An apology for atheism : $b addressed to religious investigators of every denomination by one of its apostlesSouthwell, Charles
Religion
An apology for atheism : $b addressed to religious investigators of every denomination by one of its apostles
Southwell, Charles
Atheism
Count De Montalambert, in his recently published 'Letter to the Rev. Mr.
Neale on the Architectural, Artistical, and Archaeological Movements of
the Puseyites,' enters his 'protest' against the most unwarranted and
unjustifiable assumption of the name of Catholic by people and things
belonging to the actual Church of England. 'It is easy,' he observes,
'to take up a name, but it is not so easy to get it recognised by the
world and by competent authority. Any man, for example, may come out to
Madeira and call himself a Montmorency, or a Howard, and even enjoy the
honour and consideration belonging to such a name till the real
Montmorencys or Howards hear something about it, and denounce him, and
then such a man would be justly scouted from society, and fall down much
lower than the lowness from which he attempted to rise. The attempt to
steal away from us and appropriate to the use of a fraction of the
Church of England that glorious title of Catholic is proved to be an
usurpation by every monument of the past and present; by the coronation
oath of your sovereigns--by all the laws which have established your
Church--even by the recent answer of your University of Oxford to the
lay address against Dr. Pusey, &c., where the Church of England is
justly styled the Reformed Protestant Church. The name itself is spurned
at with indignation by the greater half, at least, of the inhabitants of
the United Kingdom. The judgment of the whole indifferent world--the
common sense of humanity--agrees with the judgment of the Church of
Rome, and with the sense of her 150,000,000 of children, to dispossess
you (Puseyites) of this name. The Church of England, who has denied her
mother, is rightly without a sister. She has chosen to break the bonds
of unity and obedience; let her therefore stand before the judgment-seat
of God and of man. Again, supposing the spirit of the Camden Society
ultimately to prevail over its Anglican adversaries; supposing you do
one day get every old thing back again; copes, letters, roodlofts,
candlesticks, and the abbey lands into the bargain, what will it all be
but an empty pageant, like the Tournament of Eglington Castle, separated
from the reality of Catholic truth and unity, by the abyss of three
hundred years of schism? The question then is, have you, the Church of
England, got the picture for your frame? have you got the truth, the one
truth; the same truth as the men of the middle ages? The Camden Society
says yes; but the whole Christian world, both Protestant and Catholic,
says no; and the Catholic world adds that there is no truth but in
unity, and this unity you most certainly have not. Once more; every
Catholic will repeat to you the words of Manzoni, as quoted by M. Faber:
'The greatest deviations are none if the main point be recognised; the
smallest are damnable heresies, if it be denied. That main point is the
infallibility of the Church, or rather of the Pope.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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