , and I shall therefore forbear . But , willing as I am to acknowledge , that Dr . Lingard may have been so far influenced by a characteristic honesty of mind , as to treat with as little partiality as any Catholic historian could be expected to do , those events in which his church has been conspicuously
engaged in times which are past , I humbly venture to suggest that that original sin of Catholicism , its undisguised and unquenchable abhorrence of all dissent from its own dogmas , and all resistance to its own authority , is too deep and radical not to render it probable that some degree of artifice must be employed to intercept the too natural conclusion , that a fountain so embittered would send out streams which would be noxious in proportion to the limits they described , or the expanse they might acquire .
Unquestionably , power is a dangerous ally to religion ; but with all the disadvantages it brings , and the prejudices it creates , there is that primary and essential distinction between the respective natures of Protestantism and Catholicism , that when spiritual oppression has been inflicted by the former , we feel that it has abandoned its own principles ; that the deviations we lament are susceptible of an intrinsic correction ; and must , when circumstances permit such inconsistencies to stand clearly and prominently out , by
the mere force of the argumentum ad hominem > eventually vanish in the natural and progressive action of the rational and healthy principle out of which it first grew . Now this is not so with Catholicism ; there oppression is in natural accordance with the theoretical despotism of a church which has never remitted its pretensions , and which , by a fatal distinction from every thing else which is human , never can . Its connexion with temporal establishments , and its existence in an aera comparatively enlightened , even in
countries where it is still predominant , must regulate its present phenomena ; but until Catholicism abjures its nature , and loses its name , I am irresistibly led to believe that it is mild from accident only : ecclesiastical domination is as the life ' s blood to it ; and this grounded upon a superhuman exemption from error , which for ever cuts off all possibility of correcting : its onceasserted pretensions , or of abridging the disastrous dominion which ages of ignorance , and violence , and barbarity , may have permitted it to
promulgate . In a word , by conceding toleration in its amplest extent , by looking upon heresy as an offence which none but the great God of hearts is competent to impute , and by leaving every human being , provided he lead a peaceable and decorous life , to the unquestioned enjoyment and utterance of his opinions , Protestants would only become the more protestant—the more con- * formable to their ori g inal principles : whereas , by such an alteration of practice on the part of the Pope , or his dependent authorities , we should only witness a departure , toto coelo , from the essence of the papal system .
To apply , then , these remarks . When controversial or historical works , in connexion with these subjects , appear , and when I find the liberal Reviews and Journals of the day tendering their humble services to him who shall lift his voice the loudest in behalf of Catholicism , and , because upon reasons of state it would be most wise to remit the remaining disabilities which
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 342, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/30/
