THE 
 
 CATHOLIC FREETHINKER 
 
 THE ONLY PUBLICATION IN WHICH CATHOLIC INTERESTS ARE 
 MAINTAINED FRANKLY ON THEIR NATURAL BASIS OF 
 CHRISTIAN RIGHT, INSTEAD OF THE USUALLY ADOPTED 
 ONE OF ATHEISTIC SUFFERANCE. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 flrf (£lji{islian ftriflj M)tpm 
 
 BY 
 
 KEY. F. H. LAING, D.D. 
 
 E. WASHBOUENE, 
 
 18 PATEENOSTEE EOW, LONDON. 
 
 1887. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/catholicfreethin02fain 
 
(*, x^5 
 
 i 
 
 CxJ 
 
 r 1 
 
 Preface 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 -*o«—— 
 
 PAGE 
 
 - vii 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY. — THE PRESENT SITUATION OF 
 
 TRUTH DESCRIBED. 
 
 Notwithstanding the need of a vindicating power for 
 Truth, there exists at present in Society no received 
 
 METHOD FOR MEETING ERROR ON FAIR TERMS, SO THAT THE 
 
 virtue of Logical Equity has no authorised represen¬ 
 tative IN THE WORLD. HENCE THE UNCHECKED DOMINION 
 of Error - - - - - - 1 
 
 1. The delusive power of which, whether in 
 Religion, or Philosophy, Ethical, Political, or 
 Physical, is ever one and the same — - - 3 
 
 i. consisting in that, which onr Lord Himself had to 
 
 encounter—the spirit of Negation - 3 
 
 ii. working unseen, through divers sorts of agents, 
 
 often disowning connection with each other ; so 
 as to make the occult ‘ solidarity ’ of Error to be 
 unperceived - - - - 4 
 
 iii. under the assumed titles of respectable virtues— 
 
 ‘ loyalty,’ ‘ science/ ‘ freedom of spirit/ ‘ love of 
 Scripture/ etc. - - - - - G 
 
 Which the friends of Truth are too apt to take upon trust 
 
 iv. In the names of these grand virtues it calls, with 
 
 an air of divine authority, upon all the friends 
 of Truth, to render to itself an account of their 
 beliefs - - - ^ 
 
1Y 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Which in general the friends of Truth obediently do 
 
 v. In its aggressive operation against the Truth, it 
 
 employs a petitio principii, by proposing all 
 questions surreptitiously, in the form of the 
 Devil's see-saw , or false antagonism, secretly 
 assumed between agreeing ideas - - - 14 
 
 Which the friends of Truth mostly let pass unchallenged 
 
 vi. The Devil’s see-saw, illustrated from Renan in his 
 
 employing the pretext of devout faith for banish¬ 
 ing belief in Christ, as well as in God and the 
 soul - - - - - - 21 
 
 vii. In support of the Truth-destroying Devil’s see¬ 
 
 saw, set between fellow-truths, Negation spreads 
 its dominion over the minds of men, by passing 
 current in society its perverting phraseology : in 
 which all the creditable titles of Truth are trans¬ 
 ferred to its opposite—Falsehood, and the odious 
 ones of falsehood are imputed to Truth - 25 
 
 Which usually the friends of Truth tacitly allow 
 
 2. In consequence of the despairing resignation of 
 
 the Truth-holders to the insolent claims of the 
 Spirit of Negation, Logical Equity has ceased to 
 have any publicly acknowledged authority in 
 DECIDING THE INTERESTS OF CONTROVERTED TRUTH. - 37 
 
 3. The Truth-defender is therefore now left 
 WITHOUT LOGICAL TRIBUNAL, LAW, OR TRUSTWORTHY 
 FRIENDS ; WITH NO OTHER MEANS FOR OBTAINING A 
 
 share in Logical Equity, but what his own single- 
 handed POWER OF VINDICATION MAY WIN FOR HIMSELF 39 
 
 II. THE POLICY TO BE PURSUED BY THE GENUINE 
 
 TRUTH-DEFENDER. 
 
 1. The business into which the Truth-defender has 
 
 TO ENTER, IS THAT OF— 
 
 i. a war— 
 
 * 41 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ii. to be undertaken without waiting for animating 
 
 o o 
 
 examples— - - - - 41 
 
 iii. according to a method adapted for practical effect 
 
 i.e. 
 
 a. directed to the mind , which falsehood now 
 
 occupies, the true seat of practical power - 43 
 
 b. operating by real ideas, to supplant the mock 
 
 ones - - - - - - 44 
 
 c. in bold language , matching the boldness of 
 
 the imposing Falsehood - - 47 
 
 iv. In proportion to the employment of which it is, 
 
 that the success of the battle varies - - 52 
 
 v. now, consequently, threatening to end in a total 
 
 transposition of the due places of Truth and Anti- 
 .truth - - - - - - 53 
 
 2. This warfare against Negation requires on the 
 
 PART OF THE TRUTH-DEFENDER 
 
 i. a zealous struggle in our Lord's cause of Affirma¬ 
 
 tion— - - - - - - 54 
 
 ii. carried on with a courageous scrutiny of the 
 
 pretences assumed by the Negationist— - - 55 
 
 iii. in which he must aim—after our Lord’s example— 
 
 at overcoming , instead of merely evading, the arts 
 of the enemy— - - - - 59 
 
 iv. by intellectual skill, applied, not only to enlighten 
 
 the well-disposed, but to confound the enemy, - 61 
 
 v. from a standpoint of independence - - - 63 
 
 3. In the spirit of complete disengagement from 
 
 THE ENEMY’S TOILS, THE TRUTH-DEFENDER SHOULD— 
 AFTER OUR LORD’S EXAMPLE OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE— 67 
 
 i. set at nought the enemy’s usurped pretences of 
 
 Loyalty, Science, Scripture, etc. - - - 67 
 
 ii. undertake no burden of proof , not required by 
 
 Logical Equity - - - - - 69 
 
 iii. demand from the assailant proofs of his own right 
 
 to attach - - - - - - 71 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 iv. not allow the adversary to draw him away from 
 
 his proper basis of argument - - - 72 
 
 v. make a sceptical examination of the adversary’s 
 
 phraseology; which is always fraudulent - 73 
 
 vi. enter aggressively the territory of lying Negation, 
 
 by— 
 
 a. pressing upon its agents the responsibility 
 
 of the position they have assumed in their 
 contradictions - - - - 81 
 
 b. and also of the latent postulates, which their 
 
 contradictions—like those in Mr. Gladstone’s 
 Anti-Vaticanism—imply - - - 82 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE LEAKAGE IN THE CHURCH FROM APOSTASIES 
 
 TRACEABLE TO THE ABSENCE IN THE CATHOLIC BODY 
 
 OF POLITICAL CHASTITY. 
 
 LAW OF POLITICAL CHASTITY FOR CATHOLIC ISRAEL IN 
 scripture terms (Deut. xxxiii. 28, etc.) : 
 
 ‘ Israel shall dwell securely , apart.'' 
 
 THE SUFFICIENCY OF POLITICAL CHASTITY FOR THE 
 CHURCH’S WELL-BEING: 
 
 * His fountain shall be upon a land of corn and wine. Happy art 
 thou, O Israel! Who is like thee ? A people sheltered by 
 Jehovah, the shield of thy help, Who is the sword of thy 
 prowess.’ See also Ps. xxxii. 12—20. 
 
 The leakage a fact.—The doctrine of self-possession for 
 Catholics in worldly life, political and ordinary, which 
 this little treatise insists on as its principal point, is one 
 which may be profitable for the consideration of those, 
 who are now anxiously thinking about the ‘ leakage of 
 the Church,’ which is no doubt quite enough to awaken 
 anxieties. The Catholic population has been long, and is 
 now suffering a drain in its various classes. Amongst 
 the poor want of care has allowed many to become a 
 prey to artful sectarians, or to fall away into faithlessness 
 In the better classes how many are falling under the urn 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 checked attractions of Atheism! In all there are plenty, 
 who have yielded to the tainting influence of mixed 
 marriages. 
 
 Insufficiency of proposed remedies.—This drain is not to 
 be stopped by any of the methods which different parties 
 have proposed. Of which one of the best, and certainly 
 in itself a good suggestion, is that of having selected 
 preachers to give addresses to the various congregations. 
 One would, however, like to know, what special points, 
 besides the ordinary points of the Faith, they would be 
 directed to insist on, by way of stopping the apostasies 
 that are taking place by the action of mock science, and 
 negligence, and the influence upon all of increasing in¬ 
 fidelity in the surrounding English population. Another 
 suggestion, (of rather a trifling character) is, short Masses 
 instead of lengthy ones, as at High Mass. We are not 
 made aware, that Catholics, who attend High Mass, are 
 the sort of Catholics, who fall away into Protestantism 
 and infidelity. A third suggestion, which does not show 
 much insight into our misfortunes, is to alter the Cate¬ 
 chism, but the alteration is not in the particular, in which 
 it really calls for amendment. Which would be, if at all, 
 especially in the treatment of the question, ‘ Why is the 
 Church Catholic V This ought to be answered, ‘ Because 
 it is meant for all, whether all use it or not, or however 
 few. Instead of that, the answer given leaves the learner 
 to suppose that its Catholicity depends upon its actually 
 existing in all ages, and ‘ teaching all nations,’ which is 
 not clearly indisputable. Its being the 4 Ark of Salvation 
 for all ’ which is nearest to the exact reason, is put last 
 in the answer, as" a rider to the two others. But the 
 partial alteration, which this requires, does not seem to 
 have been advised. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 The true cause of drain the want of self-conducting spirit 
 in Catholics. —None of these advised remedies, would heal 
 the waste, from which our Catholic population is suffer¬ 
 ing. This is owing to a cause, which the advisers evi¬ 
 dently little suspect. And that is, that the Catholic body, 
 being under no better public guidance than their news¬ 
 papers, does not present to its own members, or to the 
 outside world, anything that would naturally command 
 respect from men. It wears upon itself the most undig¬ 
 nified weakness, of not daring to take its own business 
 into its own hands: instead of which its members have 
 been content to sink themselves into association with 
 unknown multitudes, whom they are powerless to in¬ 
 fluence for their own purposes. They never appear in 
 public life as speaking for themselves in their own name 
 but hiding themselves under the misrepresenting names 
 of alien associations, who have the most unqualified con¬ 
 tempt for them. As long as there shall be manifested no 
 greater spirit of self-respect, in the more responsible 
 members of the Catholic body, so long must there be the 
 impotence to retain the allegiance of its members. Who 
 can be surprised that men, whether poor or rich, should 
 desert a body of people, who scandalize their fellow- 
 members, by speaking and acting as if they were ashamed 
 to own themselves to be what they are ? As they indeed 
 do, when they disclaim for themselves any right to stand 
 independently as a body among their fellow-creatures, 
 upon the contemptible pretext, that they are too few and 
 too weak to act like men. Such is the conduct, which 
 they are content to follow under the depressing influence 
 of our Catholic newspapers; managed by a class of flat- 
 minded people, who have never learnt to apply for them¬ 
 selves the common-sense rule, that people’s success in the 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 world depends upon their presuming a self-sufficiency in 
 themselves for their own business—in other words, ‘ If 
 you want your business done, you must do it yourself. 
 If you don’t take care of your own affairs, nobody else 
 will.’ Just the contrary of this is the counsel of our 
 knowing men of the newspapers, who would make you 
 believe the only policy possible for Catholics is, to avoid 
 by all means, aspiring to the dignity of a corporate body ; 
 that, if they would have any of their rights safeguarded, 
 they must behave as if they had no such right. Instead 
 of taking care of it themselves by persevering assertion 
 of it, they must fling the thought of it away from them¬ 
 selves to the mercy of a mindless mass of parties, who 
 are adversaries to the right. Because, as they always 
 say, we are too few, too weak, to look after our own 
 rights. We must look for their protection to the oppo¬ 
 nents of the rights, because they are many and strong. 
 If on the other hand, any sentiment of manly self-reliance 
 should venture to show its head, it is immediately put 
 down by taunts and slang in leading articles and speeches 
 from the journalistic deadweight; which encourages only 
 the sentiment, that Catholics should live entirely on 
 sufferance from their Protestant adversaries. With such 
 servile self-abdication of all corporate dignity, persistently 
 inculcated by our journalistic guides, the Catholic com¬ 
 munity could not hope to enjoy the advantage of a lead 
 in public life, nor even of such an independent standing, 
 as would command respect from others, or their own 
 members. 
 
 This is quite sufficient to explain why it is, that so 
 many, under slight temptations, are found leaving the 
 Church. They see in it nothing to stick to, but its Divine 
 Faith, which its own professors seem to think, must look 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 for its worldly credit,—not to themselves, who hold it, 
 but to those who hate it. The Catholic body is taught 
 by its journals to disclaim for itself the right to stand in 
 the world as a living society under its own name. How 
 can it expect that its children in the world should find 
 in it more life to hold them than it does itself? They 
 fall from its body, because it does not show them suf¬ 
 ficient of its soul to hold them. 
 
 But loss of numbers is not the only consequence of 
 this self-abandonment to surrounding influences. It acts 
 further upon those who remain, by weakening their force 
 in all walks of life where they might else be eminent. 
 Some few of the educated portion of our people might be 
 seen at the head of those human studies, which look to 
 them as their natural guardians; as Biblical Criticism, 
 International Law, which is a high department of 
 Casuistry, Political Philosophy, or Justice and Natural 
 Science, or the doctrine of the Works of God, a part of 
 Theology. Instead of that, we find them not only without 
 a lead in such pursuits, or a wish to have one, but 
 without any independent standing of their own. They 
 own no corporate existence, no flag, no opinion of their 
 own on public matters; but what they would have is 
 common to the most worldly politicians. The only thing 
 they are taught to consider prudent is the easy one of 
 sinking themselves lifelessly and unresistingly into the 
 obliterating mass of anti-christian associations. Which 
 they try to excuse by affecting to think—what they 
 know to be untrue—that self-effacement in infidel and 
 Protestant company is a far-sighted policy. What else 
 could happen from such a servile temper, but what we 
 see does happen ? Loss of numbers and abatement of all 
 public spirit in those who are left, This is not from 
 
xn 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 want of natural ability in Catholics: who excel in all 
 the quieter arts of life, but from the baneful influence of 
 our anonymous press, who, actuated by a shallow worldly 
 spirit, have always endeavoured to overbear and sneer 
 down whatever could tend to raise the Church in England 
 to the dignity of a body it would be honourable to 
 belong to— i.e ., a self-sufficient community, with a name 
 of its own, a policy, a mind, and a spokesman. 
 
 This independent character of a corporate body, which 
 every other group of men in the country assumes for 
 itself, is one, which it would require a finer spirit showing 
 itself in some section of the Catholic body, in advance of 
 the majority. That small section has not yet dared, owing 
 to newspaper tyranny, to make its appearance. And 
 if it did, our Tablet and the others would soon come out 
 to hoot it down. Nevertheless, neglected as the value 
 of an honourable standing is for the Church, it is its 
 creditable character by which alone its members can be 
 well retained within its pale; but as that creditable 
 character has not yet been presented to them, we ought 
 not to feel surprised that so many should fall away from 
 it. This is the drain, which our writers are lamenting. 
 But as the methods they suggest do not tend to renovate 
 in English Catholics the consciousness of corporate 
 dignity, from the lack of which the retaining power 
 suffers, they will not do anything towards stopping the 
 leakage for which they are intended. 
 
 The requisite for checking the defections, being the 
 spirit of political chastity, after Christ’s example.—What 
 is required for stopping the drain of our Catholic 
 population is—what it is very difficult to get worldly 
 people to learn—the presence of something of a far 
 higher order than that, which the suggested methods 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Xlll 
 
 hint at—an entirely new spirit infused into some leading 
 individual of the Catholic community, consisting of that, 
 which was exemplified by the Master and Model of all 
 political leaders, the Founder of the Divine Corporation, 
 called the Church. In Him the spirit was that of 
 'political chastity, consisting of a determination to keep 
 the conduct of His great public cause of a heavenly 
 Kingdom, under His own authority, pure from all 
 adulterating alliances, made with others on their terms. 
 To this policy of self-possessed dignity Fie was ever 
 faithful, in spite of the solicitations, which would of 
 course be offered to Him by some of His worldly-wise 
 followers. Who, like the people that nowaday contribute 
 their counsels in our newspapers, would advise Him, in 
 order to save Himself from being isolated and separated 
 from the national life, to tack Himself on to some or 
 other of the promiscuous associations at that time 
 occupying the political world. The arguments they 
 might urge might perhaps be after the following strain : 
 ‘Your position, 0 Master, as prophet of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, is at present quite out of harmony with the 
 spirit of the age. Very noble, no doubt, but—as 
 practical minds, like ours, see—the white flag of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, in the fashion in which you hold it 
 up, attracts none of the great parties of the world— 
 unless it be to displeasure or scorn. It is neither Roman 
 nor Jewish, nor midway between the two. You are 
 therefore owned neither by Roman Procurator, nor 
 Jewish High Priest, nor Sanhedrim. Neither priest nor 
 layman finds anything of his own in you. Why not then, 
 like a practical man, take up with some of these great 
 influential bodies now in fashion ? There are plenty of 
 them to choose from, without lack of variety to suit every 
 
X1Y 
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 taste. There is the liberal Herodian, the sober-minded 
 Sadducee, the conservative Pharisee. Some of these 
 surely would be willing to give you a helping-hand in 
 your high design. But then, in order to bring them 
 round to your view of the Kingdom of God, you will 
 have to drop your white flag, which, if you obstinately 
 cling to, you will only make yourself impossible in 
 practical politics. But, if you humoured them a little in 
 this trifling matter, you might make some profit out of 
 them; they might even think of making you king. If, 
 however, you feel loth to give up the white flag altogether, 
 there is another plan we might suggest, which is to cross 
 it with the other flags of Herod, or Borne. A mixture 
 of conflicting banners, flags, and symbols, all on the same 
 level, is a genial show, that tends to conciliate everybody. 
 If also we may venture to go so far, you would be well 
 advised to give up some of your more extreme opinions. 
 —such as, for instance, the resurrection of the dead. 
 The Sadducees don’t like that. And the honest Pharisees 
 find you a little too starch in insisting so much upon 
 interior virtue ; and in reflecting upon their liking the 
 uppermost rooms, the chief seats, and greetings in the 
 market place, and then is it not pushing the white flag a 
 step too far, to address a class of highly respectable men 
 as a 4 generation of vipers, not to be saved from damna¬ 
 tion,’ as ‘ whited sepulchres, full of dead men’s bones and 
 all uncleanness V That candid style of language is surely 
 not the one to use if you wish to convert them to your 
 views of the Kingdom of Heaven. It repels, not invites. 
 Many of your cherished opinions would have to be very 
 much modified, or even given up, if you wish to con¬ 
 ciliate. To do this you will have to show yourself a 
 many-sided man, with a different face presented to the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XV 
 
 different political schools of thought around you. Be all 
 things to all men. And then, it would be wise to advise 
 your disciples to mingle themselves freely amongst all 
 parties—Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees, Homans. Let 
 the world see that the view your disciples hold of a 
 Messiah, is quite compatible with the widest and most 
 liberal interpretation, and that they hold out the right 
 hand of fellowship to all without sectarian distinction. 
 
