Roman Catholicism seems part and parcel of human nature. Luther was not
more a product of his age than Leo X. That one man should be a Papist
seems as natural as that another man should be a Protestant. Our sects
and schisms are not a very edifying sight. The greater number of them
are eternally wrangling, and uttering at the best but discordant sounds.
Few of them make any provision for the sensuous, for the love of decency
and order and solemn ceremonial, which is characteristic of some minds.
Many of them are actually contemptible when you come into close collision
with them, and examine their working, and watch their effect. The
harder, the more literal, the more matter-of-fact they are, the greater
is the chance that some subjected to their discipline should rebel
against it and become converts to the ancient faith. Mr. Lucas was a
Quaker till he became the editor of the _Tablet_. It is very probable
that Robert Owen may yet die in communion with Rome. The Roman Catholic
Church offers unity--rest for the tempest-tossed--and to the young and
the ardent and the impassioned an attractive worship and an imposing
form.
By the side of it--the Protestant substitute for it--the Evangelical
Alliance seems a poor thing indeed. Hence it is that the cry of Roman
Catholic ascendancy has always been raised ever since the Church of
England appropriated its wealth and seated itself in its place. It
always has been in danger from the Church of Rome, and it always will.
Human nature is always the same. What has grown out of it at one time
will grow out of it another. Heresy, as Sir Thomas Browne well put it,
is like the river Arethusa, which in one place is lost sight of, but only
to reappear further on. Each age has its own development. Each age but
repeats the past, as the son in his turn reproduces the blunders and the
youthful follies of his sire.