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ART. I.Methodist Quarterly Review, for July, 1844. New-York Lane & Tippent. Art. II. Literary Policy of the Church of Rome.

THE journal, the title of which we have placed at the head of this article, is the organ of the Episcopal Methodists of this country, and is conducted with considerable spirit and ability. If not remarkable for profound erudition and severe logic, it is at least quite commendable for its rhetoric; and if we miss in its pages the simplicity and unction of the earlier Methodists, we still find its papers characterized by a liveliness and freshness which contrast favorably with the more elaborate essays in religious periodicals of much higher pretensions. It is thoroughly Protestant, and holds the benighted Papists in due hor

ror.

Its number for July last contains an article against the Catholic Church, which, for its hearty hatred of Catholicism, and its vituperative character, if not for its strength and energy of expression, would have gladdened the heart of even Luther himself. Although the article is nothing but a string of false charges, or misrepresentations, from beginning to end, we have thought it would not be amiss to notice it, because its subject is one of great importance, on which the Church of Christ is perpetually traduced by its enemies and persecutors.

"It is proposed in this paper," says the Review, "to exhibit the proof that the Church of Rome has ever waged a deadly warfare upon the liberty of the press, and upon literature, and that her expurgatory and prohibitory policy is perpetuated to the present hour, not only against the truth of revelation, but equally against the truth in nature and in science,

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both learning and religion having been the doomed victims of her perennial despotism." - p. 348.

The analysis of this passage gives us four distinct charges against the Church of Rome, namely: 1. Hostility to the Liberty of the Press; 2. Hostility to Literature; 3. Hostility to Science; 4. Hostility to Revelation and Religion.

The first three of these charges, even if well founded, are urged with an ill grace by a Methodist. If we have been rightly informed, the Methodist press is itself under the strict surveillance of the bishops and elders, and the Methodist people have, we believe, great scruples about purchasing books, even of their own denomination, when not published by their own Book Society, which monopolizes the principal part of their publishing business. We even remember the time when the Methodist ministers were proverbial for their ignorance, and distinguished by their contempt for human science and learning. A better feeling is now, we are happy to admit, beginning to obtain among them, and the denomination has succeeded in establishing a few very respectable schools of its own; but we have not yet heard of a Methodist in this cot try of any remarkable literary attainments, and we are quite sure that no Methodist, clergyman or layman, has as yet made any valuable or permanent contribution either to literature or science. It betrays, then, a great want of modesty, on the part of a Methodist editor, to bring charges of hostility either to literature or science against any portion of the community, however true, in itself, such a charge might be. We are commanded to cast the splinter out of our own eye, before we undertake to pull the mote out of our brother's eye. But this by the way. We proceed to take up and consider, in their order, each of the four charges preferred.

I. LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

The Review charges the Church of Rome with having ever waged a deadly warfare upon the liberty of the press, and promises to exhibit the proofs which sustain it; but these proofs it seems to have forgotten. The editor has apparently presumed his readers prepared in advance to believe any thing which can be said against the Roman Church, and therefore ready to take the assertion itself for proof. He does not adduce a single fact to prove his assertion, and, more than all that, he cannot. We deny his assertion, and defy him to lay his finger on a single act of the Roman Catholic Church, which indicates the least hostility on her part to a free press. He

tells us, and he enters into a long and labored argument to prove, that the Church is now what she always was, and always was what she is now. For this we thank him. We not only concede, but we contend, that she is now what she always was, and always was what she now is, and always will be to the end of time. We hold the Church to be immutable, like Him whom she represents. Will it be pretended, that, prior to the sixteenth century, the Church, as the Church, ever waged war upon the liberty of the press? Prior to the invention of printing, there was no press, in the modern sense of the term; how could the Church, then, be said to be hostile to its freedom? Is the Methodist reviewer acquainted with the writings of the fathers and monks of the Middle Ages? Does he find in them any want of freedom of thought or of expression? Prior to the invention of printing, the office of the modern press was mainly supplied by the pulpit. Did ever press speak freer than the old Catholic pulpit, when the humble priest dared address the monarch on his throne as a man and a sinner, and the cowled monk feared not to reprove even the Pope himself? But the Church has not changed, and therefore, if it was not hostile to the freedom of the press then, it is not now.

Printing itself was invented before the Reformation, in good old Catholic times, and by a Catholic. Its glory belongs to Catholics, not to Protestants. And who were the first to welcome it, and to sustain the first printers? The dignitaries of the Catholic Church. The first printers in Italy, companions of Faust, were received and protected by the Pope. The earliest patrons of Caxton, the first printer in England, were Thomas Milling, Bishop of Hereford, and the Abbot of Westminster Abbey, and it was in Westminster Abbey that he established his first printing-office. It was by the aid of the Bishop of Holun, that Mathieson was enabled to introduce printing into Iceland, and whoever knows any thing of the subject knows, that the Church of Rome has always encouraged literature and the free multiplication of books.

But the Review adduces the instance of expurgatory indexes, &c., as proof of hostility on the part of the Church of Rome to the liberty of the press. The existence of such indexes we of course admit; but so far as they concern merely the Pope's own temporal dominions, they come not within the scope of our present argument. The temporal court of Rome is to be judged the same as any other court, and the Church is no more responsible for its acts than it is for the acts of the court of France, of Spain, or even of England. The expurgatory

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