 Such tempting pleas, which we may be sure were not 
 wanting from the knowing practical men of that time, 
 coming, as He would know they did, from the Spirit of 
 lies, did not prevail with Him to swerve from the high 
 principle of political chastity, which was therefore never 
 violated in His dealings with the powers and persons of 
 His own day; with whom He could have no alliance 
 except on such terms as left Him honourably free to con¬ 
 duct His own cause, according to the determinations of 
 His own mind—a standard requisite for the guidance of 
 those, who, after Him, are engaged in carrying out His 
 cause, which the Pope’s prayer after Mass describes as 
 ‘ the conversion of sinners, the liberty and exaltation of 
 our Holy Mother the Church,’ in which is included the 
 retention of the faithful in the Church’s fold. This is a 
 partnership in His Work, which they cannot expect to 
 continue after Him successfully, except by partnership in 
 the principle He acted on—of political chastity in full- 
 faced opposition—such as the counsel of His tempters 
 would have found from Him—to the like counsel offered 
 by the Catholic newspapers and their followers. Who, 
 like our Lord's tempters, would crusli all thought of 
 political purity, by openly advising, as they do, the 
 Christian people to continue vigorously the practice of 
 political adulteration, by mixing themselves up indis- 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 criminately with any anti-Christian crowd they may find 
 at hand, with no other motive than the mere infatuating 
 pleasure of joining in the irrational dissipation of elec¬ 
 tioneering fuss. ‘ Sprinkle yourselves/ they say, 1 amongst 
 the Anti-Catholic parties you find around you, without 
 caring to think about their political drift. Whatever it 
 is, it is sure to be something English, that should be 
 enough for you/ In other words ( Don’t be so bigoted, 
 as to suppose the cause of Christ could prosper if it were 
 kept separate from the cause of Anti-Christ. To think 
 it can stand alone in the land, is but a proud, sulky fancy. 
 If we want the cause of Christ's Church to flourish we 
 must ourselves show a broad-minded spirit, by flinging 
 its interests away generously at his feet, as if you really 
 believed Anti-Christ was your genial friend. It will never 
 do for us as smart men, to encourage visible differences 
 between ourselves and others, as if it were a question 
 between Christ and Belial.’ How glad the parties reason¬ 
 ing thus should be, to see the modestly retired place 
 which the Catholic Church occupies in ‘ Whitaker’s 
 Almanack.’ Where it takes its place among 300 sects 
 according to rotation hy the letter It, between the two 
 fellow denominations, ‘ Revival Band ’ and ‘ Royal Gospel 
 Army.’ After the first and before the latter, it enters as 
 ‘ Roman Catholic/ The broad look of this impartial 
 sorting by initials has nothing to make it out of harmony 
 with the mind of our newspaper counsellors, who are so 
 fond of advising to Catholics, indiscriminate mixtures 
 with Anti-Catholics. ‘ The liberty and exaltation of our 
 Holy Mother the Church ’ will never get anything else 
 but disgraceful defeat from the movement of those, who 
 run after their advice. This advice, which is only of a 
 sort that dissolute minds are always so ready to give, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XVII 
 
 would have to be resisted to the uttermost by anyone,— 
 though standing alone,—who desires to see the Catholic 
 people keep to their Church, as being fatal to the health¬ 
 preserving principle of political chastity: which, being 
 the condition of political strength, even for individuals, 
 is essential to the Catholic community, if it is ever to 
 assume for itself, under independent leading, the self- 
 determined spirit of a corporate body, by which alone its 
 ordinary members can be held from straggling away from 
 it as their spiritual home. 
 
 The principle in the treatise conducive to the checking of 
 defections.—And it is that independent self-determined 
 spirit, so far as a private Catholic may practice it, for 
 which a more regular direction is attempted in this little 
 
 rudimentarv treatise on ‘ the Art of Christian Warfare.’ 
 
 */ 
 
 The precepts of which are not simply the unreflecting 
 impulses of loose ‘ good intentions,’ from which as much 
 harm as benefit arises, but carefully drawn conclusions 
 from a more exact study of the perilously beset position 
 that Right has to occupy in the world. 
 
 By the light of that study, the precepts this treatise 
 aims at giving, are a few precise precautions for a 
 Catholic in directing his conduct in the world in a safe 
 spirit of independence, according to the authorizing 
 example of our Lord Himself. Who, being the Master of 
 wise policy, ever presented an uncompromising front to 
 the whole body of evil, without the dread, which is the 
 bane of growth in the worldly-minded—the dread of 
 being alone or ‘ isolated/ It is only after the lessons, 
 which He Himself gives, that, among the precautions this 
 treatise insists on for a private Catholic maintaining a 
 self-determining independence of mind, are: 
 
 i. To preserve, in dealing with others, a position of clear 
 
 b 
 
XV1U 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 disengagement from the network of alien associations, 
 political and sectarian, separation from which some affect 
 to discredit by calling it ‘ isolation/ 
 
 ii. To use a thoroughly sceptical treatment of all their 
 pretensions as embodied in their accepted phraseology. 
 
 Efficacy of courageous leadership for enabling the body 
 to retain its members.—It is this free handling, which, if 
 always steadily employed by our Lord’s followers, would 
 save for them the inestimable privilege of having a mind 
 of their own for the management of their own business in 
 public life. Which, whether shown by one, or few, or 
 many, in private or in public, locally or generally, never 
 fails to win for those who use it the due measure of 
 influence. For, notwithstanding the foolish contempt 
 which our ordinary advisers in the Catholic newspapers 
 show to it, the power of mind, being, even in a single 
 person, as it must be, the principle of all strength, is no 
 sooner free to exert itself, than it generates movement 
 amongst men. And when it has once liberated itself from 
 thraldom by daring to act alone , without waiting for 
 nitiation from an incapable multitude, its energy proceeds 
 to kindle an action in thought and speech, by which 
 some few other minds are assimilated. These, according 
 as they may be converted to its impulse, increase the 
 strength it had already begun in them. In this case, 
 being real adherents, they become an efficient body of 
 helpers to the cause; which, if only nominally such, they 
 would have helped to depress by their heavy apathy. It 
 is by this process of mental action, gradually making its 
 way from a single mind, not from a previous agreement of 
 a mindless many, with their formless ‘ good intentions ’ 
 that an able group of men becomes formed. This genuine 
 augmentation of force in numbers comes from the virtue 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XIX 
 
 of having a a meaning to begin with: which, definite at 
 first, at least in one man, spreads itself then in a few—- 
 and by degrees in many. Who thus become a respectable 
 body, able to hold their own before the world. 
 
 And if such a spirit of self-determining mind, present 
 in some one eminent Catholic person, like an O’Connell, 
 were to begin working in the Catholic body in England, 
 the Catholic body would soon become a something, which 
 it was not a discreditable thing to be called-by. Its 
 adherents would find in it something worthy to hold 
 them; and they would no longer be, as they are now, 
 ashamed of being known to belong to it. The leakage 
 from the Church, which is now so feelingly complained 
 of, arising naturally from the dispiriting influence of the 
 leading Catholic mind, would be arrested, and even 
 turned the other way. This would be the natural effect 
 of Catholics being taught to have, what their leaders at 
 present teach them to avoid having—a mind of their 
 own for choosing their own way. 
 
 Necessity of disregarding newspaper utterances for 
 guarding an honourable spirit.—But for helping forwards 
 the healthy movement of political self-determination in 
 the Catholic body—in so far as this has to depend upon 
 the good-will of any private Catholic, he must have the 
 moral courage—which so few have—to disregard the low- 
 minded gibes, which our Catholic newspapers and their 
 disciples are always hissing out against the wholesome 
 aspiration for a Catholic party in the political world. 
 Which they, in their self-assumed infallibility, decide to 
 be an impossible chimera. The ground, on which they 
 would justify their contempt, only reveals their in¬ 
 capacity to understand what a Catholic party would be. 
 A Catholic party, like an}^ other party, would consist 
 
 b 2 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 really of one—or a few determined leaders, who should 
 be able—not all at once, but by degrees—to draw to 
 themselves the minds of others, through the rare virtue 
 of having a meaning of their own, and knowing what 
 their meaning was. Such an idea never enters the con¬ 
 ception of those, who debate the subject in our Catholic 
 newspapers. What they think of when a ‘ Catholic 
 party 5 is mentioned is a promiscuous multitude of human 
 beings all brought together of themselves, somehow or 
 nohow, without first being taught anything to agree about. 
 This childish conception they show to be the one haunt¬ 
 ing their minds, in the question they are sure to poke at 
 you, as soon as ‘ Catholic Part} 7 ’ is mentioned—And that 
 is—‘ How will you get all Catholics to agree upon a 
 common basis V i.e. before there is any basis offered. 
 ‘How will you make all pull together?’ Pulling to¬ 
 gether in order to become a party ! As if a party began 
 by being able to pull together ! Pulling together is on 
 the contrary the act of a party completed. They suppose 
 it to be its beginning. Agreeing to pull together is the 
 act of men already educated up to an opinion. They 
 suppose it to be done by an untrained multitude, without 
 a master-mind shewing them how to pull, or what to pull 
 at. In this they display their utter ignorance of the 
 course that human associations follow. In which, if there 
 is one lesson that experience teaches, it is this:—that no 
 effective concourse of men has ever commenced from a 
 preceding unanimity in numbers, agreeing upon any 
 valuable resolution. Unanimity is a consequence , not an 
 antecedent, to commencing power: which commences first 
 without numbers, from a leader, who has a well formu¬ 
 lated thought working in him. The mere untaught 
 multitude have no formed opinion of their own concern- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXI 
 
 ing the proper basis to be assumed for their defence in 
 public life, other than the vaguest sentiment, if even so 
 much as that. They could not therefore be brought of 
 themselves to agree in any resolution, except it were a 
 forceless platitude. As we see in the resolutions attempted 
 in promiscuous meetings. Still less could they originate 
 any statesmanlike policy—which is the growth only of a 
 scientific head. This is the reason why a bod}^ like the 
 ‘ Catholic Union,’ can never be of any service to the cause 
 it professes to maintain. It fancies it can realise the 
 formation of strength by a crude combination of respect¬ 
 able men—strong only, in their inert numbers, and their 
 equally inert worldly position. All they are taught to 
 believe in as a source of self-defending power, is a dead 
 list of names, sprinkled up and down with titles. When 
 they see these names and titles increase, they think 
 their stock of strength is increasing. That the force 
 of a self-determining mind within their body is the true 
 fountain of strength, does not enter into their calcula¬ 
 tions. For lack of this light they never could have 
 courage to co-operate in any resolution, by which men 
 are efficaciously united together for work in the world. 
 The cause of this failure is the radical ignorance of the 
 truth—obvious though it be—that influence amongst 
 men for good or for evil, must have its origin only in 
 mind —not in matter, such as numbers and respectability. 
 And mind in any effective measure, is the rare gift of 
 some individual. In whom, when it has first appeared, 
 it operates upon numbers only afterwards, and by slow 
 degrees. Numbers of course increase strength, when 
 once begun. But they never begin it. And their apt¬ 
 ness for increasing strength once begun, is only as long 
 as they are obedient to the originating impulse, under 
 
XXII 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 which they were induced to combine. But strength 
 never originates in the brute force of numbers. Rather 
 
 o 
 
 the contrary. They help to smother it. Because at the 
 outset of a movement, the many have not any initiating 
 spirit to conform themselves to. Which there must be 
 first to draw them together into co-operation. A party 
 therefore, being the union of individuals, prevailed upon 
 by the force of some one leading mind amongst them, 
 can never arise, as our leaders always suppose it ought to 
 do, if at all , from the spontaneous thought of so many 
 hundred head of the human animal, in whom thought 
 had not yet been made to stir. This fancy of the re¬ 
 quisite origin for an available Catholic party, has been 
 taken by our advisers as their reason for scoffing at the 
 wish of Catholics ever having a mind of themselves, other 
 than Avhat Protestants should infuse into them. The 
 reason of this is, their not being in the least aware, that 
 the soul of all efficient association among men, is the 
 vigour of a definite meaning spreading over them from 
 some centre within themselves. 
 
 In their ignorance of this elementary truth, always 
 urging Catholics to continue the suicidal folly of desert¬ 
 ing their own home by deliberately losing themselves in 
 the waste of adverse Protestant parties ; for no better 
 reason than that the Protestant parties are big and 
 powerful. 
 
 In this slavish propensity to draggle after Protestant 
 and infidel parties, as the way to help themselves against 
 Protestantism and infidelity, our leaders represent in our 
 day those silly people of old Israel, whom Isaiah denounces 
 so strongly for their folly in leaning upon the carnal force 
 of Egypt and its horses and chariots, xxxi. 1, ‘ Woe to 
 them,’ says he, ‘ that go down to Egypt for help, and stay 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XX1U 
 
 on horses and trust in chariots, because they are many , 
 and in horsemen because they are strong .’ ‘ Many ’ and 
 
 ‘ strong !’ words exactly hitting the temptations that 
 move our Catholic leaders now to counsel trustful union 
 with Protestants : which is, as they always allege, because 
 they are ‘ many ’ and we c few ’—they are 6 strong ’ and 
 we 4 weak . 3 
 
 Equally partners are they in the evil the prophet 
 charges against the Israelites in his next words, ‘But 
 they look not to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the 
 Lord.’ So the Catholics are taught by their leaders not 
 to believe that God has anything to do with the political 
 position of His own Church in England. And why ? 
 From the same thoughtlessness there was in the Israelites. 
 Who did not call to mind, as the prophet says, that the 
 ‘ Egyptians are men, and not God, and their horses flesh 
 and not spirit .’ What ‘ horses’ and infidel ‘Egypt ’ were 
 to the benighted Israelites, that Protestant combinations 
 and ballot-box performances, are to the poor mindless 
 Catholic politicians, who profess to take in hand the care 
 of the Catholic interest. The result of the Catholic 
 trust in Protestant ballot-boxes is foretold in the 
 prophet’s next words, as the outcome of the Israelites’ 
 trust in the ‘flesh’ of horses and the ‘strength of 
 horsemen.’ ‘ When the Lord shall stretch forth His 
 Hand, both he that helpeth, and he that is holpen shall 
 fall down. And they all shall fall together .’ A very 
 good description of the result of our Catholic’s policy. 
 The God they trust to for protecting the Church, is an 
 infidel Parliament. And their form for invoking him 
 is putting their hands into an infidel ballot-box, not 
 a courageous faith in the power of a self-determining 
 mind: which is the sole spring of all power, whether for 
 
XXIV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 few, or many, for ten or for ten thousand. In excuse for 
 their really infidel conduct in asking the powers of in¬ 
 fidelity to take care of God’s interests, they say boastfully 
 —as of course the old Israelites would—as ‘ practical 
 men’ and ‘men of the world/ we have nothing in our 
 heads so hazy or ‘ theoretical ’ as an intelligible idea to go 
 by. It is in this happy freedom from all idea, that they 
 will argue, ‘ We see at a]l events as men of common sense, 
 that the Parliamentary system, like old Egypt is, at 
 least, an existing fact, that ballot-boxes, like the old 
 horses and chariots, are strong in the fashion. That is 
 enough for us. Never mind about their not being 
 ‘ spirit.’ The union of Catholics upon a basis of their 
 own, as if they had any right not derived from Parlia¬ 
 ment, is a chimerical dream. Instead of wishing for 
 that, let each man of us be careful to bury himself out 
 of sight, in some big mass, or other of the Protestant 
 respectables, no matter which. If he does not hang 
 himself on to some Protestant party, he will be isolated . 
 And to be isolated is to be weak. But when once he has 
 fastened himself on to one of their combinations, he will 
 be united with somebody; and to be united with some¬ 
 body is the security of strength. Union among yourselves, 
 they argue, is to be avoided. Because it is impossible ; 
 and even if possible, could do no good. Seek for help,-— 
 not by joining those few, who have a common interest 
 with you, but by giving yourselves over to those many, 
 who find their interest in keeping you helpless. The 
 union you should aspire to, is not union with yourselves 
 at the cost of separation from aliens, but union with 
 aliens at the cost of disunion with each other. Union 
 with many enemies, disunion with few friends. This is 
 the reason why we are so earnest in advising you to 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXV 
 
 scatter yourselves about anyhow in the Protestant 
 parties you may happen to find about you.’ 
 
