Protestantism Audiobook By R. W. Dale cover art

Protestantism

Its Ultimate Principle

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Protestantism

By: R. W. Dale
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 I can remember the time when the antagonism with which for more than three hundred years the vast majority of the English people had regarded the Church of Rome, was one of the most powerful elements of our national life. It controlled our theological controversies; it was appealed to with confidence by the chiefs of political parties; its influence was obvious in.our social intercourse. Roman Catholic priests were regarded with mingled distrust, contempt, and dread. The characteristic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were spoken of with intellectual scorn; the pretensions of the Pope to infallibility, for instance — pretensions which at those times were not sustained by the authority of a General Council, — and the dogma of transubstantiation, were supposed to be too monstrous to require serious discussion; the invocation of saints and the homage offered to the Virgin Mary were treated as nothing better than idolatry, and reverence for relics as a childish superstition. All the instruments and apparatus of Romish worship, decorated altars, consecrated wafers, crucifixes, the gorgeous robes of the priests, were regarded as things which carried infection with them; and the worship itself as a profane insult to the majesty of God. In those days it was customary to speak of the Jesuits as men who had reduced equivocation and lying to a science, and consecrated falsehood in the name of religion; nor was there any crime from which it was imagined that a Jesuit would shrink if the ' interest of the Church appeared to require it. Most English people regarded the confessional with horror and disgust; it was an abomination not to be tolerated in a free and Christian community; an institution for corrupting the morals of women and for investing the priesthood with a dark and terrible power oyer the happiness of families and the liberties of nations. The Roman Catholic Church was the very symbol and representative of all the worst evils which can desolate Christendom; it had plunged Europe into darkness for centuries; it was the irreconcilable foe of intellectual freedom; it was the ally of political despotism; it had been guilty of falsehood and treachery, covetousness and ambition, and of cruelties more atrocious than had ever disgraced the worst form of paganism; it had repressed with fire and sword, with the branding iron, the gibbet, and the stake, every noble struggle for truth and liberty; it had cursed, imprisoned, tortured, and burnt men of illustrious genius and heroic goodness; it had massacred thousands and tens of thousands of the common people who had dared to challenge its authority; it was drunk with the blood of saints. Atheism itself had an apology and a palliation in the superstition and crimes of this corrupt and tyrannical Church. Speaking broadly, this was the creed of at least the vast majority of the English people a quarter of a century ago. Even then, indeed, in some quarters the ancient loyalty of the nation to Protestantism had begun to give way. There were clergymen and scholars who had learnt to look upon Romanism, not only with charity, but with sympathy. Among the aristocratic classes there was already a disposition to tolerate and even to admire the external forms of Romish worship and certain Romish institutions. Some of the leaders of political parties, though willing enough at times to take advantage of the popular hatred of Romanism, were very much disposed to attempt the solution of English difficulties in Ireland by taking the Roman Catholic priesthood into the pay of the State. But the manufacturers, the tradesmen, and the professional men of the country seemed, at least, to be faithful to the principles and traditions of the Reformation; dnd the great masses of the working people had an intense abhorrence of Rome. What Dr. Newman has called the "Protestant prejudice" was, no doubt, to a very large extent both ignorant and unjust, but its intensity and depth can hardly be questioned. Christianity Church & Church Leadership Ecclesiology Ministry & Evangelism Theology Pope
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