Excerpt from The Vatican Decrees: In Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance; A Political Expostulation
I. The Occasion and Scope of this Tract.
In the prosecution of a purpose not polemical, but pacific, I have been led to employ words which belong, more or less, to the region of religious controversy; and which, though they were themselves few, seem to require, from the various feelings they have aroused, that I should carefully define, elucidate, and defend them. The task is not of a kind agreeable to me; but I proceed to perform it.
Among the causes which have tended to disturb and perplex the public mind in the consideration of our own religious difficulties, one has been a certain alarm at the aggressive activity and imagined growth of the Roman Church in this country. All are aware of our susceptibility on this side; and it was not, I think, improper for one who desires to remove every thing that can interfere with a calm and judicial temper, and who believes the alarm to be groundless, to state, pointedly though briefly, some reasons for that belief.
Accordingly I did not scruple to use the following language in a paper inserted in the number of the Contemporary Review for the month of October [1874]. I was speaking of 'the question whether a handful of the clergy are or are not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary effort to Romanize the Church and people of England?
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