 Union and isolation, when advisable and when to be 
 shunned.— In this way of talking they betray their 
 incapacity to understand the ground, on which union is 
 strength, and isolation is weakness. Union is. strength, 
 only when it brings together individuals having a common 
 interest. When the interests of the parties united are 
 discordant, the union is a dead-lock, which only in¬ 
 creases the weakness of the weaker party. And more 
 than that—it draws away from the weaker party what¬ 
 ever strength they might otherwise be able to exert. 
 And then again, the appropriating party uses the 
 strength it has drawn away against the party, which 
 has sacrificed itself to it. This is the result of that 
 so-called ‘union’ with aliens, which our foolish advisers 
 always recommend as a most prudent policy. 
 
 Equally perverse is the idea of isolation, which they 
 think it clever to decry, as being a condition of weakness 
 on whatever terms. Isolation is weakness only when it 
 separates from something which would, if joined, be 
 strong for the party joining it. But when the party 
 joined is strong only against those, who join it; isolation 
 from it is not weakness, but the contrary. It is then the 
 indispensable condition for commencing strength. Not 
 indeed that isolation is itself strength from the mere fact 
 of its being isolation. But I say, against the dull-witted 
 pretenders to policy; that isolation from a swamping 
 party, is only separation from a weakening combination. 
 Such isolation is the healthy condition, on which alone 
 the seed of strength, which is the force of mind, can find 
 room to exert itself. And this cannot be, as long as its 
 force is, as our Catholic advisers would have it, locked 
 
XXVI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 up in the strong grip of hostile combinations, keeping it 
 motionless. 
 
 Now, the isolation, which our newspapers would scare 
 us from, is the health-beginning isolation, which liberates 
 us from weakening combinations with Protestant and 
 infidel enemies of the faith. And the union they would 
 have us trust to, as an honourable alliance, is—like that 
 of the Israelites with Egypt—a paralyzing union with 
 anybody whatever, if only they are strong enough to 
 keep us fast in their net, without motion of our own. 
 The union they so much admire, is that which the fly 
 has with the spider in the spider's web. The isolation 
 they dread, is that, which the fly has when outside the 
 spider’s toils. We are, they argue, not strong, or many 
 enough to prosper with a free footing of our own, or by 
 standing on our own legs. But we are quite many and 
 strong enough to prosper with our footing carried away 
 from under us, by the irresistible current of two or three 
 malevolent parties. 
 
 The whole advice, now iterated and inculcated upon 
 us by our journalistic counsellors, comes briefly to this : 
 ‘ If you want to help yourself-out of your weakness, 3m u 
 should do everything that can make you weaker; by 
 neglecting the only means, by which weakness is changed 
 into free power, and free power improved. Avoid, there¬ 
 fore, all attempt at taking a footing of your own, by 
 uniting with your neighbour in any common interest. 
 Instead of that, unite yourselves one by one in some 
 weakening associations with Protestants and infidels, 
 who will condescend to accept your votes in order to use 
 them against your interest. Seek for congenial fellow¬ 
 ship with those, who pride themselves in caring nothing 
 about you, except to see you extinguished, by using the 
 power your votes help to give them. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXV11 
 
 If you want to gain the respect of your neighbours, 
 take particular care to making yourself as thoroughly in¬ 
 significant as you can, by effacing yourselves in a crowd, 
 who don’t openly spurn you, just as long as you don’t 
 happen to come within their notice. When they see you 
 have no mind, or meaning of your own, they will con¬ 
 descend to be pleased with you. Your policy is therefore 
 to sacrifice your own opinion if you have any to theirs; 
 to sink the cause of God in the will of the atheists—that 
 of Christ in the will of infidels, the interest of His 
 Church in the spirit of ‘ no Popery,’ Orangeism, and 
 respectable English Pharisaism. 
 
 This is, without exaggeration, the drift, when ex¬ 
 pressed in plain terms, of all that has ever been advised 
 as the dictate of superior practical wisdom, by our Tablet, 
 the Reviews, and their like. Could idiocy produce 
 anything worse ? The principle, which, on the contrary, 
 it is alone safe for us to adopt, concerning union and 
 isolation, might be briefly stated thus : Union is good 
 with congenials, however few ; and if there be none, 
 then do not be afraid,—as so many have at first been 
 obliged to do,—to stand alone rather than commit your¬ 
 self to the mercy of uncongenials. For the same reason, 
 hold disunion with all weakening associations; and that 
 the more strictly, as the associations are themselves more 
 powerful for effacing you. 
 
 But this dictate of common reason is something far 
 above the catch of our public advisers; who have no 
 more idea of looking to God, and to ‘spirit’ for their 
 welfare, than the poor Israelites, whom Isaiah lashes 
 for their cowardice. They would call it all ‘ theoretical ’ 
 and ‘ visionary/ The only sober and practical method 
 for them is to sink one’s self in motionless captivity, by 
 
XXV111 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 deserting the use of our natural forces, and placing them 
 at the mercy of avowed adversaries. If, then, any 
 private Catholic would seek to contribute his little to 
 the extrication of his Catholic fellows from the swamp of 
 political death, in which the spiritless folly of their press 
 leaders has left them, let him, at whatever cost to his 
 previous habits, cast aside resolutely and without re¬ 
 serve, the whole body of enervating cant, which our 
 Catholic writers indulge in, about union, isolation, and 
 party alliances. Let him set before himself the simple 
 fact, that the union advocated bv them, is union of 
 Catholics against themselves, with their adversaries, and 
 the only union, they advise Catholics to have with each 
 other, is an agreement to abandon all independent effort 
 in their own behalf: while the disunion they decry is 
 that, which liberates from disabling self-subjection to 
 enemies. In direct opposition to this folly, let the 
 upright-minded Catholic keep a wholesome dread of 
 uniting with others on demoralizing terms, and entertain 
 no dread whatever of an isolation, which is only a chaste 
 avoidance of demoralizing companionship. Let him not 
 be afraid for a little space, to occupy the dull position of 
 being isolated: where, if he cannot do much at first to 
 cherish the movement of Catholic life, which our press 
 has done so much to blight, he will at least be keeping 
 safe—what the Catholic advisers would never let him 
 have—the first condition their Catholic life requires— 
 freedom from the effect of draining alliances. And that 
 good, however small, is infinitely more than his present 
 Catholic leaders can ever teach him to obtain. 
 
THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE 
 
 WITH WRONG. 
 
 -•O* 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 
 NO ACKNOWLEDGED TRIBUNAL EXISTING IN SOCIETY" FOR 
 
 ensuring Fair Play to Truth in combating Error. 
 
 The aim of this treatise is to contribute some elementary 
 hints in the service of those, who would venture, though 
 only within the domain of their own minds, to engage 
 in the disheartening struggle against the errors of the 
 day. The subject itself—like the art of war—is capable 
 of being treated with scientific precision. But scientific 
 precision, though seen in the distance as attainable, is only 
 in a rudimental state in this effort of mine ; which can¬ 
 not pretend to completeness even in the naming of the 
 points themselves, which it touches upon. These are too 
 vast in number for the compass of one or two papers. 
 And what advice these papers presume to give, cannot 
 claim to rise above the level of the most rudimentary. 
 Scanty as they are, however, they may happily help some 
 reflecting mind to see more clearly what sort of skill it 
 is, that is required for meeting the endless tricks, which 
 error ever relies upon with such success for working its 
 effects in the understandings of men. 
 
 1 
 
2 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 The power of intellectual aggression against its cor¬ 
 rupting ways, is as necessary as intellectual cultivation 
 itself, for advancing the interests of truth. But im¬ 
 portant as the art of contentious argument must be felt 
 to be ; there cannot be said to exist in the present day, 
 any more than there has been for centuries past, any such 
 honourable conventions amongst disputants for maintain¬ 
 ing fairness of conduct between them, as there are found 
 to be in force for every other sort of contention, where 
 men are matched against each other, as in games of skill. 
 Thus, rowing matches have their rules of fair play, which 
 there is an impartial body of spectators feeling a lively 
 interest in seeing observed. They have an umpire, wffiose 
 
 decision need seldom be called into requisition. The 
 
 \ 
 
 games of whist and chess have their rules of strictest 
 observance, any violation of which would find itself at 
 once denounced. And if any doubt should arise, there 
 might be found in every town a sufficient authority to 
 arbitrate justly. Even the iniquitous practice of betting 
 for profit, has its articles drawn up in the spirit of equity. 
 The prize-ring, also, was a model of fair-play; the rules 
 of which there would be always plenty to vindicate when 
 infringed. 
 
 But for the serious occupation of argumentation in the 
 cause of truth, or of dialectic—that is, reasoning, not in 
 its meditative, but its contentious exercise—there does 
 not exist the trace of any accepted order for preserving 
 logical equity. Except, perhaps, in the ridiculous forms 
 of obsolete ‘ Grand Acts 7 at the Universities, there is no 
 such thing extant as logical observances even in name, 
 still less in force. If a lie about facts, or a prevarication 
 in argument is committed by a controversialist, there is 
 no tribunal to which the cause can be referred for settle- 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 
 
 3 
 
 ment, no rules to judge by, no umpire to judge, no jury 
 to give the verdict, no impartial witnesses to support the 
 conscience of the true speaker. Ignorance and misleading 
 representations would be pretty sure to carry away the 
 public to the side contrary to justice. Where there is no 
 secure tribunal for equity, wrong must have the upper 
 hand. And so accordingly it fares with the interests of 
 Truth. Represented only by a few minds of the better 
 order, its rights lie captive under the unchecked dominion 
 of Wrong, which has, therefore the largest share in all 
 the departments of human studies, especially the more 
 noble ; as religion, political philosophy, moral philosophy, 
 and physical science. All which—especially the last— 
 serve as masks, under which it may carry on more 
 steadily the work of sapping the fabric of Truth. No 
 region is free from its presence. 
 
 1. All Errors Ultimately Resolvable into One. 
 
 i. That of Negation .—But however various may be 
 its special manifest departments the power of Error is 
 ever one and the same: as Death itself is one and the 
 same, under whatever infinite variety of disease, in¬ 
 firmity, and accident it may work out its way. 
 
 Cognate with death, and also with sin itself, the sub¬ 
 stance of Error consists in that same evil, which our 
 Lord Himself had to encounter in His career, from the 
 enemies of His Truth—the unchanging spirit of Nega¬ 
 tion , shown in contradiction to His claims—in indif¬ 
 ference and brutish unbelief. 
 
 It is this tendency of Negation, which, little heeded as 
 it is, is as much the pervading spirit of untruth, as gravi¬ 
 tation is of bodily weight, in whatever species it may 
 manifest itself: in heresy, as of Protestantism, infidelity, 
 
 1—2 
 
4 THE AIIT OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 atheism, pantheism, rationalism, naturalism, nihilism ; in 
 fact all the depraved opinions that present themselves 
 under such various titles in the vast territory of Liberal¬ 
 ism. Differing as they may in name and local aspects, 
 they all resolve themselves, even at the first glance of 
 inquiry, into manifestations of the one everpresent action 
 of Negation . Not the reign of grace and theology alone 
 is the object of its undermining action. It invades every 
 study in the order of natural knowledge and of natural 
 welfare. Whatever has a distinctive character or feature, 
 or indeed any being at all, the power of negation tries to 
 make its own, by levelling it into nothingness, which 
 itself is. And having the insatiable nature of fire, it can 
 never be satisfied, until it has brought down to itself 
 every vestige of dignity of nature, and every privilege of 
 reason, which the Creator has bestowed on man. All 
 that is in man becomes, in due time, the proper object of 
 its work. But lurking, as it does, under species as 
 various as the perfections of nature itself, its one un¬ 
 changing essence escapes the view of the unpenetrating 
 vulgar, who never see below its exterior diversities the 
 common baneful principle out of which they spring. 
 
 ii. The one Spirit of Negation working unseen by 
 endless Diversity of Agents. 
 
 The disguise of its identity under the multifarious aspects 
 of its departments of operation, is favoured also by an 
 equally multifarious character in its agents. Who range 
 in type from the most outrageous assailants of positive 
 Truth, through moderating gradations of ill-disposedness, 
 to the tamest instruments of brute indifference. There 
 are the leaders in the warfare, who disport themselves 
 in public about politics, science, or religion—men of a 
 certain amount of acquired knowledge; such as the 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 
 
 O 
 
 Huxleys, Darwins, Tyndalls, Renans, and a whole 
 band of Materialists; as ignorant as their inferiors, 
 of the subjects, upon which they presume to talk 
 dogmatically, outside their own little range. Follow¬ 
 ing them are the chattering pretenders of the Maga¬ 
 zines, Reviews, and Newspapers. Lower down, there 
 is the mass of simpletons, who admire the representa¬ 
 tive leaders; and also the so-called ‘moderate men,’ 
 who, with a judicious prudence, say they ‘ don’t go 
 quite so far as they do.’ Outside these, there is the 
 vast nameless multitude of ignorant and indifferent 
 beings, who are led wherever they hear most noise. 
 Amongst them all there are many, who could be made 
 just as well instruments of good as of evil, if they only 
 had the light of a true idea given them. Many of 
 them, quite unaware, or heedless of the nature of the 
 cause, to which they are lending themselves—and many 
 such as we are in the habit of calling £ excellent men ’— 
 ‘ amiable and accomplished people ’— £ charming fellows ’ 
 ‘ clever educated men,’ all, of course, ‘ quite free from 
 bigotry.’ Their simplicity, however, does not make 
 them a bit less efficient servers in the general interest 
 of Negation : which, along with its energetic Apostles, 
 holds these amiable accomplished and unsuspecting people 
 as its ornaments, its instruments and strongholds, to lend 
 to its black cause the appearance, which it cannot afford 
 to be without—of innocence, respectability, and dignity. 
 
 This motley mass of humanity—designing malignants, 
 and heedless simpletons, are the outward members, who 
 serve either as generals and officers, or as privates in 
 the great army of Negation. Fellow workers in its 
 cause, they either do not know that they are such, or 
 don’t believe it, or don't wish, to know it. Not always 
 
6 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 associated together by any outward bond of profession, 
 every Liberal of them can, at his option, disown any 
 section of his fellow workers in Negation, saying, as 
 the School Board Managers would say of the Russian 
 Nihilist, ‘ Please don't confound us with such people 
 as that? This apparent discordance amongst its fellow 
 agents is far from a disadvantage to Negation : which 
 only acquires from it for its outward body, a really 
 heterogeneous appearance, which makes its real intrinsic 
 oneness in malignant action less likely to be suspected. 
 
 iii. Negation allowed by the Guardians of Truth to 
 assume to itself unchallenged all the good titles , to ivhich 
 Truth alone has a right. 
 
 One then, in essence and manifold in presentment, 
 its way of setting about its levelling work is of a 
 piece with the hollowness of its nature. With nothing 
 of its own to stand on, it has to depend for its 
 capital upon what it can steal from the Truth, which 
 it seeks to dispossess. It is accordingly TrutlPs own 
 stolen ornaments, which furnish all the seeming of 
 trustworthiness to its agents, the self-styled Liberals 
 and men of Science, who employ as their recommen¬ 
 dations before the world, little else than the masmifi- 
 cent pretensions, belonging to the Truth, they aim at 
 ruining. * In the use of which they may be likened 
 to a boy playing with his grandmother at the game 
 of ‘ Beggar my neighbour.’ With an obvious sort of 
 artifice he takes all the pictured cards into his own 
 hands, leaving to his grandmother something very 
 small in value to play with. Upon the match turning 
 up in his own favour, he boasts to his friends how 
 he has beaten her so ‘ that she could not win a single 
 trick.’ Whatever success the scientific agents of Ne- 
 
 O 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 7 
 
 gation boast of, is won by a like sort of artifice. That 
 is, a preoccupation for themselves of all their own oppo¬ 
 nents’ rights and credit. This is one of the first prepara¬ 
 tions relied upon for their battle by the ‘ scientific ’—the 
 intellectual—the large-minded politicians, the dealers 
 in ‘free religion,’as we see in their addresses, their news¬ 
 papers, articles, and literature in general. Coming forth 
 in their periodicals and yearly congresses, as champions 
 against superstition, ignorance, and oppression, they very 
 quietly, without any leave but their own, assume to 
 themselves, after the manner of the boy, all the showy 
 titles that belong to the side of religion, liberty, en¬ 
 lightenment and culture. In this character they pose 
 as the special friends of Truth, Principle, and Candour, 
 perhaps stanch upholders of the authority of Holy 
 Scripture, or as manly deniers of its claims to belief, 
 as venerators of the ancient Church, or else friends of 
 loyalty, and the right of rebellion, and of course ardent- 
 followers of science and nescience, of culture, of history, 
 poetry, and the arts ; helpers in progress, believers in a 
 ‘ bright future,’ though not a future state—at least not 
 where there is any punishment for the wicked. In 
 contrast with all these magnificent qualifications, which 
 cost nothing to obtain, the Catholic is left, after the like¬ 
 ness of the boy's grandmother, to sink down to his 
 merited lower place as one incurably illiberal—adverse to 
 the light of science, disloyal, afraid of the light of 
 Scripture, or perhaps bigoted adherents to it, shrinking 
 from criticism, child of darkness and despair, at the very 
 best, in their special witty dialect—not quite so fresh as it 
 was some years ago—as a ‘fossil of an extinct species,’ who 
 ought to be ashamed to show his face in modern society, 
 with scientific people, who have ascertained that they 
 
8 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 have sprung from tadpoles and apes, and with liberal- 
 minded politicians, who have, in their interests of light, 
 purged away the name of God from the legalized hours 
 of useful study for children. It is this vast abyss of 
 separation, that the light-bearing prophet of Negation 
 sets between his splendid self and his despised butt, who 
 stands only on religion and philosophy. And it is to this, 
 that he has ever trusted for gaining his welcome with the 
 listening assemblies of the brainless world. 
 
