Protestant Dissenters

“ And he was only one of eight thousand other Protestant Dissenters who died in prison during the merry, miserable reign of Charles II.! Of a truth, Dissent has something to forgive the Church; for [133] persecution in Protestant England was very much the same as in Catholic France, with, if possible, less justification. ”

“ That to the great and benignant principles of Religious Freedom, this Society, including many hundred congregations of Protestant Dissenters of different denominations, in England and Wales, continue firmly attached: That they must alway regard every interference with the rights of conscience as offensive and unjust—as detrimental to general happiness—and as calculated to produce those hypocrisies or martyrdoms which wisdom and goodness abhor: And that such interference exists in every age when perfect social equality, irrespective of religious opinions and modes of worship, is not enjoyed ”

“ Of this population, two out of ten are Protestants; and the half of the Protestant population are Dissenters, and as inimical to the Church as the Catholics themselves. In this state of things thumbscrews and whipping—admirable engines of policy as they must be considered to be—will not ultimately avail. ”

“ This large class of “ dissenters ” found themselves as little at home under a Protestant as under a Catholic regime, and have until recently been treated with scant sympathy by historians of the Church. Long before the Protestant revolt, simple, obscure people, under the influence of leaders whose names have been forgotten, lost confidence in the official clergy and their sacraments and formed secret organizations of which vague accounts are found in the reports of the 13th-century inquisitors, Rainerus Sacchoni, Bernard Gui, and the rest. ”

“ It would surely be a grievous violation of the intention of these founders, if those institutions, which were meant by them to be the nurseries of sound religion, and of that pure Protestant faith, which the first of these sovereigns established, and the second zealously maintained, were to fall into the hands of Roman Catholics, Socinians, or any other of the dissenting sects. ”

“ At length, the common oppression drove Protestant and Catholic dissenters into a formidable union for the restoration of their common rights, and engendered a hatred of the Established Church, its clergy, its creed, and its ordinances, which twenty years of qualified toleration have not been able to abate or scarcely to mitigate. ”

“ But whatever they are, and however much the Protestants dislike them, they have in our country,--this land of unbounded religious toleration,--the same right to their religion and their ecclesiastical government that Protestant sects have; and if Protestants would nullify their influence so far as it is bad, they must outshine them in virtues, in a religious life, in zeal, and in devotion to the spiritual interests of the people. ”

“ And then the whole truth is apparent: a Protestant has no religion,—for Protestantism is free-thinking, revolt, separation, dogmatism, theology, heresy. And the Protestant is under the ban of excommunication. This is the curse which rests over us and makes us dissatisfied, melancholy, restless. ”

“ But when the working of a system is shown in practices which introduce the priest into the place of the Saviour—aye, and which threaten the very foundations of morality—public opinion raises its indignant protest, and demands that the evil shall be cast forth from our Church. Let all forbearance be shown to the honest perplexities of thought; but let not a church, which is Protestant to the core, ally herself with the enemies of the Reformation, or cherish within her bosom practices which are Scripturally indefensible, and morally wrong. ”

“ They were encountered on all hands and of all kinds, religious and political—from the administration, from popular prejudices, from the distrust of the Government, from the hostility of the Roman Catholic clergy, from differences of opinion on theological points among Protestants themselves, from the amour propre of individuals, and the perplexed or timorous ideas of subalterns in authority. The activity of the Protestant societies created uneasiness in bishops and priests, who strove not merely to counteract their influence, but to interfere with their liberty of action. ”

“ Wherever Protestantism prevailed, intolerance became a principle of State, and was proclaimed in theory even where the Protestants were in a minority, and where the theory supplied a weapon against themselves. The Reformation made it a general law, not only against Catholics by way of self-defence or retaliation, but against all who dissented from the reformed doctrines, whom it treated, not as enemies, but as criminals,—against the Protestant sects, against Socinians, and against atheists. ”

“ The old days of the nineteenth century are gone, those days when honest men vociferously acclaimed as honourable and glorious "the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion." ”

“ But granting all this to an extent greater than can with any show of reason be imputed to the ruling power in the Church, what is there in this want of prudence or moderation more than can be urged, with far greater justice, against Protestant communities and institutions? What is there in it to make us hypocrites, if it has not that effect upon Protestants? We are called upon, not to profess anything, but to submit and be silent. ”

“ Would the men who, for the sake of a little larger circulation, do not hesitate to caricature their own Protestant co-religionists—would these men, we say, be reasonably expected to be very scrupulous in the vilification of those whose Catholic faith they detest? ”

“ If he be a Protestant, he will see that all the principles of Protestantism, religious and civil, are threatened; and if he be a Roman Catholic, not belonging to the ecclesiastic body, he will be likely to discover that his silence is construed by his Church authorities into acquiescence in politico-religious opinions which his conscience repudiates and condemns. ”

“ This much, my dear son, I have to say of this Protestant persecution,—that is, a persecution of religion itself.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words. People soon forget the meaning, but the impression and the passion remain. The word Protestant is the charm that looks up in the dungeon of servitude three millions of your people. ”

“ They bitterly lamented the durable and irremediable odium that detestable measure cast upon the true religion, whilst our neighbours, exulting to see us thus weaken and destroy ourselves, profited by our madness, and built designs upon the hatred we should draw upon ourselves from all the Protestant powers. ”

