On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• 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

    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

    Untitled Article

    342 Tendency of the Catholic Religion .

• Citation
  • 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/