 The Truth-holding Christian has but too often ac¬ 
 quiesced, though only interiorly, with chagrin, in all 
 these assumed airs of superiority. And in doing so, 
 whether mentally, or professedly, he has only helped to 
 confirm the empty braggart of Negation in a double 
 advantage he has taken—that of creditable titles taken 
 for himself , and the same titles taken away from his 
 victim. This is a damage, which no conduct afterwards 
 in the victim, even if he should have the spirit to show 
 it, can avail to retrieve. The consequence of this weak¬ 
 ness is that his adversary is enabled all the easier to pro¬ 
 ceed in his invasion against his rights. 
 
 iv. The Summons made by the Goblin of Negation to 
 the Guardians of Truth to render to itself an account of 
 their own beliefs. Which the friends of Truth in general 
 obediently do. 
 
 Which he does, by a challenge issued to all who dare 
 to pretend, that they can be certain of anything what¬ 
 ever, whether in fact or principle. Such assumption 
 in any region of thought, religion, history, or philo¬ 
 sophy, is of itself a deadly offence against the sacred 
 rights of the dealer in unlimited Negation. Who, as the 
 liberator of mankind from the chains of all the indubi table, 
 would allow no sentiment to hold a higher place in the 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 9 
 
 scale of certainty, than as something doubtful, very 
 questionable, what you must allow has been at least 
 disputed, or what nobody ever proved—a monkish legend, 
 a mediaeval tradition, or pious forgery—a scholastic 
 subtlety. Anything more fixed than this would be an 
 intolerance intolerable to the free spirit of universal 
 Negation. Who, as it tells us, can therefore no longer, 
 in this age of advancing light, extend its generous for¬ 
 bearance to the unauthorized ideas, which men have 
 hitherto indulged in so commonly, as belief in their 
 senses and eyesight—what they fondly call their soul, 
 their reason, their free-will, their identity, their assur¬ 
 ance of existence, their memory of what they saw or 
 heard, their possession of an immaterial something they 
 call mind, their experience of an external world ; their 
 proneness to talk about cause and effect, their belief in 
 Scripture and its infallibility, in Revelation and its in¬ 
 fallibility, their Church and Pope and their infallibility, 
 their Redeemer and their God. These unauthorized 
 persuasions—held as they have been perhaps by men 
 otherwise reasonable—must now, they say, be made to 
 surrender themselves for judgment to the great spirit, 
 whose daystar is increasing in its brightness—the spirit 
 of Negation. Who, with the tacit allowance of the friends 
 of Truth, has got himself established as the authorized 
 inquisitor in general of all positive opinion. Clothed, 
 then, in the credit of all the superior virtues, which the 
 believing world has habitually accorded to him, the great 
 goblin of Negation— standing forth as the legitimate 
 liberator of the human mind from all infallibility—pro¬ 
 ceeds to his work of vindicating the sacred rights of un¬ 
 certainty, doubt, and denial, against the pretenders to 
 any indubitable truth, by issuing a summons to all 
 
10 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 believers, through the mouths of his priests and ministers. 
 These are the anti-Vatican statesmen, Church-hating 
 writers in newspapers, religious and non-religious ; the 
 sensational professors of science and nescience, who 
 display their proportions in the printed organs or the 
 yearly congresses of know-nothingism; all the wor¬ 
 shippers of monkeys, dirt, and almighty nothingness. 
 These and the like are his mouthpieces, to whom each 
 in his adopted department of industry, the great cham¬ 
 pion of Negation intrusts the uttering of his regenerating 
 mandate, saying, ‘In the interests of human liberty, 
 conscience, enlightenment, science, and loyalty, it is now 
 high time to call to a strict account all the childish and 
 soul-oppressing belief in certainty, which the world has 
 hitherto accepted; as the certainty of our existence, or 
 the existence of any cause of it. Those, who would 
 continue to entertain such persuasions must, in pain of 
 being pronounced afraid to face the light of day, present 
 themselves forthwith to our grand tribunal, and there 
 submit whatever pleas they have of certainty, for inspec¬ 
 tion to our ministers—the illustrious professors of Ag¬ 
 nosticism, or enlightened know-nothingism, which is 
 Science. They, as the priests of “ the religion of the 
 future,” will decide whether they should be any longer 
 tolerated in holding them.’ 
 
 In making the summons to the world the goblin is 
 too wise to undertake the burden of showing to his 
 subjects—the friends of certainty—where he gets his 
 authority for making it. And they, on the other hand, 
 frightened into submission, do not dare to think he is at 
 all bound to do so. The whole burden of proof is thus 
 thrown by him on the holders of certainty—and they 
 unhesitatingly accept it. With this unchallenged licence 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 11 
 
 accorded to pursue them with his attacks, without him¬ 
 self being ever pursued in return, it is, that his proclama¬ 
 tion is made. 
 
 The authoritative mandate, which his Agnostic min¬ 
 isters are now always conveying to the world, is im¬ 
 mediately and unquestionably complied with by the 
 Christian believers in Truth and certainty, out of their 
 habitual unconcern for their own position in logical 
 equity. For the rights of logical equity now seem to 
 have been completely trodden out of the minds of the 
 timid friends of Truth by dint of the persevering action 
 of their lordly Agnostic and liberal enemies: who have 
 never ceased to inculcate in practice upon the holders of 
 Truth, the belief that they have no rights at all in argu¬ 
 ment, except what they may hold at their will—and 
 that is none at all. The friends of Truth have at last 
 become so accustomed to the situation, that the idea of 
 having a right as combatants on equal terms is to them 
 a forgotten thing. All the ambition that now re- 
 mains to them is to appear gentlemanly , and to treat 
 their liberal and Agnostic assailants, as they insist they 
 must, as ‘ gentlemen and scholars.’ 
 
 Led by this supposed gentlemanly spirit, the friend of 
 Truth readily imagines, that he must take upon his 
 own shoulders all the onus probandi, or burden of proof, 
 for his own position, without insisting on anything of 
 the sort from his accusers. Accordingly, at the summons 
 made by the goblin, a number of gentlemen of ability, 
 education, and piety in every walk of learning come 
 forth to proffer most respectfully, as to ‘ gentlemen and 
 scholars,’ in well-arranged treatises and articles of cairn 
 discussion, their justifying reasons for holding by what 
 the goblin has challenged them to prove—their own 
 
12 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 eyesight and senses, their reason, their conscience, their 
 Scripture, their Church, their Saviour, their God. In 
 excuse for these persuasions, they hope that the goblin’s 
 loyal, scriptural, and scientific majesty will not find 
 them so unreasonable as they might at first appear. 
 Believing, as they confess they do, that the world had a 
 first cause, they nevertheless have not denied that the 
 earth turns round the sun. Though they believe that 
 God made His Church a trustworthy guide—they have 
 no bad intentions against their neighbours. If they have 
 been taught that He would not allow the Head of the 
 Church to mislead them, they humbly conceive that 
 their religion is not therefore, as has been alleged, ‘ a 
 menace against the State.’ Taking the Church as a rule 
 of faith, they nevertheless hope to prove to his equitable 
 mind, that that means no disrespect to the Scripture; and 
 though they still cling to the Scripture, they beg to 
 assure him that they have no settled aversion to natural 
 knowledge. Though they accept miracles, they do not 
 deny that nature has its constant laws. It is true, 
 they hold the unfashionable idea that there are such 
 things as abiding principles of morality ; yet, may it not 
 be said in excuse, that many in the world before have 
 entertained the same sentiment without being discredited 
 as dangerous members of society. Even though they 
 highly esteem the privilege of belonging to God’s Church, 
 they venture to hope, that their future conduct will prove 
 to the unbelieving fellow-countrymen, who—no doubt 
 quite sincerely—take a different view, that they will be 
 found not quite unworthy of being admitted to take part 
 with them in the interests of their common country. In 
 support of all this, they bring forth before him all the 
 proofs that their research, theological and philosophical, 
 can command. 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 13 
 
 This self-abasing renunciation of their right in equity 
 on the part of the children of God’s Truth before its 
 defiant enemies, is all that the goblin of Negation wants 
 for the present. He has succeeded in making the 
 trembling Truth-holder look half ashamed of himself 
 before the world. This is all he has got for his obse¬ 
 quious reply to the gobliffs mandate. Meant, as it may 
 be, for an efficient self-defence, or a charming act of con¬ 
 ciliation, it acts as a further submission of the honour 
 of Truth, to the impudent usurper’s claim. The fact of 
 rendering a reply at his bidding is a tacit acknowledg¬ 
 ment that the bidding was rightfully made. By sub¬ 
 mitting to the assumed jurisdiction of the Devil and his 
 servants, he has subjected his dearest treasures of reason 
 to their scorn, as pearls thrown to swine. In the spirit 
 of scorn these take their careful expositions only as fresh 
 matter provided for them to trample on, scatter, laugh at, 
 profane, and turn against him. Such is the unfailing 
 upshot of the conduct, which the gentlemanly trustees of 
 Truth show towards its enemies. Their cautious good 
 behaviour has been all that was required to bring its 
 noble cause into its present ashamed condition. If Truth 
 is now reduced from its own honourable position to skulk 
 about the world as a notorious offender against human 
 society, it has to thank its prudent friends, its peace- 
 loving officers, its genteel soldiers, for pouring out in 
 sacrifice to the Devil and his ministers, in conciliatory 
 tones, their apologetic appeals, their calm reasonings, 
 their temperate representations, their courteous con¬ 
 ferences ; which should have been reserved for appreciat¬ 
 ing seekers of Truth to be brought forth on appropriate 
 occasions. Their conscientious labour in exculpating 
 themselves for believing in their own convictions, which 
 
14 TPIE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 they ought rather to have indicted the enemies for gain¬ 
 saying, has only opened a new opportunity to the usurping 
 adversary to prosecute further his successful aggression 
 against the Truth-holder. Which he does by employing 
 against him all sorts of undermining artifices of lan- 
 
 o o 
 
 guage. 
 
 v. One of the Methods by which the Spirit of Negation 
 proceeds , being The Devil's See-saiv, fixed on the word 1 or/ 
 or some fcdsely assumed antagonism between agreeing 
 ideas. Which the Guardians of Truth usually accept. 
 
 Prominent among these is the Devil's see-saw , a trick 
 of language, which has been practised by Protestants 
 against Catholics now for 350 years with almost uniform 
 success, without suffering at the present much abatement 
 in its popularity. The trick is like that, which is so 
 often played off on unsuspecting persons by asking them, 
 4 Which is the proper English, 7 and 5 are 13, or 7 and 5 
 is 13 V In this question the attention, being directed 
 especially to the difference between ‘ are ’ and ‘ is,’ is 
 diverted from the false postulate of 7 and 5 being equal 
 to 13, which the party asked must swallow whichever 
 side of the dilemma he chooses, if he accepts the distinc¬ 
 tion expressed in the word f or/ 
 
 Of the same sort of cheat is the favourite Protestant 
 dilemma about Church and Scripture; which, like it, 
 consists in a sort of latent petitio principii, or secret 
 begging of the question, by means of a sham dilemma 
 slipped in under the word c or/ by which the party, for 
 whose discomfiture it is designed, is required, previous to 
 all arguments, without having his leave asked, to allow 
 himself to be disabled from maintaining the opinion he 
 wants to defend. As for example, suppose that opinion 
 be that the Church and Scripture agree. This belief will 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 15 
 
 be rendered impossible for him to hold, if he has, as the 
 Protestant Negationist always supposes he is bound to 
 do, accepted the question in the form in which his 
 Protestant adversary chooses to set it. Which is a 
 sleight of language, set in words like these, ‘ Are we to 
 go by Church, or by Scripture V or, * We have to go by 
 the Church, or by the Scripture V 
 
 Now, in this form of words the very terms of the 
 question or proposition, are meant to leave to the Catholic 
 no choice but to drop either one or the other of the two 
 correlative ideas:—either that of the Church, or that of 
 the Scripture, both of which he would like to maintain to¬ 
 gether. The mode in which this sleight of language 
 cheats him out of his option for affirming both, is not by 
 asserting an inherent discord between the Church and 
 the Scripture outright, which might awaken resistance; 
 but, more surely, by quietly postulating it in the artifice 
 of a verbal see-saw, cunningly set between them, by in¬ 
 sidiously slipping in between them the disjunctive particle 
 ‘ or/ This little word ‘ or ’ put between Church and 
 Scripture has the deadly effect of serving up for the 
 Catholic his Church and his Scripture in the state, not of 
 two agreeing correlatives, or fellow parts of the same 
 divine system, but as two mutually excluding alternatives 
 impossible at the same time; like two buckets in a well, 
 of which one must be down if the other is up. It is in 
 the same position of mutual exclusion, that the Church 
 and the Scripture are made to stand by force of the for¬ 
 bidding word ‘or’ set between them: which presents 
 them both divided against each other as irreconcilable 
 antagonists. In this situation Scripture is pitted against 
 the Church. And the Church is set in the discreditable 
 position of something, which cannot be taken as an 
 
16 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 authority simultaneously with Scripture. If you choose 
 one, you must be supposed to renounce the other. This 
 is just what the Protestant Church-hater wants to make 
 compulsory on the Catholic, in fixing them both as 
 alternatives. He supposes, that one or other of these 
 alternatives must be chosen; so that if any should choose 
 Church, he is at once deemed to have renounced the 
 Scripture. This has the advantage of setting the Church- 
 hating Protestant in the noble position of vindicator of 
 Scripture against its natural enemy the Church; and, if 
 he should be supposed to take the side of Scripture, he is 
 obliged to admit himself as defeated of any right to hold 
 by his Church. Whichever way he chooses, or is sup¬ 
 posed to choose, he is expected to swallow implicitly 
 in the offered dilemma, the condemnation of his own 
 opinion. 
 
 And it is in this helpless state, set fast in immovable 
 antithesis by means of the disjunctive ‘ or,’ against its 
 own correlative the Scripture, that the Protestant trick¬ 
 ster requests the Catholic to recognize the due situation 
 of his divine authority, the Catholic Church. 
 
 What, then, must be the controversial fate of the poor 
 Catholic, who accepts the disjoining artifice, which the 
 word * or ’ is employed to construct ? If he allows it to 
 remain unchallenged, he will have already sold himself 
 into the net of his adversary. In vain will he afterwards 
 plead about possible interpretations and reconciliations. 
 These are but smugglings inside the net. Not having 
 the serpent’s wisdom to see through the cheat, which is 
 being practised upon him in the see-saw expression ‘ or,’ 
 he has allowed his whole position to be taken from him 
 in advance. His own cause has been lost beyond retrieve, 
 simply because he has been stupid enough to swallow in 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 17 
 
 the craftily proposed Protestant alternative, which the 
 word ‘ or ’ conveys—a lying disjunction between his own 
 two fellow-witnesses—Scripture and Church, in which 
 the one he is called upon to rescue from destruction is 
 presented to him pierced already to death in the name 
 of its own ally, the Scripture. 
 
 And it is in this stabbed condition, that the Catholic, 
 feeling at the same time the presence of foul play—he 
 does not see where—has been content to accept his adver¬ 
 sary’s form of proposing the question. Instead of repudi¬ 
 ating at once before anything else , the insulting see-saw, he 
 sets about the useless drudgery of lengthy excuses for 
 his Church as not being contrary to the sense of Scripture. 
 This ends—as it ought to do—in giving to his insolent 
 adversary another fine opportunity of holding his plead¬ 
 ings up to scorn before his own admiring world, as only 
 showing what a tame business the Catholic apologist 
 makes in defending the Romish corruption of the faith. 
 This is the invariable result of contenting one’s self with 
 mere self-defence against the artifice, which the Pro¬ 
 testant has always been so successfully practising in con¬ 
 troversy, in separating Church and Scripture by the word 
 ‘ or’ inserted between them both. 
 
 And this perfidious artifice, being performed in the 
 method of a see-saw between the two correlatives, earns 
 for itself the name I have given it, of ‘ Devil’s see-saw. 
 f DevdPs see-saw ’ may therefore be reckoned as one of the 
 best artifices that can be used to destroy the integrity of 
 Truth. 
 
