Tributes of Protestant writers to the truth and beauty of Catholicity

Front matter

PR 10 ft&S

TRIBUTES

PROTESTANT WRITERS

Preface

"How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel ! " Thus spoke the wicked Balaam, when, from the mountain of Phogor, he looked upon the encampment of the chosen people of God. He had been invited to come and pronounce a curse upon the Israelites, but God constrained kim to change the curse into a blessing.

It has not unf requently happened that men, who went forth to labor against God, have been compelled to act as the unwilling and almost unconscious instruments of His holy designs. Thus we see that, Julian the Apostate, when he undertook the impious task of attempting to falsify the prophecies, by rooting up the foundations of the temple of Jerusalem, and " not leaving a stone upon a stone," but helped to fulfil the prophecies to the very letter. Thus, too, Volney, the French infidel, who went to Palestine, for the express purpose of manuf acturing evidence against the Christian religion, furnished, in the data, which

VI PREFACE.

he afterward gave in his works, abundant material for some of the most powerful and convincing arguments in favor of Christianity.

This idea is forced upon those, who have taken the pains to examine carefully the enormous number of books, of every size and description, which have been poured out upon the world with no other purpose than that of misrepresenting the Church of God, when they find some magnificent tributes to the truth and beauty of Catholicity in a vast mass of the most violent vituperation and shameless falsehood.

"For three centuries," says Count Joseph de Maistre, "history has been only one grand conspiracy against truth." The suggestio falsi and the suppressio veri have been the grand principles of most of the non-Catholic historians. Whitaker, a Protestant, says that he blushes to admit that forgery has been the characteristic of the Reformation ; and Nightingale candidly acknowledges that "In scarcely a single instance has the case concerning them (Catholics) been fairly stated, or the channels of history not been grossly, not to say wickedly, corrupted." It would seem that like Nabuchodonosor, a beast's heart had been given them, and that they had no idea of moral justice, or honor, or honesty.

PREFACE. Vll

But the machinations of mendacious writers were in vain, and only showed more strikingly the indef ectibility of the Church, and verified the predictions of the prophet Isaias that " No weapon formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that resisteth thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn."

While the sects that broke off from the Church, soon, like rotten branches, became subject to speedy disintegration, and fell to pieces, the Church stood, like a mighty, living, energizing oak of the forest, or rather it " stood like some majestic monument amid the desert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable hierarchy, and like the pyramid in the desert, only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it is surrounded."

"Its, light is ' light from heaven'; it will assist its children through the perils of their earthly pilgrimage ; and like the fiery pillar of the ' chosen ' Israel, it will cheer the desert of their bondage, and light them to the land of their liberation ! "

Contents

PAGE

The Early Jesuit Missionaries in North America, 1

The Church in America, 6

Index To Names Of Authors, Etc

Alison, Sir Archibald,

PAGE

Chateaubriand, 194

The Influence of Religion on the Tyrolese, . . 40

Baxley, H. Willis,

Missionary Contrast, 322

Bell, Henry Glassford,

Trial and Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, . . 123

Bell, John,

Profession of a Nun, 336

Holy Week in Rome, 95

Brougham, Henry, Lord,

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 262

Burke, Edmund,

The French Revolution in its Relation with the Pope, 188

Carlyle, Thomas,

Death of Marie Antoinette, 186

The Ancient Monk, 287

(xiii)

xiv IKDEX TO l^AMES OF AUTHOKS, ETC.

Carter, Eev. T. Thellusson,

PAGE

Vows, 273

Cobbett, William,

The Population, Wealth, Power, Freedom, and Plenty of England and Ireland before the Reformation, 345

Davy, Sir Humphry,

Religious Memorials, 257

De Quincey, Thomas,

Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, 180

The Present State of Protestantism, .... 226

Dix, Rev. Morgan,

Divorce, 340

Freeman, Edward A.,

Alfred the Great, 101

Froude, James Anthony,

Cardinal Newman, 150

Giles, Henry,

The Sacred Structures of the Middle Ages, . . 57

Grotius, Hugo,

Votumpro pace, 26

IKDEX TO NAMES OF AUTHOKS, ETC. XV

GUIZOT, F.,

PAGE

Penance, 246

Hill, O'Dell Travers,

Christianity the Saviour of Civilization, . . 92

Jameson, Mrs.,

Hospitals and Sisterhoods, 324

Studious Monks of the Middle Ages, . . 63

Kip, Eev. William Ingraham,

The Early Jesuit Missionaries in North America, . 1

Laing, Samuel,

The Catholic Clergy, 10

Subversion of Liberty in Northern Europe, . . 268

Law, William,

Celibacy, ... 283

Lecky, William Edward Hartpole,

The Church the Protector and Defender of the Poor

and Oppressed, 30

The Influence of the Church upon Slavery, . . 44

Lee, Eev. Frederick George,

Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, . . . .105

Le Geyt, Charles J.,

Symbolism of Eitual, 254

Xvi INDEX TO NAMES OF AUTHOES, ETC.

Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von,

PAGE

The Power and Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, . 21 Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, . . . 231

Invocation of the Saints, 251

Confession, 248

The Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic Church, 270 The Sacrifice of the Mass, ...... 228

Loben, Count Isidore von,

Beauties of Catholic Worship, 260

Longfellow, H. W.,

Jacqueline, 237

Macaulay, Lord,

Great Catholic Italian Republics, . . . .65 The Roman Catholic Church, 312

McCullagh, W. Torrens,

The Triumph of the Church at the Downfall of the Roman Empire, 35

Mackintosh, Sir James,

The Jesuits, 206

Maitland, Rev. S. R.,

Monasticism, 33

Mallock, William Hurrell,

Necessity of an Inf allihle Guide, . . . .221

Maury, Sarah Mytton,

The Church in America, 6