Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Mr Warren then quotes, as illustrative of the Pope's assumed supremacy
in _temporals_ over the Papist everywhere, a conversation detailed
in evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons.--'I said
to him, (a respectable Roman Catholic,) suppose the Pope and his
Council announced that the King of England was a person who should
be deposed--would you feel in conscience bound, as a Roman Catholic,
to obey?' He answered, 'Certainly not, because it would be contrary
to Scripture.' I asked whether _he_ or his church was to judge of
Scripture? He replied, 'His church.' I then asked, 'If the decree was
so worded, that the Pope and Council affirmed it to be _not_ contrary,
but according to Scripture, that a heretical monarch should be deposed,
how would you act?' He admitted, 'that he should feel himself _bound by
the decree_, because it was _for the Pope to judge of Scripture_, and
that, as a Roman Catholic, he should _obey him_.'
In this conversation we have a perfect specimen of Popish casuistry.
The man is suffered to believe that he has a _conscience_, and that he
is ever obedient to _Scripture_. But Popery still holds him fast, and
if regicide should suit its purposes, he can _give the blow_ with a
safe conscience. What must be the religion when such is the morality?
And this view leads us to the true question on which the whole
subject turns. In the eyes of the Tractarians, the controversy is
simply between an _old_ church and a _new_. In the apologies of the
apostates, it is simply between Papal infallibility and private
judgment. Thus, the whole is diluted into a mere metaphysical inquiry,
while both suppress the entire practical _reality_ of this tremendous
superstition. In those tranquil subtleties and meek submissions they
both labour to conceal the _fact_, that if they are to be Papists, they
_must_ be _worshippers_ of the Virgin Mary; they must be worshippers
of imaginary saints; they must be worshippers of stocks and stones,
as the images of those imaginary saints; and they must be prepared to
do the bidding of the Papacy, even though that should amount to the
dissolution of society; for to this they _must_ come. This is _their_
yoke. To this every man who apostatises is bound for life: he must drag
the whole length of the chain.
Strong curiosity is now excited by the approach of Parliament; and
the inquiry into the measures contemplated by the Cabinet is intense.
In the midst of the numberless conjectures hazarded at the moment, a
letter from the Bishop of Durham to a body of his clergy has appeared;
which, when we remember that the memorable letter of the Premier was
addressed to the Bishop, and that a correspondence on the subject
may have been continued, seems to throw a light on the Ministerial
intentions, and probably has been written for the _express purpose_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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