 The same vicious see-saw, articulated by the word ‘ or,’ 
 will be readily recognised in numerous other examples of 
 sham dilemmas, accepted only too readily by society : as 
 when we are modestly asked to take our choice between 
 
 2 
 
18 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 ‘ liberty or authority/ ‘ order or progress/ ‘ Rome or 
 antiquity/ ‘ Rome or reason/ Nor could we omit to 
 name the popular scientific catch-phrases about * reason 
 or revelation one or the other of which must be sacri¬ 
 ficed, as if revelation was not the enlightenment and 
 perfection of reason, ‘ science or faith/ where faith, the 
 highest function of the reason, is made its acknowledged 
 incompatible. 
 
 Amongst the false antagonisms instrumented by the 
 word ‘ or/ is that, which divides knowledge into two 
 separate regions, one which is supposed to be derived a 
 priori, and another, which is derived a posteriori. There 
 is no knowledge, even the most immediately gained, 
 which has not both these two factors in it. You might 
 just as well separate e}msight into two methods, one de¬ 
 pending on the eye, and the other depending on the object 
 seen, as separate the knowledge gained by the action of the 
 mind, which is d priori , from the sensible fact, which 
 is a posteriori. Both are alwa}^s present in every act of 
 seeing, and so also of every mental cognition. The dis¬ 
 junction of ‘ induction or intuition’ is equally vicious. 
 For induction only leads to intuition, and ends in it, 
 when the mediating term falls away after having served 
 its mediating purpose. These belong to the same general 
 vice of setting two correlatives at variance by a disjunc¬ 
 tive see-saw fixed between them. And what makes the 
 see-saw between the couples of correlative truths, as 
 nature and grace, successful, is the usual detestable hypo¬ 
 crisy, by which the idea of an eternal antagonism 
 between them is inculcated under a pretended desire to 
 reconcile them both, as ‘ how are we to reconcile liberty 
 and authority/ Scripture and Church, science and Scrip¬ 
 ture, reason and religion ? This affectation of a wish 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 19 
 
 to reconcile, the two correlatives, only is a more 
 finished way of getting the endless chaotic war between 
 them all the more steadily believed in. 
 
 Of these killing disjunctions, so current in modern 
 speech, is the one, which would take away the criminality 
 of crime by presenting it as either social or political. If 
 f political,’ it ceases to be anti-social or criminal: as blow¬ 
 ing up an emperor in his palace or railway-carriage is not 
 anti-social or criminal, in the eye at least of a foreign 
 government — because the emperor is not merely an 
 individual man, but the political sovereign of the man 
 who aims at him. And that raises the aggression out of 
 the class of crimes. It might even be a virtue. Such is 
 the wonderful effect of turning social and political into 
 see-saw by the little word f or ’ set between them. 
 
 The like see-saw is effectual for hushing the complaint 
 about a real grievance—like being robbed. This would 
 be allowed to be real and substantial evil to the sufferer, 
 as long as it stands alone, as only robbery. But, if the 
 robber add insult, dishonour, and calumny, the whole 
 offence has no longer the credit of being real, according 
 to the principles of modern estimation. It then evapo¬ 
 rates into the category of a sentimental grievance. So 
 we are taught that the grievance of being deprived of 
 legal existence, as a religious order, is not 'practical or 
 substantial. The grievance is only theoretical. 
 
 The same dissolution is worked by other particles ; as 
 ‘ rather than,’ c but not: as when the robbery of all 
 religious societies is smoothly called ‘ political rather than 
 religious,’ and letting loose a pack of arbitrary officials 
 against the ritualist clergy, is called a measure ‘ rather ’ 
 of procedure ‘ than ’ of jurisdiction. Religious obliga¬ 
 tion and religious sentiment are insidiously opposed by 
 
 2—2 
 
20 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 Henan, when he says in his first lecture, ‘The religion of 
 the early Christians was a sentiment, not an obligation ;* 
 as if sentiments of piety and religious obligation could 
 not co-exist in the same mind. The same easy form of 
 contrarious see-saw turns the whole world of truth and 
 welfare into a universal discord. No two virtues, or 
 qualities, can co-exist in peace, according to the habit of 
 the modern Liberal mind. Which finds in any virtue or 
 truth no other use, but that of a lever for turning out 
 some other one of its fellow virtues, or fellow truths, and 
 then being itself pitched out after it, when no longer 
 wanted as an implement for lying with. Some of this 
 dissolving discord will be found planted, in every question? 
 proposition, or argument used by the parties of the world 
 outside the Catholic Church ; where alone the idea of 
 unity of Truth can find refuge. 
 
 Such are a few of the favourite dissolving and dis¬ 
 integrating practices, which sin uses for spreading dis¬ 
 cord and mutual antagonism in the harmonious realm of 
 God’s Truth, in order to propagate the Negation, with 
 which it is identified. That the tricks are successful to 
 the last degree, is owing to the unskilful habit of the 
 friends of Truth. These seldom show any of the serpent’s 
 wisdom. With no more suspicion than a tiy shows to a 
 net-weaving spider, they fail to notice the quiet trick, by 
 which the poison of discord is slipped in quite unper¬ 
 ceived, under some little innocent sounding particle, or 
 else by some assumed unspoken contrast. How r lament¬ 
 able a want of militant economy the Christian soldier 
 shows, when he fails, through customary familiarity with 
 such tricks of speech, to challenge at the very outset, the 
 disjunctions, by which the work is performed! If he 
 takes them or adopts them, the ‘or,’ the ‘but not,’ the 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 21 
 
 ‘ rather than/ and the other dislocating turns of expres¬ 
 sion, he is in no less foolish a position than a man unsus¬ 
 pectingly playing with another, who is using loaded 
 dice. As for saying that he and his fellow-disputant are 
 ‘ quite sincere/ it is not much to our comfort. If your 
 house tumbles over your head through the culpable 
 stupidity of the builder, what consolation is it to be told 
 that he was quite ‘ sincere ’ in making the bad construc¬ 
 tion ? It is the same with the Catholic’s mode of conduct¬ 
 ing controversy. Of what service will it be to the 
 damaged interests of Truth, to be told that, in accepting 
 the slily presumed incompatibility of reciprocal truths, 
 the parties in the controversy didn’t know, that they 
 were passing current a dissolving compound, by which the 
 whole fabric of truth would be made to crumble to pieces ? 
 
 vi. The Devil’s See-saw illustrated from Rdnan in 
 his employing the Pretext of devout Christian Faith 
 for banishing Belief in Christ , as well as in God and 
 the Soul. 
 
 Before quitting the demolishing artifice of the Devil’s 
 see-saw, I cannot resist the temptation of present¬ 
 ing another illustration of it from the arch-hypocrite 
 Kenan, of a more subtle mechanism, contrived for the 
 purpose of dissolving our respect for any determinate 
 religious belief as to a soul, its immortality, or a really 
 existing God. In subversion of which, as being only 
 coarse-minded ideas, what is the counterpoise he sets in 
 see-saw against them ? It is nothing else than the 
 ethereal charm of a deep religious devotion; which 
 stoutly refuses belief to any determinate object at all. 
 The example of this mode of see-saw, which M. Renan 
 usually adopts, is to be found in a passage of his lecture 
 on M. Aurelius: where, after admonishing us that the 
 
22 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 soul and its immortality is something, that Kant has 
 already pronounced to be inherently doubtful, and there¬ 
 fore unfit object for certain affirmation, he proceeds to 
 take up for his standing in opposition to them, the 
 Christian-like ground of an unhesitating devotional trust 
 in what we can’t see; such as the pious faith, which is 
 said to have been shown by St. Louis : whose belief in the 
 Blessed Sacrament was so firm, as to stand in no need of 
 evidence; the same faith as was commended in our 
 Lord’s saying, in His resurrection , 4 Blessed are they who 
 have not seen and have believed.’ On which words 
 Henan exclaims, just as if he were trying to recommend 
 faith without sight: ‘Charming watchword! eternal 
 symbol of idealism, tender and generous, which has a 
 horror of touching with the hands that which ought to 
 be seen only by the heart. Our good M. Aurelius was 
 on this point/ i.e., seeing with the heart, and unbelieving 
 with mind,—‘as in all the rest, centuries in advance/ i.e., 
 in advance of the Christian world, which shows such a 
 brutal liking for something certain to believe in. His 
 ‘seeing with the heart’ consisted, according to this en¬ 
 lightened Renan, on the contrary, is not caring a button 
 about such gross metaphysical questions as the soul, its 
 immortality, or God. And the indifference was all 
 owing, we are taught, to his having such an exquisite 
 piety, as could not bear the presence of an object for the 
 intellect, but saw only with the heart. ‘ Never did he,’ 
 continues Renan, ‘ dream of putting himself in accord 
 with himself concerning God and the soul.’ Whether he 
 has a soul or not is nothing to him, nor whether there be 
 a God or not. He is too spiritual to think of such 
 things. This devout carelessness about God and the 
 soul, which Rdnan chooses, for his own purpose, to attri- 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 23 
 
 bute to M. Aurelius, as something much to be admired, 
 was only the result in him of wonderful spiritual eleva¬ 
 tion, which was so great, that you must go to a modern 
 German infidel, before you can find a parallel to it. Here 
 are his words : ‘ As if he had read the “ Critique of Practi¬ 
 cal Reason,” i.e., of Kant, ‘he saw well, that when the 
 infinite is in question—no formula is absolute (though 
 infinite itself, makes part of a formula)—and that, in 
 such kind of matter, one has not any chance of having 
 perceived the truth once in one’s life, if one is much con¬ 
 tradicted.’ What is once ‘ seen as the truth/ is the idea 
 that, if you can’t deny God and the so’ul outright, you 
 can at all events say you don’t want to know anything 
 about them, because the thought of them would only be 
 an intrusion on the sanctity of your spiritual life. 
 
 The see-saw between definite religious belief and 
 spiritual piety comes out more avowedly in the next 
 sentence, in which deep moral conviction is alleged as a 
 counterpoising motive for upsetting the thought of a 
 first cause. And the separation of belief in first cause 
 from the sense of moral beauty is made the mark of a 
 lofty soul in M. Aurelius. In Renan’s own words: ‘ He 
 broke off with a high hand —il detacha hautement — 
 moral beauty from all fixed theology. He did not grant 
 to duty to depend upon any metaphysical opinion of the 
 first cause.’ 
 
 A fresh counterpoise is then added against the ex¬ 
 istence of a God objectively real, in the allegation of an 
 extraordinary interior sense of another god, who, it ap¬ 
 pears, is not encumbered with anything so gross as real 
 existence. 
 
 ‘ Never/ says this phrasemonger, ‘ was intimate union 
 with the hidden God,’— i.e., the God of Renan and M. 
 
24 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 Aurelius—‘ pushed to more unlieard-of tenderness (deli- 
 catisses ) ; i.e-., than by detaching duty and sense of moral 
 beauty from a belief in an existing God. 
 
 Borrowing the cast of this last sentence, we might 
 say : ‘ Never was intimate union with the father of lies 
 pushed to greater extremes of compound hypocritical 
 malice, than in the impudent see-saws of Kenan between 
 religious truth and religious emotion : in which, darkening 
 religion in the shadow of its own name, he would make 
 you believe that true piety, such as his own and M. 
 Aurelius’, is of so sublime a nature, that it cannot tolerate 
 the thought of anything so earthly as being indebted to 
 a first cause for one’s existence. If he is a disciple of the 
 Jew-infidel Spinoza, and of all the tribe of atheists and 
 agnostics, it is only because his soul is too refined to bear 
 the presence of anything rational in the understanding. 
 If he does not care to know anything about a God that 
 exists really outside himself, it is only because, like M. 
 Aurelius, he has such a glowing sense of a non-existing 
 God, whom he possesses within him. If he does not 
 believe a scrap of any religion, Christian or pagan, it is 
 not owing to unbelief, but, on the contrary, to his tran¬ 
 scending excess of faith, which is like that of the Christian 
 St. Louis and of the non-witnessing believers in the 
 Lord’s resurrection, whose hearts believed what they had 
 never seen. The purpose of the see-saw between reli¬ 
 gion and itself is to plant utter desolation of belief. The 
 plea used for scorning religious faith is the beauty of 
 believing ‘ without sight.’ The objects to be discarded 
 from our thought are all the Christian truths. And the 
 motive-power applied against the Christian truths is 
 assumption of intense Christianlike devotion. What 
 blackening of religion cannot be achieved if you only set 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 25 
 
 the Devil’s see-saw quietly at work against it, by appear- 
 ing against it in the credit of its own great name! 
 
 It is sad enough to have to contemplate such elaborate 
 perfidy in a Jewish apostate from Christianity. But one 
 thing still more noteworthy lies in the fact, that all this 
 varnished impiety was published with high honour by 
 the English daily press : in which was not one breath of 
 disgust or indignation to show that the English public 
 had the slightest interest in the honour of the Christian 
 religion, or penetration enough to see through the trick, 
 by which it was pushed aside, in the name of its own 
 teaching. After all, it is only a specimen of a habit 
 which has now become a system. 
 
 vii. Another Method for working out Negation, which 
 the Guardians of Truth accept, consisting in Debasing 
 Phraseology, or Good Words used in a way contrary to 
 their own meaning : illustrated by examples. 
 
 Congenial with the dissolving see-saw, by which the 
 evil spirit of Negation chiefly works its ends, is the tissue 
 of debasing phraseology, which it employs for the purpose 
 of mutilating and defiling the features of Truth. 
 
 This phraseology is always vicious in one way or other 
 —either from being directly false ; or else, if not false, 
 from being used in the service of falsehood: where 
 specious words are offered either in a partial sense, to 
 exclude something better, or in forming some treacherous 
 
 O' o 
 
 ambiguity. 
 
 Thus, of good words made to pass current for bad 
 things, we have ‘ education * where ‘ diseducation ’ should 
 be employed; as being the right term for instruction de¬ 
 liberately castrated of its better element, in order to cram 
 the learner’s mind with odds and ends, called ‘ national 
 science.’ 
 
26 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 ‘ Natural knowledge ’ is invidiously used by the ‘ scien- 
 tifics ’ as the only knowledge worth cultivating. 
 
 ‘ Secular ’ does not stand for ‘ honestly secular/ but 
 for ‘ secular ’ only , exclusive of religion; and thus be¬ 
 comes a lying expression, accepted without challenge by 
 Catholics, where the real thing signified is ‘ irreligious/ 
 or ‘ anti-religious/ 
 
 * Progress ’ is a verbal disguise for rapid decline from 
 whatever ennobles humanity. 
 
 ‘ Science ’ is taken for merely physical, or the science 
 of the sensible, to the exclusion of the science of the 
 reason and of the spirit, and their objects the intelli¬ 
 gible; together with the science of God. 'Fact’ is a 
 favourite word with most, not because they like ‘ facts/ 
 but because it sounds to them something which thev can 
 oppose to the reason —to theory and to 4 the abstract/ 
 
 So, too, ‘ experimental knowledge ’ is invidiously 
 thrust forward to exclude philosophy and logic, as if 
 logic was not itself experimental. 
 
 ‘ Culture ’ is a plausible pretence for smothering the 
 better aspirations of human nature. 
 
 ‘Institutions 5 does not stand for the planting of bene¬ 
 ficent public agencies, but for * de-institutions / in which 
 liberties are crushed and religious associations are 
 scattered. 
 
 ‘ Law/ in like manner, stands, not as it should do, for 
 the establishment of abstract justice, or for natural right, 
 but for any atheistic edict against the natural rights of 
 men; which, in order to get fuller freedom for destroy¬ 
 ing them, are denied to have any existence at all. In this 
 perversion the guardians of right acquiesce. 
 
 ‘Patriotism ’ stands, not for love of country, but for 
 hatred of the Church and all its benefits for men. 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 27 
 
 ‘Civilization’ stands not simply for the bettering of 
 natural life, but for the exclusion of religious culture— 
 legalized adultery and godless education. 
 
 ‘ Tangible facts ’ make a pretext for shutting one’s eyes 
 to their significance. 
 
 ‘ Practical.’ But foremost, perhaps, amongst the ex¬ 
 pressions, hackneyed in the service of fraud, is the 
 famous cant word ‘ practicalwhich, ever as it is in the 
 mouths of shufflers, stands not for the virtue of applying 
 the light of reason to our actual circumstances. This, 
 which is its true meaning, is furthest from its accepted 
 use. What it now serves to honour is the refusing place 
 to reason at all, and denying its entrance into the mind. 
 It is thus a very useful mask for irrational, inconsistent, 
 illogical, and unprincipled. Whenever any base thing of 
 this sort is required to be commended the word ‘ prac¬ 
 tical ’ is always brought forth for the purpose. That is 
 its real value at present. 
 
 Accordingly, ‘ taking a 'practical view of things ’ is a 
 universally received cover for meanness, selfishness, and 
 brutish contempt of sight. 
 
 ‘A practical man ’ is the never-failing title for one, who 
 is designing to make his escape from some obvious dictate 
 of reason or honour. It may usually be taken as filling 
 the place, where ‘ snob ’ would be the veracious expres¬ 
 sion. 
 
 As companions with ‘the practical man,’ may be con¬ 
 veniently sorted the three strutting phantoms, * states¬ 
 man,’ ‘statesmanlike,’ and ‘statesmanship,’ which, we 
 observe, are always drawn on to the political stage in 
 leading articles of our newspapers—especially the Stan¬ 
 dard —whenever the writers want to give what they 
 think a robust appearance to public unprincipledness. 
 
