Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... derivative. Though the men went to Rome, they yet remained English; the principles that carried them had been educed and developed within the Anglican church and in its interests; and so men and principles alike tended to naturalize Catholicism on the one hand, and to beget a patient and respectful hearing for it on the other. People wished to believe that men they admired and loved had acted with reason and had accepted what was reasonable; the old attitude to Romanism ceased, and a public, well disposed for conviction, invited the best efforts of men so well able to convince. V. Whether the Catholic Apology was equal to the Need I. Now, whether Catholicism has profited by this extraordinary change, and the gains that caused it, as much as she hoped to do, or as she might and even ought to have done, or whether her once high hopes have been dashed with bitterest disappointment, is not a matter that concerns us. But here is a matter that does--the movement that made Religion more real and living to a large number of cultivated men did a true interpretative and so apologetic work. It is a blunder of the worst kind to imagine that any one form of Christianity can be served by any other being made ridiculous. It belongs to the madness of the sectary, whether Catholic or anti-Catholic, to believe that his own system grows more sane as others are made to seem less rational. But the Protestant ought to be as pleased to discover the reason in Catholicism, as the Catholic to find the truth in Protestantism; what makes either ridiculous makes the other less credible. For if there is difference there is also agreement; and while the difference is in man's relation to the truth, the agreement is in the most cardinal of the truths that stand..."