Protestants

“ This is the principal reason why the Protestants who remain attached to their Church do not increase so fast as the Catholics. But in common minds, daily scenes, the example of the majority, the power of imitation, decide their habits, religious as well as civil. ”

“ But what news,' said they, 'we pray you have you of the Protestants?' 'None other,' quoth we, 'but that we hear they have great hopes in your aid, and that they begin to gather men.' 'Will you go walk with us,' said they, 'and we will tell you more. The Protestants say they shall have, ere it be long, fifty thousand men in the field.' 'God send them well to do,' said we. ”

“ And let me tell you that you Protestants, in fighting against the dogmas of the Catholic Church, commit two very serious faults: First, you do not provide yourselves with philosophy enough to cope with her. ”

“ We, then, follow antiquity, and they take up novelty. And so it follows that while we have Protestants against us, we have the earlier Christians for us, whilst Protestants are opposed not only to the present race of Catholics, but to those whose children these are, and whose doctrines they have preserved. ”

“ This question divides Protestants into rationalists and pietists. The Church solves it in practice, by admitting the truths and the principles in the gross, and by dispensing them in detail as men can bear them. ”

“ Protestants, then, have many more opponents than we; to which we may add, thirdly, that we assert and maintain a doctrine which for several ages had no opponents worth mentioning, and which received a general belief and assent. Protestants, on the contrary, no sooner brought their doctrine to light than they roused the whole Catholic Church against them ”

“ But whatever they are, and however askance Protestants regard them, they have in our country,—this land of unbounded religious toleration,—the same right to their religion and their ecclesiastical government that any other sects have; and if Protestants would nullify their influence so far as disliked, they must outshine them in virtues, in a religious life, in zeal, and in devotion to the spiritual interests of the people. ”

“ Nothing else can take its place. The day is too late for Protestantism, which has developed into wider forms, and in the matter of satisfied and complete religious conviction Protestants are hardly better off than Catholics. ”

“ And how can they have faith or believe in God who commune with those who resolve all faith, all belief, all truth, indeed, into a mere opinion, or an inward sentiment, varying with each individual? If Catholicity in Christian, if reason is authoritative in its own province, nothing is more certain than that Protestantism is in no sense Christian, and that persons living and dying Protestants cannot be saved. ”

“ As Protestants are not all sick souls, of course reliance on what Luther exults in calling the dung of one's merits, the filthy puddle of one's own righteousness, has come to the front again in their religion ”

“ There is no denying the fact. The variations of Protestantism, even during the lives of the reformers, the multiplication of Protestant sects, all appealing alike to the sacred text, and the experience of three hundred and more years, render it indubitable. Hard pressed by their Catholic opponents, Protestants were driven to the sad alternative of either condemning their separation from the Church and returning to her communion, or of giving up dogmatic religion as unessential and falling back on interior feeling or sentiment. ”

“ We have to preach on the one hand to a people nominally Protestants, but who have been, from time immemorial, in a church where organized dissent has been unknown. The people regard any innovation as an attempt to drag them from the banner of their martyred ancestry. ”

“ Such, in effect, was, next to the essential motive of religious faith, one of the principal objects of the members of the Bible Society under the Restoration; namely, that of offering to the Protestants [493] scattered over the face of the kingdom, without any common organization, a central rallying-point around which they might assemble for reciprocal assistance, an advantage of vital importance when considered with reference to the intrigues and encroachments of the clerical party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor is our author more hopeful that the reformed churches, the Protestants, would be any more successful than the Greek and Roman churches have been. So far Protestantism has but increased division, and multiplied strife without changing materially the moral and spiritual condition of the world. ”

“ Oftentimes the service is gone through with, and nothing in it but an out-and-out performance; no life, no spirit, no power. Protestants often speak disparagingly of the ritualistic services gone through with by the Roman Catholic church, but if you come right down to it you will find about as much spirit and power in the one as the other. The result is that scores and hundreds of men, and women, and children are being gathered into the Protestant church who have not an ounce of Christian experience. ”

“ Protestants, in general, are better instructed in the principles of their religion than Catholics; the reason is obvious; the doctrine of the former requires discussion, of the latter a blind submission; the Catholic must content himself with the decisions of others, the Protestant must learn to decide for himself ”

“ Nor are Protestants wanting who have used with the most untiring zeal all the liberty acquired in our days by Protestantism; they have founded all those associations and originated all those undertakings which have manifested the vital energy and extended the action of the Protestant Church ”

“ If, on the clearness of the express sense of these Scriptures, I cannot infallibly ground my faith, against many other rational men contradicting; on what plainness of the sense of any other Scripture is it, that Protestants can ground theirs against a contrary sense given by the learned; by several Councils; by the whole Church of some ages, as they do; not promising to the Councils, even to the four first, an absolute, but conditional assent, viz. only so far, as their Decrees agree with these clear Scriptures? ”

“ Witness the divisions which exist among the Protestants, in consequence of this liberty which they take of explaining the Scripture, every one as appears best to him. One believes a certain thing, another denies it, and a third believes something different from both. ”

“ I can remember an old geography book from which I learned the lesson that all Protestant countries were prosperous and that all Popish ones were poor, shewing that Protestantism is true Christianity, since Protestants have naturally inherited all the blessings pronounced on the very rich in the New Testament. ”

