wholesale, retail, systematic, unscrupulous lying, for I can use no gentler terms, that the many rivulets are made to flow for the feeding the great Protestant Tradition,-the Tradition of the Court, the Tradition of the Law, the Tradition of the Legislature, the Tradition of the Establishment, the Tradition of Literature, the Tradition of Domestic Circles, the Tradition of the Populace. ON THE PRESENT POSITION OF CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND: ADDRESSED TO THE BROTHERS OF THE ORATORY. BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D. PRIEST OF THE CONGREGATION OF ST. PHILIP NERI. LECTURE IV. TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. London: BURNS & LAMBERT, 17, PORTMAN STREET, AND 63, PATERNOSTER ROW. LECTURE IV. TRUE TESTIMONY UNEQUAL TO THE PROTESTANT VIEW. I CAN fancy, my Brothers, that some of you may have been startled at a statement I made at the close of my Lecture of Last Week. I then said, that the more fully the imputations which were cast upon us were examined, the more unfounded they would turn out to be; so that the great Tradition on which we are persecuted is little short of one vast pretence or fiction. On this you may be led to ask me whether I mean to deny all and every thing which can be advanced to the disadvantage of the Catholic Church, and whether I recommend you to do the same? but this was not my meaning. Some things which are alleged against us are doubtless true, and we see no harm in them, though Protestants do; other things are true, yet, as we think, only go to form ingenious objections; others again are true, and refer to what is really sinful and detestable, as we allow as fully as Protestants can urge: but all these real facts, whatever their worth, taken all together, do M not go any way towards proving the Protestant Traditionary View of us; they are vague and unsatisfactory, and, to apply a common phrase, they beat about the bush. If you would have some direct downright proof that Catholicism is what Protestants make it to be, something which will come up to the mark, you must lie; else you will not get beyond feeble suspicions, which may be right, but may be wrong. Hence Protestants are obliged to cut their ninth commandment out of their Decalogue. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" must go, must disappear; their position requires the sacrifice. The substance, the force, the edge of their Tradition is slander. As soon as ever they disabuse their minds of what is false, and grasp only what is true, I do not say they at once become Catholics; I do not say they lose their dislike to our religion, or their suspicion of its working;—but I say this, either they become tolerant towards us, and cease to hate us personally, or, at least, supposing they cannot shake off old associations, and are prejudiced and hostile as before, still they find they cannot communicate their own feelings to others. To Protestantism False Witness is the principle of propagation. There are indeed able men who can make a striking case out of any thing or nothing, as great painters give a meaning and a unity to the commonest bush, and pond, and paling, and stile: genius can do without facts as well as create them; but few possess the gift. the gift. Taking things as they are, and judging of them by the long run, one may securely say, that the Anti-Catholic Tradition could not be kept alive, would die of exhaustion, without a continual supply of fable. I repeat, not every thing which is said to our dis |