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Untitled Article
you were remarking ) was bo irreconoileable with " the spirit of the Catholic religion , " ( such are your words , p . 119 , ) as to hesitate in imputing to such spirit that besotted and iniquitous measure of the grand monarque ? If you do , then you differ in opinion from no less an authority than the defender of the Gallican liberties ; for that idol of Mr . Butler , Bossuet himself , " exclaimed ,
in reference to this feat of Louis , " You have given stability to the true faith , you have exterminated the heretics ; this is the work worthy of your reign , this is the glorious distinction by which it will be known in history !" I think the inferences to be drawn from this passage are obvious ; but I shall not enlarge , as I fear I am trespassing on your anticipated indulgence much too considerably . I shall only observe , once for all , that I defy any genuine friend of religious liberty to shew that a body of people who
profess the opinions and subscribe to the sentiments contained in the Encyclic of Leo XII ., of 1824 , those contained in the Pastoral Charge of the Irish Catholic Bishops of the same year , those of Bishop Doyle ' s Pastoral , of August , 1825 , —that a people so professing , and bound down in spiritual obedience to such pastors , are , upon any principles of their own , in their character of Roman Catholics , worthy of that political brotherhood which they claim with the other religious denominations of this country .
And yet , with my whole soul , 1 would emancipate them ; for I would not even bind a madman who could be safely entrusted with his liberty ; and , because I would encourage them , by generosity and confidence , to mingle in that free strife of mind , both in Parliament and the country , which would , in no long time , I believe , prove the most powerful of all solvents in operating on those chains of bigotry and priestcraft which now enter into their souls , " and detain so fine a portion of the general intellect from aiding in the public weal and giving additional force to the public freedom .
Pardon me , Sir , let your liberal readers pardon me for the sake of my intentions , if I have overstrongly stated what I esteem to be an important truth . Your Whigs and your Tories , your Churchmen and your Plunketts , * these all may have their designs to serve , may be time-servers and factionservers ; but those who argue for truth and freedom ' s sake alone , should scorn these grovelling flights , and , borne on nobler pinions , should look with unshrinking eye upon that moral light which alone can extricate us all , whether Protestant or Catholic , from the difficulties which beset us—from
the sophistries which would abuse us—and from that darkness and tyranny in which the priests and politicians of all sides would , for their own selfish and ignoble ends , perpetually retain us . Sir , I wish these feelings to be apprehended , to be acted upon , and written upon , by the truly liberal classes of England —would to God I could say of my own poor country ! but
here we have none such . —I wish them , in their advocacy of that one great measure which I think would give peace to Ireland , which I am satisfied would no more endanger the empire than it would shake the foundation of the Pyramids , and equally satisfied , would give a force and plausibility unfejt before , to Protestant efforts to detach the Catholic mind from a faith
unfit for freemen ; not to forget , at the same time , so much as they do , the recorded and uneffaceable pretensions of that religion to which its modern ——
^— . ¦ —— . _ j . ¦ # Against this gentleman ' s ecclesiastical doctrines there is not a Dissenter in Great Britain , nor any genuine friend of religion and intellectual independent , who ought not to raise his voice . Neither one atom of gospel feeling , nor of constitutional habits of thought , ever enters into this person ' s harangues on the religlows institutions of his country .
Untitled Article
344 Tendency of the Catholic Religion .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/32/
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