28 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 On these occasions it makes its appearance as a virtue, 
 under the title ‘statesmanship/ ‘ Statesman’ is, accord- 
 ingly, a commending title for a loose public man, who 
 prides himself for his smartness as ‘ a man of the world/ 
 in regarding public honesty as folly, because it is only 
 ‘abstract;’ and ‘abstract’ will not do for ‘a knowing 
 man/ 
 
 In the interest of shuffling and prevarication, we have 
 the phrases ‘ extreme opinions,’ ‘ violent language,’ ‘ in¬ 
 temperate,’ ‘ indiscreet.’ These are the ordinary epithets 
 for anything upright, straightforward, and intelligible. 
 Whatever is mongrel and debased enters into our 
 modern discourse as ‘moderate,’ ‘ wise,’ ‘ temperate,’ and 
 ‘judicious.’ 
 
 Then we have other words made instruments of direct 
 lies, to dignify the exact contraries of their real objects, 
 as ‘ sectarian,’ which has now become—with the con¬ 
 nivance of Catholics—a phrase for stigmatizing Christian, 
 Catholic and ‘ unsectarian/ 
 
 While ‘ unsectarian ’ also, with the connivance of 
 Catholics, is made to yield the rottenness of sectarian 
 and of ultra-sectarian infidelity. 
 
 In the same system ‘ doctrine ’ is for ‘ non-doctrine ’ 
 and ‘anti-doctrine;’ as ‘justification by faith alone ,’ 
 which is only a form of denying anything but a sterile 
 faith, and substituting really unbelief. 
 
 ‘ Theory ’ is taken to dignify anti-theory ; as Darwin’s 
 trumpery pretence of chance-selection as the cause of 
 natural species instead of creative design. 
 
 ‘ Principles ’ are universally made a name for ‘ non¬ 
 principles ’ or ‘ anti-principles;’ as, ‘ the principles of the 
 Reformation,’ ‘ of the Revolution,’ ‘ the principles of 
 Liberalism,’ etc. 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 29 
 
 ‘‘Greeds/ with full acquiescence from Catholics, and even 
 their adoption, stands for ‘ non-creeds * or ‘ mis-creed 
 as, ‘the creed of the materialist/ ‘the creed of the atheist/ 
 consisting in the denial of God. 
 
 ‘Beliefs’ is the word for ‘unbeliefs’ and ‘religious' 
 for ‘ anti-religious ’—fragments of the one religion. 
 
 ‘ Catholic ’ has ceased to signify ‘ meant for all/ or for 
 having universal right, or endowed with authority over 
 all. It is now used for the very reverse of all this. 
 What it stands for is universally devoid of right—hetero¬ 
 geneous—or that which all have their own authority for 
 despoiling. It is therefore no longer a title for the 
 public depository of the Divine revelation common for 
 all, but for the chaotic aggregate of private likings and 
 dislikings about it—not as being various in its unity, but 
 as heterogeneous in lawlessness; not therefore rightly 
 jealous of the full integrity of its intrusted faith, but 
 bound to be indiscriminate in welcoming every violation 
 of it. * A catholic-minded man,’ sometimes called ‘ a 
 many-sided man,’ and of course always ‘genial,’ is the 
 name for any loose fellow, who has no principle of his 
 own, and is not opposed to anything, so it be not fast to 
 reason or honour; ready to seem to agree with anyone. 
 It signifies a loose-minded man or a ‘ loafer.’ 
 
 Giving up the Catholic religion is called, even by 
 Catholics who should know better, ‘ changing one’s 
 religion,’ not renouncing it. 
 
 In the same spirit, ‘ Protestant Faith ’ goes everywhere 
 current, even with Catholics, for the Protestant denial of 
 faith. 
 
 ‘ A robust faith ’ is not the faith of one, who believes 
 firmly, or believes much, but of one who believes in little 
 else but what he can see and eat. 
 
30 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 ‘ Infidelity ’ is entitled ‘ Critical Theology,’ and 
 Atheism enters into the English language accredited as 
 ‘Negative Theology,’ as if it were a co-ordinate depart¬ 
 ment of it, along with moral or dogmatic. 
 
 Add to these the class of pompous emptiness such as 
 f modem thought,’ ‘ freethought,’ to dignify flippancy and 
 contempt of thought. 
 
 ‘Modern legislation’ and ‘the principles of modern 
 legislation,’ stand as received English amongst Liberals 
 and Conservatives, for turning the English State into an 
 impersonal engine for crushing out human dignity, and 
 interfering with private rights. 
 
 ‘ The fundamental principles of modern society,’ is a 
 mouthy phrase, which the Times is always using, to 
 excuse the English State in its uprooting all the natural 
 and Christian bases of the social order. 
 
 In keeping with these phrases the imposing word 
 ‘ State ’ is employed principally when a title is wanted to 
 prohibit men from saying their prayers without schismatic 
 intention, taking vows as members of association, or 
 associating together in the service of the Lord, or any¬ 
 thing else they have a natural right to do. These things 
 having, according to the Liberal mind, only a tolerated 
 existence, are not to be done without leave of the 
 omnipotent State : which now asserts itself practically, 
 and sometimes even doctvinally as God, free from all 
 obligations to moralit}\ Being, as in effect it claims to 
 be, the author of all natural liberty, it does not own to 
 the duty of being its protectory but can destroy it when¬ 
 ever it finds it expedient. 
 
 ‘ Forms.’ Remark especially the word ‘ forms.’ This 
 should designate properly the rich varieties of worth and 
 being in the world of nature and of man. It is made 
 
 O 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 31 
 
 to stand now for deforms, or mutilations of form, as in 
 the accepted phrase * forms of government ’ applied to 
 all the frightful deforms of government, as Republicanism, 
 Communism, Socialism, Constitutionalism, and other pri¬ 
 vations of the integrity and beauty of human society. 
 This perversion of the word ‘ form ’ for ‘ deform ’ belongs 
 to a very vast system, in which we find defects and 
 mutilations are regularly called by the name of what has 
 been allowed to survive the mutilation and deformation. 
 This is well exemplified in the high-sounding titles which 
 schismatics have sometimes chosen for their maimings 
 and mangling of the Ecclesiastical order. 
 
 Thus ‘ Episcopalian ’ is not used to distinguish Episcopal 
 from non-Episcopal, but from Papal, which is itself 
 Episcopal. Though made to stand for the absence of 
 Papal, or for being Popeless, it takes its name, not from 
 the defect, which really distinguishes it, but from what 
 the defect has left behind it, the remnants of Episcopacy. 
 And hence what is called ‘ the Episcopalian * form of 
 Church discipline is simply a headless deform, or Popeless 
 mutilate of the Church order. 
 
 ‘ Presbyterian/ which really means bishop-hating, in 
 like manner, does not honestly distinguish Presbyterian 
 from non-Presbyterian, but from both Episcopal, which is 
 itself Presbyterian, and from Papal, which is also Presby¬ 
 terian. It stands therefore as a mask for two acts of 
 mutilation, by which the Church would be deprived both 
 of its Pope and its Bishops. But, instead of veraciously 
 distinguishing itself by the frightful negative title of 
 Popeless, Bishopless deform of Church order, or by Pope- 
 and-Bishop-hating, which would truly describe it, it 
 invidiously takes a positive title, from the Presbyterian 
 element, which its mutilation has left behind, i.e., ‘ the 
 
32 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 Presbyterian form of Governmentunder which flag it 
 sails grandly down the stream of Scotch and English 
 history. 
 
 ‘ Congregationalism,’ meaning hatred of all ministerial 
 order, after the same law, does not distinguish its object 
 from ‘ non-congregational,’ or from not having congrega¬ 
 tions, which all have; but stands for the deform, remaining 
 after the three mutilations, depriving its followers of Pope, 
 of Bishop, and of Presbyter. But the mutilate does not 
 take its name from what it is —a headless, Bishopless, 
 Priestless deform, but from what itlyingl y pretends to be, 
 i.e ., distinguished from all others by the feature which all 
 have, of having congregations. 
 
 Every successive mutilation of a whole, or of a previous 
 mutilate, is thus dignified, like the headless monstrosity 
 Republicanism, or king-hating, with the title of ‘ form,’ 
 which ought never to be bestowed except upon that which 
 has a positive character. 
 
 Of ‘ treacherous ambiguities,’ the most notable one will 
 suffice. It is that one which has been supinely accepted 
 by Catholics at the hand of cunning Protestant trickery— 
 that is, the respectable sounding adjective, f denomina¬ 
 tional,’ invented by sectarians for the purpose of deceit, 
 and now applied with corresponding effect to education. 
 
 In this comprehensive phrase ‘ denominational,’ 
 Catholics are, with their own consent, politely put under 
 the same indiscriminate title, as that of heretics and 
 Atheists; so that the distinctive character of Catholic is 
 made, as was intended, to deliquesce, like snow in warm 
 water, without observation, into the formless mass of 
 heresy, with which it has contentedly taken a common 
 designation. 
 
 We must not forget to add a few of the brief and 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 33 
 
 expeditious canting phrases, under which desertion of 
 upright principle is sanctified under the name of virtue— 
 as sincerity, charity, filial obedience, respect for authority 
 for ‘ the law of the land,’ conciliation, fraternity, geni¬ 
 ality, union peace. All these—^properly names of the 
 best virtues—now serve as pretexts, by which the more 
 worthy is invited to merge his worth amongst the worth¬ 
 less—never for the worthless to raise himself to the 
 worthy. They are, therefore, employed as motives for a 
 Catholic's becoming a heretic ; but find an instance, if you 
 can, of their serving as a motive for a heretic becoming a 
 Catholic. 
 
 Here, then, are a few specimens of the way, in which 
 our English language, amongst others, is employed for 
 the purpose of giving currency to deceit, lies, perversions, 
 antagonistic see-saws, decorations of evil, and transposi¬ 
 tions of virtue and vice. It is no exaggeration to say, 
 that the whole body of our English language—to go 
 no further than our own—whenever credit, or discredit, 
 appreciation or depreciation has to be signified, has been 
 prostituted into a mechanism of hypocrisy, to the 
 effect of degrading the intellect of those, who use it, and 
 stifling their moral sense. How responsible then are 
 those, especially if they are gifted with intelligence and 
 education, who heedlessly trade in any such of its ex¬ 
 pressions, in which the interests of Truth are concerned ! 
 In passing current bad language, we are responsible for 
 propagating whatever infection it may embody. For 
 language is the medium of communicating evil, just as 
 much as it is of good, in society. Words when well used 
 are food and light to the understanding. If ill used, 
 they are its poison and darkness. All good and evil, 
 whatever dunces may say to the contrary, follow in the 
 
34 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 wake of words , especially favourite expressions, watch¬ 
 words, axiomatic phrases, extemporised political coinages. 
 These supply the repertory of ideas, on which the poor 
 popular intelligence has to feed. The parties, therefore; 
 who have the setting the fashion of phrases, really com¬ 
 mand society: which turns passively in the direction 
 of fashionable expressions, just as smoke runs in the line 
 of the prevailing wind. It is this subjection of the minds 
 of men to the influence of phrases, however shallow, 
 that is the secret of the success of Liberalism in the 
 world: which has relied on nothing so much as in posses¬ 
 sing itself of the resources of language for the purposes of 
 boasting and abusing, dignifying and vilifying. In this 
 it has been wise, because it has instinctively felt that 
 the sway over the mind must come by the medium that 
 convej 7 s thought—the sham thought as much as the real. 
 Where, then, this powerful medium is corrupted, as 
 the perpetual use of it to Liberalistic ends has made 
 it to be, the mind also, that daily adopts it unresis¬ 
 tingly, is itself made corrupt, and in its turn becomes 
 the channel to others of the same infection it has 
 itself contracted. When, then, the English language, as 
 all modern speech, has been for so long a time the servile 
 tool of falsehood, anti-philosophy and perversion, how can 
 an English friend of Truth escape the blame of fighting 
 along with the enemies of his own professed cause, when 
 he takes into his own mouth without sifting, the estab¬ 
 lished expressions of its pernicious phraseology; such, 
 as we just noted, about ‘forms’ for deforms of Govern¬ 
 ment, ‘ forms ’ for deforms of Christianity and of religion, 
 ‘ creeds ’ for non-creeds, ‘institutions’ for deinstitutions, 
 ‘ law ’ for regulated oppression, ‘legality ’ for established 
 lawlessness, ‘ State ’ for the public agent of persecuting all 
 
THIS PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 35 
 
 man’s rights, natural and polititical, ‘ science 5 for advance 
 in uncertainty, * education ’ for diseducation, * sectarian : 
 for unsectarian and entire, ‘Catholic’ for heterogenous 
 and infidel, ‘ practical statesman , 5 for public timeserver, 
 and ‘ statesmanship ’ for perfidy; with all the other 
 innumerable tricks of English and modern speech, framed 
 to promote the interests of falsehood, not merely to fact 
 but more especially as to principle. To use its verbal 
 mechanism after the modern Englishman’s own way, is 
 only training the understanding in the exercise of pre¬ 
 varication. Those friends of Truth, therefore, who 
 wilfully put on the yoke of its lying phraseoIog}g are 
 only efficiently working as self-made bondslaves in the 
 service of the falsehood that oppresses them. For every 
 perverted expression which touches the interests of 
 Truth, is loaded with a weight of reason, all turned the 
 wrong way: which acts against the Truth-holder, who 
 accepts it, not simply as conclusive in argument, but even 
 as tantamount to the practical defeat of his own cause. 
 Good, therefore, as the cause is, it is forfeited duly by the 
 Truth-holder, according to the right of logical consequence, 
 whenever he has heedlessly resigned himself to the use 
 of the phrases of modern English, as administered by the 
 gibbering masters of our literature, periodical, or other¬ 
 wise. Their dialect contains a denial of every principle 
 his cause should depend on. In making himself a 
 party to their language, he naturally loses, as he deserves 
 to do, the good cause he would maintain. When, then, 
 the cause of Truth is held captive, as it is by the demon 
 of Negation, theTruth-holder, not being a Truth-defender , 
 has no right to complain. The loss is owing only to his 
 cfwn unmanlike stupidity, in adopting with his e} 7 es open, 
 under no other force but his own lifeless will, the use of a 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 perverted dialect, in which all that he should resist is 
 sanctioned, and all he should hold sacred is renounced. 
 
 All-powerful engine as language is, for demoralizing as 
 well as for enlightening, we find, nevertheless, that 
 Catholics, under whose disposal it is, just as much as of 
 their adversaries, have, with a dead listlessness, resigned 
 the working of it wholly into the hands of the various 
 ignorant mischief-makers opposed to them. Where have 
 they been known to contribute the sign of a thought of 
 their own to the public life of the country ? What per¬ 
 version have they been known to correct ? They have, 
 on the contrary, accepted all the perversions of language 
 which have been already enumerated, and then employed 
 it in the same demoralizing direction, in which their own 
 adversaries set it for them. In the whole reign of the 
 English political vocabulary could we find the Catholic 
 using any word, but what the Protestant anti-philosophy 
 of Liberalism happens to give him ? His political talk is 
 simply that of an English Conservative, or an English 
 Liberal, or some mongrel shade of English. Anything, 
 so it be void of a distinct Catholic character. And if he 
 is asked why he never dares to offer an idea of his own 
 to the age, in which he lives, to help it out of its quag¬ 
 mire of errors, he tells you that this surrender of his 
 thought to the fashion of his misleaders is only his 
 unpretending form of taking a patriotic part in ‘ the 
 national life of his country/ from which he would not 
 like to separate himself. It is thus that he would dignify 
 his spiritless desertion of his own community, under the 
 pretence of a great public spirit. 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 37 
 
 2. The Prostrate Condition, to which the Christian 
 Truth-holders have brought themselves, by Pas¬ 
 sively ALLOWING THE PARTY OF NEGATION TO HAVE 
 the Lead in Fixing all Phraseology to Suit 
 Themselves. 
 
 Taking account of this conduct, we may be better able 
 to bring within our view the relative situation, in which 
 the holders of Christian Truth stand to those of anti- 
 Christian Negation. The situation of the Christian 
 Truth-holder, then, may be likened to that of a man 
 playing chess with another, whom he has habitually 
 allowed to outrage all the rules of the game, in insisting 
 upon taking away his opponent’s pieces off the board 
 as he pleased—setting the remainder just as he liked, or 
 obliging him to make the moves that suited himself best. 
 And, in order to forestall him from making any just 
 complaint, he raises a cry that he himself is being dread¬ 
 fully injured, invaded, and threatened by his encroaching 
 fellow player. Then, under the plea that further restraint 
 is needed against him, he knocks him over, as being 
 an ignorant and violent fellow, always acting in such an 
 indiscreet and intemperate style, that he ought not to be 
 allowed to play at all. If this were the position of the 
 beaten chess-player, it would not be at all worse than 
 that, in which at present the reduced cause of Christian 
 Truth stands in logical equity towards the triumphant 
 negation of it, as represented in the timid Catholic 
 towards the overbearing Protestant,—the Christian apolo¬ 
 gist towards the scoffing Materialist,—the friend of poli¬ 
 tical justice towards the unprincipled Liberal statesman. 
 This is a degree of humiliation on the Truth-holding 
 
38 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 side, which might be thought bad enough. But it does 
 not nearly reach the description of his case. His state is 
 rather like what would have taken place, if the ill-treated 
 chess-player should deem it the height of prudence to 
 manifest acquiescence in the condition, to which his 
 previous want of spirit had reduced him, and praise his 
 oppressor as being fully desirous to show fair play. 
 
