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unlike what is familiar to them, so unlike the Anglican Prayer-Book, so unlike some favourite author of their own, so different from what they would do or say themselves, requires so much explanation, is so strained and unnatural, so unreal and extravagant, so unquiet, nay, so disingenuous, so unfeeling, that they cannot even tolerate it. The Mass is so difficult to follow, and we say prayers so very quickly, and we sit when we should stand, and we talk so freely when we should be reserved, and we keep Sunday so differently from them, and we have such notions of our own about marriage and celibacy, and we approve of vows, and we class virtues and sins on so unreasonable a standard; these and a thousand such details are, in the case of numbers, decisive proofs that we deserve the hard names which are heaped on us by the world.

(III.)

Recollect too, that a great part of the actions of every day, when narrowly looked into, are neither good nor bad in themselves, but only in relation to the persons who do them, and the circumstances or motives under which they are done. There are actions, indeed, which no circumstances can alter; which, at all times and in all places, are duties or sins. Veracity, purity, are always virtues— blasphemy always a sin; but to speak against another, for instance, is not always detraction, and swearing is not always taking God's name in vain. What is right in one person, may be wrong in another; and hence the various opinions which are formed of public men, who, for the most part, cannot be truly judged, except with a knowledge of their principles, characters, and motives. Here is

another source of misrepresenting the Church and her servants; much of what they do admits both of a good interpretation and a bad; and when the world, as I have supposed, starts with the hypothesis that we are hypocrites or tyrants, that we are unscrupulous, crafty, and profane, it is easy to see how the very same actions which it would extol in its friends, it will unhesitatingly condemn in the instance of the objects of its hatred or suspicion. When men live in their own world, in their own habits and ways of thought, as I have been describing, they contract, not only a narrowness, but what may be called a one-sidedness of mind. They do not judge of us by the rules they apply to the conduct of themselves and each other; what they praise or allow in those they admire, is an offence to them in us. Day by day, then, as it passes, furnishes, as a matter of course, a series of charges against us, simply because it furnishes a succession of our sayings and doings. Whatever we do, whatever we do not do, is a demonstration against us. Do we argue? men are surprised at our insolence or effrontery. Are we silent? we are underhand and deep. Do we appeal to the law? it is in order to evade it. Do we obey the Church? it is a sign of our disloyalty. Do we state our pretensions? we blaspheme. Do we conceal them? we are liars and hypocrites. Do we display the pomp of our ceremonial, and the habits of our Religious? our presumption has become intolerable. Do we put them aside and dress as others? we are ashamed of being seen, and skulk about as conspirators. Did a Catholic priest cherish doubts of his faith, it would be an interesting and touching fact, suitable for public meetings. Does a Protestant minister, on the other hand, doubt of the Protestant opinions? he is but dishonestly eating the bread of the Establishment. Does a Protestant exclude Catholic books from his house? he is a good father and

master. Does a Catholic do the same with Protestant tracts? he is afraid of the light. Protestants may ridicule a portion of our Scriptures under the name of the Apocrypha: we may not denounce the mere Protestant translation of the Bible. Protestants are to glory in their obedience to their ecclesiastical head; we may not be faithful to ours. A Protestant layman may determine and propound all by himself the terms of salvation: we are bigots and despots if we do but proclaim what a thousand years have sanctioned. The Catholic is insidious, when the Protestant is prudent; the Protestant frank and honest, when the Catholic is rash or profane. Not a word that we say, not a deed that we do, but is viewed in the medium of that one idea, by the light of that one prejudice, which our enemies cherish concerning us; not a word or a deed but is grafted on the original assumption that we certainly come from below, and are the servants of Antichrist. ("Occasional Sermons," p. 148.)

A PROTESTANT VIEW OF CONVERSIONS.

ONE word here as to the growth of Catholicism, of conversions, and converts-the Prejudiced Man has his own view of it all. First, he denies that there are any conversions or converts at all. This is a bold game, and will not succeed in England, though I have been told that in Ireland it has been strenuously maintained. However, let him grant the fact, that converts there are, and he has a second ground to fall back upon; the converts are weak and foolish persons-notoriously so; all their friends think so; there is not a man of any strength of character or

force of intellect among them. They have either been dreaming over their folios, or have been caught with the tinsel embellishments of Popish worship. They are lacka-daisical women, or conceited young persons, or silly squires, or the very dregs of our large towns, who have nothing to lose, and no means of knowing one thing from another. Thirdly, in corroboration :-they went over, he says, on such exceedingly wrong motives; not any one of them but you may trace his conversion to something distinctly wrong; it was love of notoriety; it was restlessness; it was resentment; it was lightness of mind; it was self-will. There was trickery in his mode of taking the step, or inconsiderateness towards the feelings of others. They went too soon, or they ought to have gone sooner. They ought to have told every one their doubts as soon as ever they felt them, and before they knew whether or not they should overcome them or no: if they had clerical charges in the Protestant Church, they ought to have flung them up at once, even at the risk of afterwards finding they had made a commotion for nothing. Or, on the other hand, what, forsooth, must these men do when a doubt came on their mind, but at once abandon all their clerical duty and go to Rome, as if it were possible anywhere to be absolutely certain? In short, they did not become Catholics at the right moment; so that, however numerous they may be, no weight whatever attaches to their conversion. As for him, it does not affect him at all; he means to die just where he is; indeed, these conversions are a positive argument in favour of Protestantism; he thinks still worse of Popery, in consequence of these men going over, than he did before. His fourth remark is of this sort: they are sure to come back. He prophesies that by this time next year, not one of them will be a Catholic. His fifth is as bold as the first-they have come

back. This argument, however, of the Prejudiced Man, admits at times of being shown to great advantage, should it so happen that the subjects of his remarks have, for some reason or other, gone abroad; for then there is nothing to restrain his imagination. Hence, directly a new Catholic is safely lodged two or three thousand miles away, out comes the confident news that he has returned to Protestantism; when no friend has the means to refute it. When this argument fails, as fail it must, by the time a letter can be answered, our Prejudiced Man falls back on his sixth commonplace, which is to the effect that the converts are very unhappy. He knows this on the first authority; he has seen letters declaring or showing it. They are quite altered men, very much disappointed with Catholicism; restless, and desirous to come back except from false shame. Seventhly, they are altogether deteriorated in character; they have become harsh, or overbearing, or conceited, or vulgar. They speak with extreme bitterness against Protestantism; have cast off their late friends, or seem to forget that they ever were Protestants themselves. Eighthly, they have become infidels ;—alas! heedless of false witness, the Prejudiced Man spreads the news about, right and left, in a tone of great concern and distress; he considers it very awful. Lastly, when every resource has failed, and in spite of all that can be said, and surmised, and expressed, and hoped, about the persons in question, Catholics they have become and Catholics they remain, the Prejudiced Man has a last resource, he simply forgets that Protestants they ever were. They cease to have antecedents; they cease to have any character, any history to which they may appeal; they merge in the great fog, in which, to his eyes, everything Catholic is enveloped; they are dwellers in the land of romance and fable; and, if he dimly contemplates them

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