A reply to the speech of the Hon. Edward Blake against the Orange Incorporation bill; Protestantism first, politics after.

judgment.This is the fatal flaw which mars their work, and for the lack of which no amount of education can ever compensate.A close observer of human nature tells us-i don't profess to quote the very words-that education is a good thing to have in the upper stories, if only there be common sense in the ground floor.This my intercourse with men leads me to endorse wholly.Next to the endowment of a high moral sense, that of true insight is the highest gift of nature.I beg to say here that I have throughout my pamphlet taken the liberty of employing "feeble italics," whether so found in the passages quoted or not.If in any place I have spoken warmly, it is because I have felt warmly.Civil and religious liberty, the great conquest of Protestantism, is far too dear to me to be spoken of in cold terms ; but if anywhere I seem to have spoken too warmly, I hope I may be pardoned.Everywhere I have aimed at speaking what I believed to be the truth in the plain language that truth requires. J. A. A.A Reply to Mr. Blake's Famous Speech on Orangeism.Of no man can it be pronounced with certainty how he will act under a complete change of circumstances, and no man has so fully sounded the depths of his own nature that he can predict it even of himself.We remember who said, in his burst of indignant sincerity and outraged self-respect, " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing," and yet, when the occasion served, he did it.We recall Peter, too-his prospective self-confidence, and his terrible break down when the trial came.Even high-natured men have gone to great extremes in wrong doing, when, under pressure, they have once allowed themselves to slide.Indeed, it has passed into a proverb that corruptio optimi pessima est.Hence I argue that things however seemingly impossible at present or in the future, but which were the merest commonplaces in the past, may again be repeated ; for history teaches us that we are very much the playthings of circumstances, and that no man can say with certainty how he, much more how others, will act under wholly changed conditions.Have we any guarantee then, that, under no possible circumstances, could persecution rear again its horrid crest?Are there even no indications that a lack of power alone prevents a revival of the old policy?Or have we not had sufficient warning, and good grounds for believing, that the Arch-enemy of the rights of conscience and of man has not only not retracted one ancient claim, but has shown us that, while lingering lovingly over the past, he contemplates hopefully a revival of it in the future.But, it may be replied, men can never be again the brutes they once were.And yet I know not what good grounds there are tor believing that human nature has undergone any essential change, or that we moderns are in inward structure very different from those who went before us.Only think what a beautiful dream of a noble and gentle soul was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More.What generous sentiments breathe throughout it, and what a humane spirit was that of its saintly authorpeace on earth and goodwill towards men -and in the society of his friends, and, in the bosom of his refined and charming family, as he talked sweetly and smilingly with Erasmus, when the angelic nature was uppermost, who could have dreamt what a slumbering volcano of bigotry and cruelty and fiery impatience of contradiction was there, ready to burst forth into devastating hatred and persecution, onl} r coated over with the thin self-deception of a zeal for Christ, forgetting that '' The wrath of man worketh not -6the righteousness of God."How could, I say, any one who had road Ins beautiful picture of an ideal society not be struck with the thought of what a gentle and philanthropic spirit tenanted such a bosom as his; and yet-for man is a kind of moral Centaur, part God and part Devil; in his lowest thoughts, motives, and feelings he comes near the liend ; but rouse his highest nature, anda God, he battles 'gainst a universe of wrongthis pattern man, in the very teeth of the express commands of Christ to the contrary, was so dominated by a pseudo-Christianity hardened into a concrete of sacerdotalism and tradition, which had gradually supplanted the religion of Christ and Paul, that, though so capable of higher things, he had become at once a bitter persecutor, and the urgent advocate of persecution.Such is the warping influence of a false theory of religion, illustrating the old adage thai corruptio optimi pessima est.Truly had Christ told his disciples, when, in their untutored zeal for his honour, they were for calling down fire from heaven to consume those who rejected Him, " You know not what manner of spirit you arc of: the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives."No, my readers; words spoken in the holiday attire of the soul when we are at our best; or when we are on our guard; or when spoken for the purpose of placaiion, are not to be held to override the actions that speak louder than words, especially when those action-are accompanied by the cool declarations of the bad, steady principles in which the}^originate.And as I know what those actions have been, and what those principles ever have been, and now are, not as Mr. Blake knows them, from the convenient and ever shifting utterances of unauthorised bishops or underlings, how high soever, of the church, but from the highest authority, from very infallibility itself, so is there a wide gulf which my soul refuses, because unable, to pass, that separates the splendid rhetoric of Mr. Blake from the inexorable logic of historic fact; and this, too, much and often, as 1 say to myself, oh, that 1 could pass to the other side, and believe as he would fain persuade me to.For could I but believe what Mr. Blake's argument implies to be the very heart of Popery towards ue heretics; could I believe that the Pope and the Pope is now Catholicism-has been converted into an advocate, or even a convineed non-opponent, of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and free institutions; that he regards persecution as a crime, and toleration of honestly main- tained religious opinions as not only a human right, but a solemn human duty; that he abhors, as unchristian and demoniacal, Inquisitions, and autos dafe, and (he stake, and the rack, and all the horrible and revolting enginery of a misguided and pitiless past; and had won over to his infallible opinion the cardinals and bishops and priests and people of his church ; and would himself declare that henceforth men might breathe freely, and face with honest minds the problem of the world, my heart would bound with a great joy; and whatever and however strange might be the religious dogmas of Catholics, however unlike the Christianity of the New Testament, however contrary to my reason and common sense, yet my soul would be drawn towards him and i hem by a boundless sympathy ; and my mindno longer troubled about the future of our poor humanity-I could repose in peace, mivexed henceforth by distracting doubt and pity for my kind.I have been wont, however, I confess, judging Rome by history and her unchanging declarations, to regatd the Papal despotism as the most insidious, constant, and dangerous enemy to honest, independent thought, free institutions, free speech, and freedom of worship; but 1 am informed by Mr. Blake that I was wholly mistaken, and that she has become, if she ever was otherwise, tolerant and harmless, and, if not the avowed friend, the opponent no longer of freedom and political fair play.But though I thought in this way in regard to the system of Popery, I did not believe that the mass of Catholic people shared with their accredited teachers their opinions, or even believed that they held them at all; but I feel that, in the event of any great opportunity of reviving the old status of the Church of the Middle Ages, of any great (to them) favorable crisis in human affairs ever occurring, such as, say, some new revocation of the Edict of Nantes, accompanied by the power to bend others to their will or to break them by it, Catholic laymen would have to choose be- tween the tearful alternative of joining in a general crusade against all who differed from Eome in opinion, and of using force (and we know what that means) to achieve their ends ; or, else, of abandoning their church, which, in their opinion, would seem almost, if not altogether, equivalent to the abandonment of Christianity itself.And though the best feelings of the Catholic layman and of many a priest and bishop of that church, their sense of justice, and their human pity would rise up instinctively against it, and though the whole spirit and genius of Christianity is opposed to it, yea, and the express commands of Christ, yet the church's dictum would have, I fear, to be carried into execution, and even Edward Blake would have to go or to recant, and many a gentle Sir Thomas More to give in his adhesion, spite of all his Utopias.For when once the demon of priestcraft has taken possession of a man, when he is cock-sure (excuse the vulgarism) that he knows

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.