 And this is the case. For hundreds of years—and 
 still mure, perhaps, the last fifty years ; and now more 
 than ever—the Truth-holder has been so drilled by his 
 empty, bullying adversary into submission to his as¬ 
 sumed superiority, that, with some few exceptions, almost 
 all who have not abandoned Truth seem content to hold 
 it at the pleasure of their adversaries. In this contented 
 state they seem to have even forgotten that they have 
 any rights in logical equity at all: which accordingly are 
 now all in the undisturbed possession of the enemy. 
 
 The only portion in logical equity which the poor 
 Truth-holder now occupies in front of his victorious 
 enemy, is merely such a vestige of freedom, as would 
 survive after a long and unsparing contest, in which the 
 Truth and its rights had been time after time so dis¬ 
 honourably surrendered, or so weakly defended, that there 
 existed no longer any tribunal for its vindication. And 
 so it is now. There exists no public authority in human 
 society, to which the Truth-holder can appeal for rightly 
 conducting the interests of truth or right. 
 
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TRUTH DESCRIBED. 39 
 
 3. The Truth-holder left, in consequence of his 
 previous Neglect of Self-defence, without any 
 Appeal for Right outside his own Self-vindi¬ 
 cating Power, as holding within his own Con¬ 
 science the Offices of Party", Judge, Law, and 
 Tribunal. 
 
 If, therefore, he would defend, as well as hold , his 
 Truth, he must make up his mind to the fact, that he 
 has no other tribunal now for his right against error, but 
 within his own conscience. 
 
 There are no rules, even conventionally acknowledged, 
 for conducting the contest with the agents of Negation. 
 The Truth-defender, therefore, must find in his own con¬ 
 science all the authority for the rules, by which he would 
 maintain it. There exists no judge to administer any 
 rules. The Truth-defender, therefore, must be also his 
 own judge. 
 
 There are no impartial spectators to encourage him 
 with their cheers or effective help. His own conscience 
 also must provide all the encouragement he has to ex¬ 
 pect. Subdued by the attractions and bullyings of the 
 army of Negation, the friends of Truth are some of them 
 pretty well reconciled to error, or else but tamely op¬ 
 posed to it. And many of those who still stand to the 
 Truth are too prudent to utter a word against its foe. 
 But little help can be expected from them by the Truth- 
 defender, until he can first show them, that he can help 
 himself. His conscience in the meantime must be his 
 only friend. 
 
 He must frankly recognize the fact, that the state, into 
 which he has to enter, is a state of war : which, as it has 
 generally been carried on only on one side, he must take 
 
40 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 now up for himself on the other. In this enterprise 
 against an enemy, who will give his cause no quarter, he 
 must be ready to look for trustworthy help to nothing 
 but God and his own conscience. 
 
 If, then, he would not be resigned to having his rights 
 in Truth kept from him, even within the narrow com¬ 
 pass of his own private mind, he can look for no share in 
 logical equity, but what he can win for himself according 
 to the right of war, by the cunning of his own single 
 hand. 
 
 How, then, to secure that portion is a skill, which it 
 therefore concerns him well to possess. The only friends 
 he has to rely on, must be what he afterwards makes 
 himself. Till that he must be prepared to be his own 
 fighting man, his own general, his own army, his own 
 law, his own tribunal, and his own judge. 
 
IT. THE POLICY TO BE PURSUED BY THE 
 GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 
 
 The Business into which the Truth Defender has to 
 
 ENTER IS THAT OF 
 
 1 .—A War. 
 
 We have seen from the last chapter, that anyone 
 who would be a defender of the Truth, as well as its 
 friend, must frankly recognise, without any attempt at 
 self-deception, the dead fact, that there is being carried 
 on more vigorously than ever against the Truth he holds 
 dear, an exterminating warfare, which can never reach its 
 contenting level, until it has completed its annihilation 
 amongst men, by sinking it all, whether Christian, or 
 natural, in the one abyss of universal Negation. Thither 
 it is, that the enemies of Truth hasten of set purpose; 
 and, after them, are drawn along captive, sooner or later, 
 its Conservative friends; who always tell you they ‘ can’t 
 help it. They needs must/ 
 
 ii .—to be undertaken without waiting for animating 
 
 examples. 
 
 If, in opposition to the irresistible current of anti- 
 truth, the defender of Truth would wish to lend his 
 help towards saving any little portion of its sacred 
 interests, he must at once give up waiting till the many 
 weak friends of Truth have become its champions: which 
 
42 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 is not to be expected of them. They have been hitherto 
 as a body unanimously leaning to the enemy conciliation- 
 wise. That is not the disposition, from which they will 
 unanimously turn round, to pull together like brave men, 
 the contrary way against him. To wish it, as so many 
 content themselves with doing, is a mere womanish 
 dream, and a very vain one. Pulling together the right 
 way against the stream of lying Negation, could only be 
 the gradually formed result of an animating example, set 
 by a few—a very few—honest minds, capable of assum¬ 
 ing independence. It could never be the spontaneous 
 instinct of the many, however well disposed. Their 
 instinct is not to pull at all, but to be pulled together, 
 like brute matter, whichever wav the brn multitude that 
 is nearest to them may lean. The encouraging vision 
 therefore of a great enthusiastic party, springing up all of 
 itself without leaders, to move together against the pre¬ 
 vailing current of anti-truth, must be put entirely outside 
 the expectations of the friends of Truth. 
 
 Neither must he wait to see springing up to his relief 
 a professed Order of select brave-hearted crusaders to 
 undertake the cause of Truth, now left deserted before 
 the attacks of the world. There is no such body of 
 Regulars to take him up into their organization. In the 
 army of Truth very few have the thought of fighting for 
 their cause. The most characteristic function they show 
 of an army, is the business of making a prudent retreat 
 before the enemy, like f practical men ’ or men of ‘ tact.’ 
 Of those, who would undertake the work of defence, some 
 scores may be found who carry shields ; but very few 
 who carry swords. And the use of the sword, or of any 
 weapon of offence, is looked upon by most in the camp of 
 Truth, as Quixotic, or out of date in this age. This is the 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 43 
 
 reason why he, who would do anything in the defence of 
 Truth, must also do it himself as a free lance, or volun¬ 
 teer, single handed . 
 
 iii.— according to a\ metliodj adapted for practical effect. 
 
 But, to make his zealous disposition available for 
 good, he must well understand, from what spring it is, 
 that the deciding forces of the battle of Truth and anti¬ 
 truth really tlovv. The originating source is not in the 
 region where the} 7 show themselves in ultimate effect: as 
 in the walk of literature and education, science, law, 
 Government and politics. Parliamentary business and 
 electioneering. 
 
 These are the practical departments of human life, 
 where the force of contest is felt at last. But they are 
 not the seat of the vital force itself, from which the stir of 
 battle is fed. The fountain of all the war-waging power 
 in the interests of Truth lies in a more secret part, outside 
 the manifest region of the practical, and above it. What¬ 
 ever has not its root in a region above the practical will 
 never itself become practical, so as to make its bodily 
 appearance as ripened fruit, in the great market of public 
 life. To have any place there, is the lot of only such 
 things, as have first merited the honour of being present 
 there, by having first passed through the condition of a 
 private nurture, in a more abstract region of existence. 
 
 (a)—directed to the mind , which falsehood now occupies 
 —the true seat of practical power. 
 
 And what is the secret abstract region, in which the 
 virtue of all the practical has its seat ? It is the meta¬ 
 physical region of the minds of men. Whose invisible con¬ 
 ceptions are the irresistible cause, that determines the 
 
44 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 character of all human practical movements, as a ship’s 
 rudder determines the course of a ship. What is done in 
 the metaphysical region of the mind is, has been, and ever 
 will be, sole sovereign over material practice, good or evil. 
 
 Whence arise civil disorders—shooting at landlords for 
 possessing their land, withholding rent, and all the prac¬ 
 tical beginning of civil war. Not from anything already 
 embodied, but from an action as yet metaphysical—resolu¬ 
 tions taken within the secret chambers of the mind, 
 disturbed by images coming from the minds of others. 
 
 Whence arise beneficent institutions, charitable organi¬ 
 zations. From the same metaphysical region stirred 
 by the spirit of benevolence. 
 
 (6)— operating’by real ideas to supplant the mock ones. 
 
 The practical then is never anything else than the con¬ 
 cretion of an abstract idea, that the mind has generated 
 invisibly. This, first made audible in word, is then made 
 tangible in thing. In that state it is rightly called the 
 ‘practical.’ If, then, the practical ever takes its place, it 
 is only because it previously had a vigorous life in the 
 state of metaph} 7 sical conception. 
 
 Where, then, there is no abstract idea to precede, 
 there can be no practical to follow. Where there is 
 nothing secret and invisible, there will be nothing public 
 and cognizable. Where there has been nothing meta¬ 
 physical in power, there will be nothing physical in act. 
 In the region lower down than that of mind, we have the 
 world of the physical—things past, not future—results 
 already determined—not determining causes. But it is 
 determining causes, not determined results, that we want 
 for future practical good: which must have its principles 
 of growth in no other field than the metaphysical part of 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 45 
 
 men—their mind. It is there, that the action of Truth, 
 like that of untruth, must begin in its working for prac¬ 
 tical edification, as anti-truth does in working for practical 
 mischief. 
 
 Whatever public aim therefore in favour of the 
 interests of Truth and Eight does not take for its mark 
 the free capacity of the minds of men, leaves untouched 
 the fountain, from which alone any force can issue for 
 efficient action. The public battle of Truth and falsehood 
 is not to be fought according to the misbegotten, blunder- 
 
 O O cD 7 
 
 ing notions of your self-styled ‘ practical men/ Super¬ 
 ficial, blind, averse to reason, ever aiming outside the 
 mark—at mere consequences, not at vital causes , they 
 feebly suppose, that they are doing a good stroke of work 
 for their cause of right, by dabbling about in grounds 
 already preoccupied by opposing wrong, in helping to 
 send members to Parliament, and electioneering work 
 performed inside a ballot-box by a crossed ticket. The 
 ballot-box and ail its agencies are wholly in the posses¬ 
 sion of practical rottenness. Eottenness alone therefore 
 can find a representative there. If, then, anyone not 
 a friend to rottenness, would coniine himself to such sort 
 of service in the cause of God’s Truth, as his ticket inside 
 an English ballot-box can work in the English world, he 
 might just as well give up his pretending to fight for the 
 Truth at all. 
 
 But yet the ballot-box teaches us one great lesson—in 
 its being a witness to the virtue of metaphysical action. 
 Which it is in this—that the possession of it by its 
 masters, as of all other parliamentary agencies, was 
 gained first of all by their addressing their contemporary 
 generation in its mind. Which they did most persever- 
 ingly through books, speeches, and popular sayings, aptly 
 
46 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 framed for the purpose of unteaching them— i.e., teaching 
 them to think and talk like fools. And if they were 
 taught to do this so effectually for mischief afterwards, it 
 was onty because they had been first judiciously touched 
 in that metaphysical quarter, which was the fountain of 
 all their practical—their poor heads. 
 
 There, then, in the mind, in the region of independent 
 thought, outside the mechanism of what is called ‘ prac¬ 
 tical politics,’ outside all existing secular institutions, 
 which are at present pre-engaged and retained for the 
 business of snobs and ignobles, lies the true field of 
 action, which must determine what shall afterwards be¬ 
 come practical for good. 
 
 Without previous and continuous operation of free 
 mind upon mind, all other agencies that the professed 
 friends of Right would employ, however bustling and 
 showy the} r may appear, are but mere playing in the 
 gutter of human affairs—labour wasted only to waste 
 the heart with disappointment. The invitation to take 
 part in it should be avoided as a mere seduction to self¬ 
 degradation. If zealous appeal to the minds of men in 
 the ordinar} r modes, which the devihs agents employ so 
 well on their side, be neglected, the whole principle of 
 the practical is neglected. And the mode, in which the 
 devil’s agents stir men’s minds is by spreading what 
 looks like doctrine and ideas. This gives us an answer 
 to the question, ‘ What is the first requisite for an 
 efficient worker in the interest of Christian Right here 
 in England V It is the abiding sense, that practical 
 efficiency for it can come only by direct address to the 
 thought-conceiving minds and consciences of men, as 
 
 O O 1 
 
 being the one and only spring of all that is to be after¬ 
 wards embodied in actuality, bad or good. For the sake 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 47 
 
 of that one fountain of practice, all concern for instituted 
 and now preoccupied fashions of procedure may be, for a 
 season, at least, safely abandoned, as luring only to the 
 shipwreck of all our invaluable ability—that of free 
 mind. 
 
 (c )—in bold Language, matching the boldness of the 
 
 imposing falsehood. 
 
 Thither, therefore, to the mind, must be the direc¬ 
 tion of all the Truth-defender’s efforts. For the forces, 
 which the Truth-defender has to rely on for doing his 
 small stroke of work in the interests of Religion and 
 Truth, are the same as those of his enemy the Truth- 
 assailer, viz., the forces proper to Truth itself: which 
 are the same on both sides. Whether Truth, or the 
 devil’s anti-Truth—each takes its operating influences 
 from one side only—that of Truth. Because Truth alone 
 has any native force for swaying the minds of men. The 
 other side, anti-Truth, has absolutely none of its own. 
 All it has therefore to rely on for working on men’s 
 minds, is simply what it can keep on pilfering from its 
 opponent Truth, consisting in semblances of Truth,— 
 scraps and partial sayings, grand sounds, piteous appeals, 
 airs of nobleness and open-hearted candour, making up 
 a fine stock of lying appearances. 
 
 All these assumed representations, made out of the 
 native property of Truth itself, gain their effect on the 
 mind by seeming to the vulgar like ideas. For ideas, or 
 else their seemings, non-ideas, are the form, in which both 
 Truth and anti-Truth take up their place in the mind as 
 its moving impulses. Thus if ‘ Catholic faith ’ presents 
 an idea or coherent thought for Truth, anti-Truth has 
 on the other side its non-idea, or an incoherence to imitate 
 
48 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 it, of ‘ Protestant faith which sounds to the vulgar ear 
 just as much like an idea, as the idea itself, to which it is 
 set as counterpoise. All these mock ideas, being them¬ 
 selves without vital coherence, contain, nevertheless, in 
 their jumble, some reality for their material, as ‘faith,’ 
 and ‘Protestant;’ which give them an attractive or 
 repulsive power, like to that, which the original ideas 
 have, for charming and terrifying the imagination of 
 such as have no discernment of their incoherence. Those 
 who have nothing else but their uninstructed piety to 
 guard them against the delusions of Truth-mocking 
 Negation, will naturally be swayed by them. 
 
 If, then, in counteraction to the noxious dominion of 
 mock ideas, the Truth-defender would mean real work 
 against the Truth-destroyer—the Apollyon ; let him first 
 turn his back for good and all upon the mob of drivelling 
 dead-weights, who are always calling themselves ‘ practical 
 men,’ and then resolve within himself in fellowship with 
 the wise of every generation, that the only application he 
 can employ for raising a forcible action in the world of 
 men for Truth and Right, is that, by which the usurping 
 mock ideas of the Truth-destroyer are resisted. And the 
 only fund of resisting force is the substance of genuine 
 ideas, thrown into the spring of all human practice, the 
 human mind. For as the mind is the organ of all effort 
 for Right, its ideas alone are its instigating power. 
 
 This brings the Truth-defender practically to the 
 business of taking up for his arms and spear in the 
 service of Truth, not the preoccupied mechanism of the 
 dumb Protestant ballot-box, on which so many Catholics 
 rely as the best organ for defending the Catholic Church 
 in England, but the mind-moving instrument which ballot- 
 boxes cannot touch—free speech, which is the sensible body 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 4£* 
 
 that the energy of ideas assumes for its vehicle between 
 man and man. This vehicle has been hitherto allowed to 
 be undisturbedly occupied by the noisy traffickers in 
 Negation: who have got themselves possessed of all the 
 creditable language of Truth for spreading abroad their 
 non-ideas. To what mischievous success may be seen well 
 enough exemplified in the career of the prostituted word 
 'legality/ This good word ‘legality/ like the words 
 ‘ authorized ’ and ‘ unauthorized,’ was once used to 
 express a real idea, distinctive of order as against dis¬ 
 order, of authority against rebellion. And in this position 
 it was the mark of attack for the forces of revolutionary 
 disorder. But when these same revolutionary enemies 
 had once climbed up into the seat of the authority, which 
 they had displaced, they then assumed for their own non¬ 
 ideas all the creditable titles belonging to the ideas, which 
 they had before denounced, as 'obedience’ to the ‘law of 
 the land,’ and ‘ authority of the state' These, therefore,, 
 now, instead of signifying the personal fountain of 
 liberty-preserving law, has come to stand as a title of 
 an impersonal machine for crushing out human liberty. 
 Amongst these imposing titles, the pretence of ‘ law,’ or 
 ‘ legality,’ like ‘ authority,’ is now accordingly unceasingly 
 employed by the successful party of disorder more than 
 ever it was before by those whom they scouted for using* 
 it. The nest of Atheistic usurpers now in France flourish 
 the phrases ‘law - ’ and ‘legality’ as a whip, with which 
 to flog the poor children of order, in return for their 
 having tamely surrendered their own proper credit into 
 their hands, by way of conciliating them. 
 
