Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The Pope and his cardinals cannot there any longer keep the Scriptures
from the people, and they are sensible of the bondage in which they
have been held. Perhaps this is one cause of the insolent endeavour to
establish their hierarchy. The priesthood and the Roman Catholic press,
with a double object--the keeping up their religion and rebellion--yet
uniting in one purpose, see that any movement is more safe to them than
peace, which is weakening their hold, and confirming the strength and
power over the people's minds of the religion of the Reformation.
Under these circumstances, in that country particularly, it is most
unadvisable to allow any new position to the Papal power. Let it
have no quasi-State authority, which our Government of late years
has laboured to give it. Allow fully religious liberty, but mark
distinctly where religious liberty terminates, and falls into a civil
incompatibility. Allow not an inch of ground to the anomalous mixture,
a divided allegiance. Exact strictly that allegiance, whole and
undivided, without which civil liberty is endangered. If there be any
doctrine in a religion subversive of that, those who hold it ought to
be content with the liberty of holding it, but they must be content
also with restrictions which civil liberty demands. Popery can only
gain strength two ways--by positive persecution, and by indifference
as to its movements. By the latter it is gaining strength at this
day in France. The Church has been shaken off by the State; the mass
of religionists, therefore, are become thoroughly ultra-montane, and
acknowledge no authority but that of Rome. Persecution, we trust, will
never be the law of England, until, if this shall ever be, Romanism
prevails; and, to prevent so dire a calamity, restriction should be our
law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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