“ In reviewing the history of the various denominations of Christians in past ages, humanity is deeply wounded by the intolerant spirit which has been so often exhibited by the dominant party. Till of late, attempting to suppress by persecution, what were deemed erroneous opinions, was judged lawful, not by Catholics only, but by the Reformers, by Episcopalians, and almost all the different denominations of Dissenters. ”

“ Who can believe, that protestant Jesuits would ever have submitted to persecute protestants? Who can imagine unanimity of mind, heart, and action among men, who disagreed in the fundamental principle? ”

“ Has not the same process been repeated in nearly every church calling itself Protestant? As its founders, those who possessed the true spirit of reform, pass away, their descendants come forward and “new-model the cause.” While blindly clinging to the creed of their fathers and refusing to accept any truth in advance of what they saw, the children of the reformers depart widely from their example of humility, self-denial, and renunciation of the world. ”

“ But there is on foot a formidable conspiracy against her freedom, and it is beginning to be maintained pretty determinedly that the majority of the people, being Protestant, and the people being the state, have the right and the duty as the state to sustain Protestantism, and outlaw and suppress the church. ”

“ The huge lie that Protestantism is in matters of State as well as of church essentially revolutionary, while Catholicism is the bulwark of the State against revolution and democracy, was affirmed with such audacity that even Protestant statesmen believed it. ”

“ That Church insisted that the people were not to understand the Scriptures for themselves, but were bound, to receive, unquestioned, such interpretations as the bishop or priest should teach them. Whoever deny freedom of opinion, in regard to religion, to all men, clearly violate the spirit of the gospel, the recognized rights conferred by the Protestant religion, and the sanctions of our political institutions. ”

“ No question of the merits of the Reformation or of persecution is involved in an inquiry as to the source and [Pg 186] connection of the opinions on toleration held by the Protestant reformers. No man's sentiments on the rightfulness of religious persecution will be affected by the theories we have described, and they have no bearing whatever on doctrinal controversy. Those who—in agreement with the principle of the early Church, that men are free in matters of conscience—condemn all intolerance, will censure Catholics and Protestants alike. ”

“ Now, this life of prayer in poverty, chastity, and obedience is an offence to Protestants. They do not believe in perfect chastity, they hold religious obedience to be a slavery, and poverty, in their eyes, is ridiculous. Inasmuch as the monks tilled the earth, transcribed books, and taught school, they receive a partial recognition from the Protestant world; but inasmuch as they were bound by religious vows they excite disgust. We should say, then, that the distinctive trait of Catholic morality is ascetic, while the Protestant is utilitarian. ”

“ That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying ”

“ To grant better laws to a small minority, ought to have given little umbrage. But behind the Protestant community were the (Roman) Catholics, with a discontented clergy, secretly hostile, and hating the organic articles even more than the consistories. If anything were granted to the former, nothing could be refused to the latter; and expediency forbade the aggravation of the troubles of the State by those of the Church. ”

“ If they have vices—and what people have not?—let a share of the blame at least be laid at the doors of those who designedly and continually debarred them from all means of enlightenment and every incentive to virtue, instead of being attributed to the influence of the church.
And yet, in view of the gloomy history of these people—a chapter in the annals of England which the best of her Protestant statesmen are endeavoring to efface from the popular memory—the writer in the Independent appears to be surprised at what he calls Catholic prejudice against Protestant missions. ”

“ It has long been true in this country that no Protestant can freely expose the errors and superstitions of the papal church, especially from the pulpit, without incurring the charge of intolerance, bigotry, and uncharitableness. ”

“ What! knock at every door, besiege the offices of all the ministers, address the sovereign, threaten, solicit, pray, even offer money; and for what purpose? To oppress the conscience of more than a million of Protestants; to persecute them even in the sanctuary of domestic worship; to constrain them to have their children baptized by a priest under pain of bastardy; to compel married people to ask for the (Roman) Catholic benediction under pain of being denied any civil condition; to send soldiers, in a word, against the meetings, gaolers and hangmen against the pastors ”

“ The immense majority of Protestants will give up these doctrines, or consent to hold them simply as opinions with no objective authority, sooner than desert the Protestant movement or reject the denials which are the essence of Protestantism, if we may speak of the essence of a negation, which has no being in itself or elsewhere. A few of the laggards may be occasionally captured, but most of them will quicken their pace and close up with the main body. ”

“ They crawled at the feet of a hostile government, says the latter, fawned on their Protestant neighbors, and felt honored by being even noticed by persons of that creed, even though in every respect their inferiors. Such people had very little business in the civil courts to give, and what little they had they gave to those who loathed their creed and despised themselves. ”

“ We allow the Catholics to be brethren of the Dissenters; some people, indeed, (which we cannot allow) would have them to be our children, because we both dissent from the Church established, and both agree in abolishing this persecuting Sacramental Test; by which negative discouragement we are both rendered incapable of civil and military employments. However, we cannot but wonder at the bold familiarity of these schismatics, in calling the members of the National Church their brethren and fellow Protestants. ”

“ We have seen that the Protestant denials, in both their logical and historical developments, lead to the denial of all dogmatic religion, of all objective truth, and reduce the truths of reason and of revelation to mere personal opinions, and therefore involve the denial of those very doctrines which Protestants profess to hold in common with us. ”

“ The Catholic Church as an institution was her enemy, and the enemy of all Protestants. "If they could kill you, and not be found out by the law, they'd do it just as quick as wink, because the priest would bail them out of hell for a dollar and a quarter." ”