Another Cause of Antagonism Against Catholic Church
Some Wish to be Fair
Catholic System Seems Unreasonable
Conclude Catholics Are Unbelieving, Dishonest
Argument Has Influence with Educated
First Principles
Their Nature
Required for Thinking
Examples
Sovereign, Irresponsible, Unconscious
Hidden Cause of Disputes
Romans versus Christians
Religious Toleration
Meekness and Humiliation
Catholics have First Principles too
Bigotry
Miracles
Self-Evident Absurdity to Protestants
Catholic Side
My Belief in Specific Miracles
Concluding Advice
There is a great and a growing class in the community, who wish to be fair to us, who see how cruelly we are dealt with, who are indignant at the clamour, and see through the calumnies, and despise the prejudice, which are directed against us, who feel themselves to be superior to the multitude in their feelings and their judgments, who aim at thinking well of all men, all persuasions, all schools of thought, and of Catholics in the number, and to like each for what is good in it, though they may not follow it themselves. Being thus candid, and, in a certain sense, unbiassed, they readily acknowledge the grandeur of the Catholic Religion, both in history and in philosophy; they wish to be good friends with it; they delight to contemplate its great heroes; they recognise, perhaps, with almost enthusiastic admiration, the genius and other gifts of the intellect, which in every age have been so profusely found among its adherents. They know and they like individual Catholics; they have every desire to like us in all respects; they set their minds towards liking us, our principles, our doctrines, our worship and our ways. As far as can be said of men, they really have no prejudice. In this interesting and excellent state of mind, they take up one of our books, sincerely wishing to get on with it; alas, they are flung back at once; they see so much which they cannot abide at all, do what they will. They are annoyed at themselves, and at us; but there is no help for it; they discover, they feel that between them and us there is a gulf. So they turn from the subject in disgust, and for a time perhaps are in bad humour with religion altogether, and have a strong temptation to believe nothing at all. Time passes; they get over the annoyance, and perhaps make a second attempt to adjust their own feelings with our doctrines, but with no better success. They had hoped to have found some middle term, some mode of reconciliation; they did not expect agreement, but at least peace; not coincidence, but at least a sort of good understanding and concurrence:—whereas they find antagonism. No: it is impossible; it is melancholy to say it, but it is no use disguising the truth from themselves; they cannot get over this or that doctrine or practice; nay, to be honest, there is no part they can acquiesce in; each separate portion is part of a whole. They are disappointed, but they never can believe, they never can even approve; if the Catholic system be true, faith in it must be a gift, for reason does not bear it out.
What are the things which so offend the candid and kindly-disposed persons in question? So many, that they do not know where to begin, nor where to end. It is the whole system of Catholicism; our miracles, and our relics, and our legends of saints; and then our doctrine of indulgences, and our purgatory; and our views of sin, and of the virtue of penances; and our strange formalities in worship; in a word, all is extravagant, strained, unnatural, where it is not directly offensive, or substantially impossible. They never could receive any part of it, they are sure; they would find it as hard to receive one part as the whole. They must lose their moral identity, and wake up with a new stock of thoughts, principles, and argumentative methods, ere they could ever endure it.
If such is the feeling of even candid and kind men, what will be the impression produced by Catholicism on the prejudiced? You see it is a cause of shrinking from us quite independent of prejudice, for it exists among those who are not prejudiced; but it may be joined with prejudice, and then the aversion and abhorrence entertained towards us will be intense indeed. In that case, reason (that is, what the person in question takes to be such)—reason and passion will go together.
Further, consider that it is not individuals merely, here and there, but vast multitudes who are affected precisely in the same way at hearing our doctrines; millions, whole nations. Each member of them bears witness to the rest; there is the consent, intimate, minute, exact, absolute, of all classes, all ranks, all ages, all dispositions. All this is a fact; we see it before us: do we require anything more to account for the position we hold in a Protestant country? So strong does the persuasion become, that Catholicism is indefensible, that our opponents become aggressive; they not only spurn our creed and our worship themselves, but they are (as they think) in a condition to maintain that we too in our hearts despise both the one and the other as really as they. They will not believe that educated men can sincerely accept either; they do not hold them, therefore no one else can hold them. They conclude, therefore, that we disbelieve what we teach and practise; and in consequence, that we are hypocrites, as professing one thing, and thinking another. Next they come to a third conclusion, that since no one acts without motives, we must have a motive in professing without believing, and it must be a bad motive; for instance, gain or power: accordingly we are, first, unbelievers; secondly, liars; thirdly, cheats and robbers. And thus you have full-blown Priestcraft; here you have Popery simply detected and uncloaked: and observe the course of the argument;—Catholic Priests are infidels, are hypocrites, are rogues, why? simply, because Protestants think Catholic doctrine and Catholic worship irrational.