We cannot doubt, for instance, that the feeling with which Mr. Whalley or Mr. Newdegate regards Roman Catholicism must cause extreme reluctance to admit the services which Roman Catholicism rendered to European civilization in the past; and must make almost impossible a patient hearing of any one who thinks that it renders some services now. Whether great benefit did not arise in early times from the tendency toward unification produced within each congeries of small societies by a common creed authoritatively imposed?—whether papal power, supposed to be divinely deputed, and therefore tending to subordinate the political authorities during turbulent feudal ages, did not serve to curb warfare and further civilization?—whether the strong tendency shown by early Christianity to lapse into separate local paganisms, was not beneficially checked by an ecclesiastical system having a single head supposed to be infallible?—whether morals were not improved, manners softened, slavery ameliorated, and the condition of women raised, by the influence of the Church, notwithstanding all its superstitions and bigotries?—are questions to which Dr. Cumming, or other vehement opponent of popery, could not bring a mind open to conviction. Similarly, it is beyond the power of the Roman Catholic to see the meaning of Protestantism, and recognize its value. To the Ultramontane, holding that the temporal welfare no less than the eternal salvation of men depends on submission to the Church, it is incredible that Church-authority has but a transitory value, and that the denials of authority which have come along with accumulation of knowledge and change of sentiment, mark steps from a lower social régime to a higher. Naturally, to the sincere Papist, schism is a crime, and books that throw doubt on the established beliefs are accursed. Nor need we wonder when from such a one there comes a saying like that of the Mayor of Bordeaux, so much applauded by the Comte de Chambord, that "the Devil was the first Protestant;" or when, along with this, there goes a vilification of Protestants too repulsive to be repeated. Clearly, with such a theological bias, fostering such ideas respecting Protestant morality, there must be extremely false estimates of Protestant institutions, and of all the institutions going along with them.
In less striking ways, but still in ways sufficiently marked, the special theological bias warps the judgments of Conformists and Nonconformists among ourselves. A fair estimate of the advantages which our State-Church has yielded is not to be expected from the zealous dissenter: he sees only the disadvantages. Whether voluntaryism could have done centuries ago all that it can do now?—whether a State-supported Protestantism was not once the best thing practicable?—are questions which he is unlikely to discuss without prejudice. Contrariwise, the churchman is reluctant to believe that the union of Church and State is beneficial only during a certain phase of progress. He knows that within the Establishment divisions are daily increasing,
