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Untitled Article
From this after-thought arrangement has arisen ait obvious dilation of tlie Spanish chapter , from what it . was meant to be , into a size commensurate , perhaps , with the importance of the subject , but exceeding the quantity of the materials collected . The running title of a " History of the Reformation
in Spain , " is somewhat ridiculously applied to the meagre notices which ^ ean be collected of the opinions and actions of a few individuals , whose plans , whatever they were , were crushed in the moment of their development , and to a short narrative , which only tends to shew that unfortunately there was no " Reformation" of which any one can write " the History *"
Apart from these observations on the policy and arrangement by which we have two books , to convey what might more reasonably and with more convenience have been comprised in one , we are obliged to Dr . M'Crie for this continuation of the design of making his countrymen better acquainted with the scanty notices which are to be gathered from various sources concerning the efforts made by individuals to resist ecclesiastical tyranny' in those countries where the attempt was attended with the greatest difficulties and hazards .
The first topic which naturally excites attention , in considering the ecclesiastical history of Spain , is the somewhat singular contrast which exists between the reputed and the real history of religious opinions there . Take the common report and popular assertion of the last three centqries as the rule , and one must believe , that if the church has been any where one and indivisible , pure and unspotted by taint or heresy , Spain has been the happy
scene of that prolonged triumph of orthodoxy . Investigate the real facts , and no country exhibits , in its early history , greater vicissitude of faith , greater perplexity among the journeyers along the paths in which orthodoxy should be the directing line . The Spaniard , when he boasts the unchanging purity of his country's creed , is as wide of the real mark as when , with the same breath , he joins to the assertion that he is an " old Christian , " the parallel boast that he is " free from all stain of bad descent ; " the fact being ,
that no population was ever compounded of such a jumble , in which Iberian , Celt , Carthaginian , Roman , Greek , Goth , Jew , Saracen , Syrian , Arab , and Moor , throw in equal proportions to complete the mixture . But when Dr . M'Crie talks of the erroneous opinion as to the purity of Spanish orthodoxy , as " originating in vanity , " he is surely not so correct as he is in part when he describes it " as fostered by ignorance and credulity . " Spain owes her delusion to the same cause to which she owed the
destruction of her civil liberties and the suppression of every channel for the exercise of individual opinion , namely , to the craft and strength of temporal and spiritual tyranny , united under circumstances unfortunately adapted , in an eminent degree , to the promotion of their common object . Church and Stale in Spain had liberty to form themselves on the most perfect model ; they had the game to themselves ; they did their work well and thoroughly ; and the success of their united exertions still remains to shew of what they
are capable when left to exert their full and unrestrained influences . Not satisfied with punishing , in the most remorseless way , every deviation from the rule prescribed by the established authorities , it is plain' that every art was used to turn national prejudices to account , and that the poor slave was aetually brought to hug even his chains with pride , in the belief , first , that they v * ere to himself the badges of honour , and next , that they had been equally the boast and ornament of his ancestors . The higher the romantic stories which recorded the deeds of his forefathers stood in the estimation of the S paniard , the higher was he led to prize the bigotry which forme dpart of
Untitled Article
Reformation in Spain 109
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 109, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/37/
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