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Show (VHU-n for The Intermountain Catholic) 'ie separation of England from the rarest church at an earlier century 1 than am- ,;.a was a Fc.paraion jj-e complete than that of any of the other countries then lost to the faith. The comi,l,..te stamping out of Catholicity; !. 'a-blishmont of an essentially J'-ng.ishnd State Church; that strong fnse u loyally inherent in English- Ki'-'n. and their being an island people, ;, 1 combined to give support to tne tl5at ihe Catholic Church ! could t:,-v.T flourish in England. - j i-i'om a sermon delivered bv the late ciiunvui Newman before the First Pro- I Vu- , Synod of Westminster, we tion' or A" '"":!rnvi?r graphic dc-scrip-!'lafJ r ,ndjU(in of Catholicity in ..It1; an,i what seemed its final end: o'ie niT" c, nturiffs ago and tfce Cath- I ' S hatwcreal,0n of of nlL if J'Vhis land in Pride thousand ha4 the honors of ar a throrei d,nears UP" it; it was en-- in the wm?rad ountry was based erg zed , ' f faihful people; it n-. was ennohV.? nd lnflu. and it martin T y a ho of aints and i : j "And then, too. its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its univer-1 univer-1 sities, its wide relations all over Europe, Eu-rope, its high prerogatives in the temporal tem-poral state, its wealth, its dependencies, dependen-cies, its popular honors where was there in he whole of Christendom a more glorious hier-hy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with kings and nobles, with the people found in every village and in every town it seemed j destined, bo long as England stood. and to outlast it might be England's reatness. But it was the high decree of heaven that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, you know it well. I need not go j through it. The vivifying principles of truth, the shadow of Saint Peter, the grace of the Redeemer left it That old j Catholic Church in its day became a corpse, a marvelous and awful change; and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed lost; and there was a struggle for a time and then Its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples tem-ples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues siezed by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Cathol- icism was at len-gth simply remov eil. ts I grace' disowned, its power despjsea. us name, except as a matter of hitorj. at length almost unknown. It ih S time to do this thoroughly; much , time much thought, much labor, much ex j pense. but at bust it was dor Truth was spod an a away, and thcre;va a calm, ! a sort of Pef:ni:nU"e were born I the state of thmgs he n w f v the I into this weary 'Jlt'- country; nay, 1 Catholic churcn in ine Catholo C(jm no longer. I may ents of the old munity; but a fett, f;" ty and sorrow-religion, sorrow-religion, moving of what had fully about, me'. cgnot even been. The Kmal' interest as men a sect. n0t.enOt a body, however conceived of u f Uie great corn- small, representatn -a handful of munion abroaa . ht De counted like individuals who in de,uge and wno the pebW -happened to 1 retain a forsooth, meieij day anJ deed( was creed which, in cnurCh. Here a set the profession c lng. and going at of poor irishme: n co,ony of them ,odg. harvest time. quarter of the vast ed in miSThere,'Perhaps, an elderly metropolis. A ,kSnff in the streets, person sfen,itLrv, a.d strange, though Swe mbcarin and said to be of good t family and a "Roman Catholic." An old-fashioned house of a gloomy appearance, ap-pearance, closed in with high walls, with an iron gate, and the report attaching at-taching to it that "Roman Catholics live there;" but who they were or what they did or what was meant by calling them Roman Catholics, no one could tell; though it had an unpleasant sound and told of form and superstition. -And ! then, perhaps, as we went to and fro j looking with a boy's curious eves j through the great city, we might come I today upon some Moravian chapel or ! Quaker's meeting house: and tomorrow, ' on a chapel of the "Roman Catholics;" but nothing was to be gathered from it except that there were lights burning burn-ing there, and some boys n white ! swinging censers; and what it all meant could only be learned from books, from Protestant' histories: and I senmons; and they did not report well 1 of the "Roman Catholics." but, on the ( contrary, deposed that they had once j had power and had abused it. And fchen ; again, we might, on one occasion, hear it pointedly put by some literary man, as a result of his careful investigation, and as a recondite po nt of information informa-tion which few knew, that there was this difference between the Roman Catholics of England and the Roman Catholics of Ireland, that the latter had bishops, and the former were governed j by four officials, called vicars apostolic. Such was about the sort of knowledge possessed of Christianity by the heathen heath-en of olden time who persecuted its' adherents ad-herents from the face of the earth and then called them a "gens lucifuga" a people who shunned the light of flay. in corners and alleys and cellars and the housetops or in the recesses of the i j country; cut' off from-' the populous world around them, and dimly seen as if through a mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth. At ! length so feeble did they become, so I utterly contemptible that contempt gave birth to pity; and the more gen- : erous of their tyrants actually began to wish to bestow on them some favor, under the notion that their opinions were simply too absurd ever to spread again, and that they themselves were they but raised in civil importance, would soon unlearn and be ashamed of them. And thus, out of mere kindness to us, they began to vilify our doctrine to the Protectant world, that so our very idiocy or our secret unbelief might be our plea for mercy. A great change, an awful contract between the time-honored church of St. Augustine and St. Thomas and the poor remnants of their children in the beginning of the, nineteenth century! It was a miracle, I might say, to have pulled down that lordly power, but there was a greater and a truer one in. store. No one could have prophesied proph-esied its fall, but still less would anyone any-one have dared to prophesy its rise again. Has the whole course of history his-tory a like to ahow? Cardinal Newman spoke these words in 1852. What would he have said had he spoken them fifty years later? Or in 1900, which will witness the rearing of a noble monument to religion, the great Catholic Cathedral at Westminster? Westmin-ster? He callled the revival which was in 1852 in process the "Second Spring." It has since then passed through the successive stages, and is ripening into the fullness and glory of perfect bloom. Truly the whole course of history has not the like to showv The revivifying of Catholicism in England is the more striking in this, that it can be explained explain-ed by no external causes. It is not as if a whole nation were led back by I political consiuerauons, or oy me con-1 con-1 version of its chief, or by the influence ! of a universal revival going on in the I world around it; it has all come to pass silently, and without visible powers; it has been the wonderful and irresistible irresist-ible workings of the silent spirit of Truth. It is a sublime reminder of the power of Him who said to the Jews: "Destroy this- temple, and in three days I will rebuild it." |