“ As to Protestants, the difficult point is to make them admit a visible authority taught by God himself, and having the right and mission to explain the Scriptures and to make a practical application of them to our lives. ”

“ They claim to be the true Protestants,TRUE PROTESTANTS. i. e., those who protest against the doctrines of a ceased fellowship between the Creator and the creature made in his image; they gratify their self-esteem by sneering at those who confine themselves to the old and obsolete revelation, and by pitying the blindness and ignorance that can not or will not open its eyes to the new light. ”

“ I have conversed with men who have come out as honestly as men could in their positions. Members of the Catholic Church have come out as honestly as I have stated, and said that they must give up, but the Protestants are very tenacious, and will stick to their creed, often in spite of reason. ”

“ We have undertaken the task, and we hope that this book, defective as it may be, will at least give some just idea of the affairs and the men of the Reformed communion of France.
It is sad to think how little the history of the Protestants is known in their own country, and even, it must be confessed, among the members of their own churches. Yet it offers chosen intellects and noble spirits for contemplation, great examples for imitation, and precious lessons to be gathered.
Protestantism has suffered from national opinion the fate of minorities, and of vanquished minorities. ”

“ The Catholics accuse the Protestants, of not only giving birth to rationalism, in their desire to extend liberality of mind, but of fostering a material life in their ambition to be outwardly prosperous. ”

“ When the English clergy know that in France young men [57] famous for their excesses and raised to the prelature by the intrigues of women, make love publicly, amuse themselves by composing love songs, give every day elaborate and elegant suppers and go straight from them to ask the illumination of the Holy Spirit and boldly call themselves successors of the Apostles, they thank God that they are Protestants. ”

“ And among Protestants of what denomination soever, they who lay the greatest stress on useless speculations, rites, modes and ceremonies, are for the most part for ill-natured persons, ready to come into any persecuting measures for their sake. ”

“ Protestants note only the abuses which marked the age; they look upon the old system with a jaundiced eye, and they misrepresent, undoubtedly, often without knowing it, the state of the ancient Church. ”

“ Protestants who have attended their worship, have observed greater appearances of fervor, and greater moving of the passions, than are usual in the religious assembles of other denominations of Christians. ”

“ Let the liberal Protestants offer us a spectacle of Christian virtue of a holier, intenser, and more intimate kind than before; let us see it active in their persons and in their influence, and they will have furnished the proof demanded by the Master; the tree will be judged by its fruits. ”

“ The decided Protestants from choice were few and their descendants are comparatively few. The mass of English Protestants are the descendants of cowards who yielded up their faith and their convictions to save property, liberty, or life. ”

“ They prefer and choose, Secondly, true devotion rather than ignorant superstition.—Thirdly, they prefer what spiritually, comforts the soul, rather than unmeaning and untelligible ceremony.—Fourthly, they prefer a rational service, rather than one that is a mere mockery; more fit to amuse children than to edify the church.—Fifthly, they prefer what affects the understanding and the heart rather than a service which affects only the eye:—and lastly, the Protestants prefer and choose to follow the wisdom and Spirit of God, rather than the blindness and folly of men ”

“ A small number have become Protestants, but many have drifted into indifference and agnosticism or positive atheism. The Catholics have five large churches and parochial schools connected with them, while the Protestants have four mission churches and their branches. ”

“ The Jesuit turned away, saying, sarcastically, The protestants are impenetrable rocks. You are mistaken, said Kutnaur, it is Christ that is the rock, and we are firmly fixed upon him. ”

“ Now you have Arm'd me Thus far, pray'e help me on, one step farther; for I was hard put to't not long Since, about the businesse of the Protestant Religion. What is That, I pray'e, that ye call the Protestant Religion?
Of Dissenting Protestants.
Citt. You are to understand, that by the Protestant Religion is meant the Religion of the Dissenters in England, from the Church of England; As the First Protestants in Germany 1529. ”

“ The most deadly enemies of the Roman Catholics are they who love best their religion as Protestants. When we look to individuals we always find it so, though it hardly suits us to admit as much when we discuss these subjects broadly. ”

“ It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries, which are adopted by the general consent of catholics and protestants. ”

“ In treating of the internal condition of Protestantism, we shall make mention, as we have done when speaking of the preceding periods, less of opinions considered in themselves, than of the men who were their most distinguished representatives. ”

“ By this miraculous cure of the child, God made manifest the truths of our religion; and by the sudden death of the child, which followed upon the heretical baptism, God showed in what abomination he holds heresy.
§ 9. THOSE WHO SINCERELY SEEK THE TRUE RELIGION. If no one, then, can be saved except in the Roman Catholic Church, all those who are out of it are bound to become members of the Church. This is what commonsense tells every non-Catholic. In worldly affairs, Protestants never presume to act without good advice. ”

“ If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have [453] not, in their turns, been persecutors and complainers of persecution. The primitive christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practised it on one another. The first protestants of the church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practised it against the puritans: ”

“ If popery judges men in meats, protestantism does the same in drinks and in the sabbath; they both judge men in holy-days and movable feasts; and though protestantism repudiates the worshipping of angels, it proclaims in its fasts, preparations, concerts etc., a voluntary humility, and celebration of "saints and martyrs," renowned in legendary tales for "the pride that apes humility." Let the reader search the Scriptures from beginning to end, and he will nowhere find such systems of faith and worship as those comprehended in the papal and protestant systems. ”