United States or Lesotho ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Has America then nothing to do with Romanism? But another gentleman exclaims, "What if Romanism be on the increase in the United States! Is not their religion as dear to them, as ours is to us?" To this the Rev. M. J. Gonsalves would reply as follows. "The American people have been deceived, in believing THAT POPERY WAS A RELIGION, not a very good one to be sure, but some kind of one.
Atheism only preaches a negation, but Romanism goes further; it preaches a disfigured, distorted Christ it preaches Anti-Christ I assure you, I swear it! This is my own personal conviction, and it has long distressed me. The Roman Catholic believes that the Church on earth cannot stand without universal temporal Power.
Such views, too, are necessary for our position. Yet I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be ascribed, in no small measure, to an impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect, and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism."
The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's dress, Christianity before the Reformation.
The next play-writer whom we are bound to notice is James Shirley, one of the many converts to Romanism which those days saw. He appears, up to the breaking out of the Civil War, to have been the Queen's favourite poet; and, according to Laugbaine, he was 'one of such incomparable parts that he was the chief of the second-rate poets, and by some has been thought even equal to Fletcher himself.
Besides the works above mentioned he wrote, among others, The Arians of the Fourth Century , Twelve Lectures , Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics , Idea of a University, Romanism and Popular Protestantism, Disquisition on the Canon of Scripture, and his poem, The Dream of Gerontius.
In brief compass, I hope I have made it quite clear what the Religious Difficulty in Ireland under Home Rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. The Religious Difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism. Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal.
She forgets, or does not know, that Protestantism is a quieter creed than Romanism; as it does not clothe its priesthood in scarlet, so neither does it set up its good women for saints, canonise their names, and proclaim their good works. In the records of man, their almsgiving will not perhaps be found registered, but Heaven has its account as well as earth.
So far from Romanism now producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation.
Many thought that Romanism continued to gain ground in England, and some cried out that still stricter laws were needed to suppress the Papists. It is doubtful, however, whether advances in some quarters were not more than balanced by losses elsewhere.
Word Of The Day