Brown's 'Fasciculus Rerum,' &c., to say nothing of the Magdeburg Centuriators, or even Mosheim's or Gieseler's Histories.
The old Protestant and especially the Anglican anticatholic writers are solid, learned, and ponderous, compared with Janus. They have also the force of visible sincerity. Used against the Church from without, their arguments are consistent and weighty; used by professing Catholics within the unity of the Church, they are powerless in controversy, and heretical in their effects and consequences.
I speak thus plainly, Reverend and dear Brethren, because you are charged with the cure of souls; and in this country, where reading, speaking, writing has no rule or limit, those committed to your charge will be in daily temptation. They cannot close their eyes; and if they could, they cannot close their ears. What they may refuse to read they cannot fail to hear. It is the trial permitted for the purity and confirmation of their faith. By your vigilant care they will be what the Catholics of England, in the judgment often expressed to me in other countries, already are—and I would we were so in the degree in which others believe—that is, firm, fearless, intelligent in faith, and not ashamed to confess it before men. Nevertheless the trial is severe for many. And, as I have said before, the Council will be 'in ruinam et in resurrectionem multorum.' Some who think themselves to stand will fall; and some, of whom we perhaps have no hope, will rise to fill their place. Therefore we must be faithful and fearless for the truth.
