MR GLADSTONE ON THE CHURCH OF ROME.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 311, 12 February 1875, Page 3

MR GLADSTONE ON THE CHURCH OF ROME.

Mie fallowing- extract ,of Mr. Gladstone's position in reference, to the Church of Rome .is of. interest:—

. In 'he.Ootnhe.r;-number of the- l\\>ntemporary Review' Mr -Gladstone hiid an article on I? . Ritualism,".. which .ext-ited very general ■ attention, and has led i" a great deal of comment.: On« passage in it has been the -subject of special and unfriendly criticism It was that which raised the question; whether a handful of the English clergy - are or are not engaged in an utterly hopeless and missionary effort to Komanise the Church and people of England," and which: proceeded to state the ex Premier's opinion that— At.no_time since the bloody reign of M ary has such a scheme been less possible. But if it had been possible in the • seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it still has become impossible in the nineteenth, when Rome had substituted for the boast of Semper eadem a policy of violence and" change in ; when she has refurbished and .paraded anew every rusty tool she would fondly be thought tohave disused ; when no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another ; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history."

• Mr. Gladstone has found it. necessary i to- explain his meaning in writing the foregoing,; and has dene so in a pamphlet of 72 pages, ' which is published by Mr. Murray, of Albemarle -Street. The right hon gentleman precedes his . explanation by stating that his words were uttered in the prosecution of a purpose not polemical but pacific, and by one who believes that the alarm in the public mind at- the ag r gressive activity and imagined growth of the Roman Church in this country is groundless. Had he been addressing the 'Contemporary Review' article, as he does the present pamphlet in considerable measure, to his Roman Catholic fellow countrymen, he should have striven to avoid the seeming roughness of some of his expressions, from • tbe : s.ubstance of which, however he has no desire or intention to recede. His assertions, he holds, are not aggressive but defensive.

" It is neither the abettors of the Papal chair, nor anyone, who, however far from being an abettor of the Papal chair, actually writes from a Papal point of view, that has a right to remonstrate with the world at large, but .it is the world at large, on the contrary, that has the fullest right to remonstrate, first with his Holiness ; secondly, with those who share his proceedings ; thirdly, even with such as passively . allow- and accept them." •

As one of the great world at large; therefore, he purposes to expostulate in his turn, and will strive to show to Roman Catholics that the people of this country are entitled on purely civil grounds to expect from the authorities of the Church of Rome some, or manifestation' of opinion in reply ttf. that ecclesiastical party in their midst who have laid down, in their name, principles adverse to the purity and integrity of civil allegiance. He has no intention of insulting anyone; but if he is told tha f he who animadverts upon these matters assails thereby or in suits Roman Catholics at large, who do not choose their ecclesiastical rulerß and are not recognised as having any voice in the Government of their Church, he must decline to bo. bound by or., accept a proposition which seems so little in accordance with reason. Before all things, he desires to eschew not only religious bigotry hut likewise religious .controversy. With theology, except in its civil bearing, it has nothing whatever to do ; hut it is the peculiarity of Roman . theology that by thrusting itself into th.e temporal .domain jt naturally, and .even-necessarily 'coriies'to be a frequent theme of political discussion. . .