THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 31, 1 August 1901, Page 16

THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET.

' To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Poace.' LBO VTTT. to the N.Z. TABLET.

Gregory in the seventh century, Alexander 11 , Innocent 11., Alexander ll[., Gregory IX. in the thirteenth century, Clement V m Clement VI., Nicholas 11., and Clement XIII. It was forbidden to force their conscience or to disturb their festivals. During the middle ages, says Rev. Dr. Starbuck, ' I also see Saracens quietly living in Italy, practising their worship unmolested, and received in Rome as in that Catholic centre in which they were sure of being treated with respect. I see also the great HildefiiiAM) striviug to bring about a peaceable understanding and mutual toleration between Islam and Christendom. His efforts failed, but mainly because Islam would not be reconciled. The fault was not his. After the great discovery [of America] I see the Dominicans, supported by the Inquisition and the Pope, contending to the utmost against the wickedness of forcing the Gospel upon the Indians against their will. At last ihe Holy See solemnly excommunicates all who shall undertake to coerce them in any wise.'

Lecky cannot be accused of any leaning in favor of the Catholic Church, and yet this is what he has to say, in the first volume of hia Rationalism in Europe, on the subject of persecution in the Reformation and post-Reformation days : 'Catholicism was an ancient Church. She had gained a great part of her influence by vast services to mankind. She rested avowedly on the principle of authority. She was defending herself against aggression and innovation. . . . She might point to the priceless blessings she had bestowed upon humanity, to the slavery she had destroyed, to the civilisation she had founded, to the many generations she had led with honor to the grave. She might show how completely her doctrines were interwoven with the whole social system, how fearful would be the convulsion if they were destroyed, and how absolutely incompatible they were with the acknowledgment of private judgment. These considerations would not make her blameless, but they would at least palliate her guilt.'

The rationalist historian then goes on to speak of the Reformed creed : ' But what shall we say of a Church that was but a thing of yesterday, a Church that had aa yet no services to show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind, a Church that was by profession the creature of private judgment, and was in reality generated by the intrigues of a corrupt court, which nevertheless suppressed by force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to their salvation ; and by all her organs and all her energies persecuted those who clung to the religion of their fathers ? What shall we say of a religion which comprised at most but a fourth part of the Christian world, and which the first explosion of private judgment had shivered into countless sects, which was nevertheless so pervaded by the spirit of dogmatism that each of these sects asserted its distinctive doctrines with the aame confidence, and persecuted with the same unhesitating violence, as a Church which was venerable with the homage of twelve centuries ? ... So strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it may, I believe, be truly said that there were more instances of partial toleration being advocated by Roman Catholics than by orthodox Protestants.'

With these words of the noted rationalist historian we gladly part with a theme which only the attacks of violent agitators could have compelled us to take up.