 In this transposition of creditable words, like 
 * legality ’ from the side of Bight, to that of its contrary,, 
 the side of Bight, be it noted, suffers more than a 
 
 4 
 
50 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 double loss. Its first loss is that of the credit of legality 
 for themselves. The second loss is—that what they 
 themselves lose , is added also as force to their enemies, 
 which is doubling their first loss. Then, when the 
 enemy puts their own stolen credit of ‘legality’ into 
 actual play against their bereavement of the same ; these 
 stand not merely deprived of their credit as keepers of 
 the law, but are forced to suffer the discredit of rebels 
 against it. This brings to their enemy a third augmen¬ 
 tation of advantage over them in amount of credit; 
 which would in arithmetic be called, not merely double 
 the difference, but the square of the difference in credit 
 and discredit. And when, furthermore, the worsted 
 party seals this multiplication of their two previous 
 losses by censenting to it, they themselves multiply over 
 again the whole difference in advantage, which they 
 before allowed their enemy to gain over them. 
 
 The same self-multiplying force of evil for progress in 
 success is terribly exemplified in England in the mis¬ 
 application, to which Catholics have given their tacit 
 consent, of the word ‘ conscience the credit of which 
 the English Government, of course with national ac¬ 
 quiescence, has, in its anti-conscience clause, transferred 
 from the Christian part}q who have a right to it, to the 
 anti-Christian, who have no right to it. And these last, 
 now strong in the power of public sanction, enjoy all the 
 honour of conscience undisturbed. Hence arises to the 
 true children of conscience the threefold injury just 
 before described. The first of which is having their own 
 credit of conscience taken away from themselves. Which 
 is bad enough. The second is having their first loss 
 doubled , in the lost credit 'passing over to the advantage 
 of their infidel adversaries, who assign it all to themselves. 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 51 
 
 The third injury—worse than the other two—is having 
 the two former losses not merely increased, as by addition, 
 but actually multiplied together, to form a product; 
 which happens as soon as ever the adversaries bring, as 
 they do, their own increase of credit into active play 
 against the proportional increase of discredit in their 
 victims. The product thus arising becomes equal to the 
 square of the first difference in credit: all which has 
 grown out of the first privation. 
 
 Thus the injury, which the transfer of credit from the 
 right to the wrong side brings to the losers, is one, which 
 increases against them at every step of its way in a 
 geometrical ratio. Of such sort is the power which the 
 public authority of England has won for the anti- 
 Christian against the Christian by merely transposing the 
 credit of ‘ conscience 5 from the Christian side to the side 
 of the anti-Christian. What wonder, then, with this ad¬ 
 vantage, it should have succeeded in fixing a legal stigma 
 against the Name of God in education, as being an ‘ undue 
 influence 5 against the conscience, by which freeborn 
 Englishmen are oppressed in their sacred rights of dis¬ 
 senting, non-conforming, disbelieving and blaspheming? 
 All this liberty for evil has been achieved through the 
 advantage, which the party of Right have allowed their 
 foes to get over them by stealing from them the native 
 credit of Truth, even though only in the worth of one 
 single word, ‘ conscience . 5 All this unmatched advantage, 
 which the use of language carries with it, has lapsed 
 from the side of right, to swell the resources of wickedness, 
 which now is able to cover its own naked hideousness in 
 the dress of conscience and virtue that belong to Truth— 
 its stolen vesture, its stolen credit, its stolen majesty and 
 titles. All these the supine trustees of Truth have 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 fatuously let slip away from themselves into the hands 
 of their rapacious enemies, by leaving the fair and equal 
 field of independent self-assertion to be solely at their 
 command. Those, therefore, left with almost -unchecked 
 liberty to strut about the world as the legitimate 
 functionaries of Truth, apply to their own vile ends 
 without intermission all its winning powers of language, 
 its voluble phraseology, its power of popular address, its 
 dignified reproofs, its bracing watchwords, its rousing war- 
 cries, its soul-stirring appeals, and all its shows of 
 reasonableness, which the Divine author of speech meant 
 for swaying the minds of men to good. Its bravery has 
 been all surrendered to the impudent enemy by the 
 cowed friends of Truth. And in their surrender of the 
 administration of language is the real secret of the 
 captivity, which the Catholic populations are at present 
 undergoing under their foes. That captivity is voluntary. 
 It has been voluntarily procured, and is now as voluntarily 
 endured by them. They have the absolute power of 
 liberating themselves, and even of overcoming the 
 adversaries. They have at their command all that their 
 adversaries have, and more. Why, then, do they not 
 use it ? It is because they are suffering a mental 
 captivity under the fascination of overbearing public sin, 
 which blinds them to their own all-sufficient power. 
 They don’t know their power; they won't know it. 
 And they try to increase their blindness by keeping 
 their eyes fixedly staring at the dazzling world of parties 
 and empty politics. In this worldly engrossment their 
 backs are turned upon the invincible basis of all their 
 own political and social power, which is their position as 
 Israel, the people of God, His nation and kingdom. 
 This is forgotten ; and that is the reason why the grand 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 53 
 
 voice of all-subduing Truth is not heard from them. 
 Lying alone now possesses all their rightful share in the 
 language of Truth, its name, dress, and glory. In that 
 allowed usurpation is the real cause of the present 
 triumph in the world of falsehood over Truth, which the 
 Truth-defender should make it his business to under- 
 stand. 
 
 iv. In proportion to the employment of which it is, that 
 the success of the battle varies. 
 
 For it is in proportion to the assiduity with which the 
 language proper to Truth is employed—either falsely or 
 truly—whether by its native children or by its usurping 
 enemies, that the issues of the warfare between Truth 
 and Negation have turned to one or the other side. All 
 the things of men are in the power of their words. 
 
 And as the words of Truth and Light have been 
 applied most energetically in these latter days by the 
 usurping party of Negation, while the other party have 
 been losing heart more and more in the work of affirming 
 it; it is no wonder that the party of Negation, which set 
 out with nothing of their own, should now seem to 
 possess almost all the honours of Truth ; and the friends 
 of Truth, who set out with all , now seem to be reduced 
 to almost nothing. Sin with its Protestantism, Repub¬ 
 licanism, and Materialism, hold next to undisputed sway; 
 and Truth is ashamed to show its head, or has to be 
 content to crave a little indulgence of liberty under it. 
 
 v. Now, consequently, threatening to end in a Total 
 Transposition of the due places of Truth and anti-Truth. 
 
 The natural consummation, to which this successful 
 encroachment of Falsehood upon Truth tends, would 
 seem to be—that in the close of the world-long struggle 
 between them both, there will have come to pass a 
 
54 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 complete transposition of the rights of each to the other. 
 Privative Negation, the essence of evil, which at first had 
 nothing , will be found possessed of all the might and 
 honour of Truth; while Truth, which at the beginning 
 had all, will be left as an abomination, with nothing but 
 its naked right, covered with all the shame that belongs 
 to desolating Negation. 
 
 O O 
 
 2. This warfare against Negation requires, on 
 
 THE PART OF THE TRUTH-DEFENDER— 
 
 i. A zealous struggle in our Lord's cause of Affirma¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Such being the description of the enemy, with whom 
 the Truth-defender has to deal, the way of proceed¬ 
 ing efficiently against him requires that he should be 
 as 'instant in season and out of season,’ ‘instant’in 
 pressing forward the interests of his cause of Truth, as 
 the cunning adversary is in pressing forward the cause of 
 anti-Truth; the means of doing which should be as 
 directly opposed to the means used by the others, as the 
 nature of the one is opposed to that of the other. For 
 the nature of anti-Truth, being that of Negation, that of 
 Truth is therefore affirmation . As the Negation is un¬ 
 limited and unmixed, except in so far as it is expedient 
 in practice to seem coloured with something less repul¬ 
 sive ; so, on the other hand, affirmation is unlimited in 
 its reach. As Negation is always increasing in volume 
 and intensity, so Affirmation should always be seeking 
 to extend its domain in depth and breadth. The spirit 
 of Negation has, after its lying nature, got itself called 
 ‘ Positivism,’ the technical name proper to Truth and 
 certainty. The spirit of Affirmation, which is necessarily 
 positive, is true ‘ Positivism;’ the title of which the 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 55 
 
 Truth-defenders should vindicate for themselves from its 
 usurpers. As Negation has for its office the ‘ denying all 
 things,’ Affirmation has that of ‘ believing all things.’ 
 As Negation seeks to win its way by making things 
 doubtful, loosening, obscuring, confusing, disintegrating, 
 and always keeping at least indeterminate ; so affirma¬ 
 tion has for its mode of operation that of ascertaining, 
 proving, sifting, confirming, determining, enlightening, 
 and organizing. Negation is not simply intolerant, it is 
 intolerance in se, as we see in Protestantism, whose 
 raison d'etre is to spite the Faith, not to affirm it. The 
 only check which its spiteful nature abides, is that which 
 it cannot help. Affirmation, on the contrary, is not 
 simply benevolent. It is one with benevolence itself, 
 but, per accidens , it is unswervingly and eternally in¬ 
 tolerant of its contrary, and of all that its contrary works 
 by. The two, Affirmation and Negation, stand against 
 each other as Health and Disease. Whatever is said of 
 one pair of contraries may be said of the other pair. As 
 the art of lying is the art of advancing Negation, so the 
 art of Truth is that of advancing Affirmation in all its 
 dimensions. The soldier of Truth is therefore the soldier 
 of Affirmation. And as Negation, like disease, misses no 
 opening for worming or forcing its wa}7- to annihilate the 
 affirmative and certain; so the soldiers of Truth or 
 Affirmation should miss no opportunity of getting an 
 advantage against the agencies of Negation to help in 
 expelling it from the borders of creation. 
 
 ii. Carried on with a courageous scrutiny of the pre¬ 
 tences assumed by the Negationist. 
 
 But, for the edifying work of promoting the interest 
 of Affirmation, there is required in its competent servants 
 a courageous determination to pierce through these hollow 
 
56 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 semblances of Truth, which the Negationist has been 
 quietly allowed to assume for himself, in order to recom¬ 
 mend his empty objects as having some positive value. 
 
 It is with this view that he always employs positive¬ 
 sounding terms to cover bald negations, by using good 
 words for bad things, as well as bad words for good 
 things. 
 
 Thus an unbeliever in Christianity chooses to distin¬ 
 guish himself from the Christian, not by describing him¬ 
 self truly as an ‘ infidel,’ but under the more decent title 
 proper for those who believe in God—which is ‘ J)eist.’ 
 This, therefore, is the title he assumes. Hence it is, that 
 the name of a believer in God, or Deist, has now become 
 a distinguishing name for infidel, with the assent of 
 Christians. * For,’ says the Christian defender, f Why 
 should you disturb yourself about the infidels taking the 
 name of Deist, or believer in God. It is of no im¬ 
 portance. Deist is only a word. We all know what it 
 means.’ 
 
 So the spoliator of proprietors clothes himself in the 
 attractive appearance of zeal for ‘ the poor and working 
 classes.’ This is assumed by him without question 
 asked by the friend of order; who will tell you, ‘ It is of 
 no consequence, “ friend of poor and working classes ” is 
 only a phrase. Lying phrases can do no harm.’ 
 
 Then the Atheist, generally posing before the world as 
 a zealous promoter of ‘ science,’ calls himself by the name 
 of ‘ secularist,’ i.e ., one who belongs to the present age of 
 the world. The honour of being connected with the 
 present age of the world is thus reserved only for Atheists 
 —those who disbelieve in a future state. ‘But what 
 does that signify V says the Christian complacently; 
 
 4 secularist is only a word. The Atheist is perfectly 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 57 
 
 welcome, for our part, to take it all to himself if he 
 pleases.’ 
 
 The same reforming class, when intent on banishing 
 
 O 3 O 
 
 religion from education, advocates its banishment in the 
 sacred name of 4 conscience the credit of which has 
 now, by force of unchallenged custom, become a special 
 privilege for enemies of religion. 4 But where’s the harm 
 of that ?’ thinks the Christian defender. 4 Their taking 
 exclusively to themselves the credit of 4 conscience. ’ 
 breaks no bones in us. Conscience is only a creditable 
 word.’ 
 
 The miscellaneous party, of which these characters 
 and the like are ingredients, always take care to proclaim 
 themselves as the 4 harbingers of a bright future! Which 
 is to consist either in no redemption, 4 no future state,’ or 
 in no right of property, no religion, no God, no Christ. 
 The work of bringing on this 4 bright future’ is thus to 
 be the special charge of infidels, reformers, despoilers of 
 every sort. ‘But where is the harm of their assuming 
 all these grand things to themselves,’ says the easy- 
 minded Conservative. 4 We are not going to alarm our¬ 
 selves simply because a set of men choose to spread lies 
 about the world. Lies are only words. They break no 
 bones.’ 
 
 To these assumed positive titles, in which the agents 
 of Privation know how to disguise their aims, we may 
 add further the grandiose recommendations of their 
 hollowness, consisting in eloquent language having the 
 air of philanthropy, nobleness, high principle, conscien¬ 
 tiousness, tenderness for the poor 4 working classes.’ 
 
 Devoid as these pretences are of all substance, they 
 nevertheless have a soul-subduing influence, which gives 
 to them, when left to take their place unchallenged in 
 
58 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 customary language, a success, which is beyond all com¬ 
 putation, for engaging most of the world in favour of the 
 falsehoods they are used to cover, if not actively, at least 
 in quiet submission to them. The sure conquest that 
 well-dressed lies have, naturally follows from the credulous 
 character that marks most men; of whom only a few 
 think of challenging the validity of the exterior profes¬ 
 sions, by which their assent is solicited. 
 
 This uninquiring temper of mind naturally yields an 
 unchecked advantage to the seductive arts of prostituted 
 language, which the trustees of Truth have allowed the 
 Negationist hypocrites to adopt for the purpose of 
 recommending their privation as plenty, and their evil as 
 good. 
 
 Hackneyed as these showy tricks of language are, they 
 hardly ever fail, through the tame acquiescence of 
 Christians, to win from the gullible multitude, male and 
 female, a favourable hearing for the parties employing 
 them;—Negationists of every class, as Atheists, Infidels, 
 Sectarians and Politicians, Conservative and Liberal, who 
 have made their way in society by the art of painting 
 evil as good and good as evil. Hence arises the necessity 
 for the Truth-defender, if he be sincere, of learning how 
 to detect the showy artifices of language, so as to be able 
 in some slight degree to counteract the immense influence 
 for evil, which the employers of them have obtained for 
 themselves. These, in the strength of their popularity 
 which specious lying has gained for every thing unworthy, 
 have been able to win for themselves the most honourable 
 places of influence in human society, through the weak¬ 
 ness of the trustees of Truth ; who have supinely allowed 
 the pretenders to take for themselves, along with the 
 creditable titles of Truth, all the incalculable advantages, 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 5D 
 
 which the credit should bring in its rear, the highest 
 positions in the walks of literature, politics, and science. 
 All these positions, which are rightfully departments in 
 the territory of the Positive, have passed away into the 
 possession of the Negationist enemy, as entirely as 
 Catholic Westminster Abbey has passed into the grasp of 
 the anti-Catholic Establishment. And the obtainers of 
 these stolen positions, clothed in the prestige of philan¬ 
 thropy, education, civilization, etc., enjoy in them the 
 most commanding position in society for holding the mind 
 of the world captive to the reign of ghastly emptiness. 
 
 When, then, this has obtained such a firm possession 
 for evil by virtue of flourishing perseveringly the exterior 
 semblance of Truth, the only possible chance of shaking, 
 or of making any impression in the slightest degree in its 
 reign, is by the courageous exposure of the plausible 
 artifices,by which it has been maintained; and these are, 
 the use of good words for bad things, and of bad words 
 for good things. It is the exposure of this prostitution of 
 language for evil purposes, which ought to hold, as it has 
 not yet, the highest 'place in the business of those, who 
 would seek, in opposition to the mischievous Negationist, 
 to promote the Divine interest of Affirmation. 
 
 The knight of Truth is therefore bound by the con¬ 
 dition of his office as defender, to probe with searching 
 insight the specious semblances of Truth, under cover of 
 which the agencies of evil have won their advantage. 
 
 iii. In which he must aim , after our Lords example , 
 at Overcoming , instead of merely Evading the arts of the 
 enemy. 
 
 But in applying his detective skill against the arts 
 of Negation, he, as Affirmativist or Positivist, must 
 not be content with any lesser aim than that of over - 
 
60 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 coming, after the example of the Leader of all workers in 
 the interest of the Positive—our Lord Himself, Who, 
 when the Jewish gainsayers beset Him with their captious 
 questions, was not content merely to save His threatened 
 Truth from imminent defeat by an evasion, but aimed at 
 winning for it an unconditional ascendencj 7 . This in¬ 
 tolerance in Him sprung from the same principle as that, 
 which made Him tolerate all hostilitv that was levelled 
 
 t/ 
 
 against His own individual life. And that one principle 
 was unswerving constancy in affirming the rights of God 
 against sin, in the two opposite presentments it offered to 
 Him—that of rendering Him debtor to God for offences, 
 and the other in its attempts to entrap Him into a con¬ 
 sent with it. These two operations often required from 
 Him as faithful to God’s honour in resisting them, two 
 opposite modes of facing it: the one lamblike , in suffer¬ 
 ing justly for the offence for which He had made Himself 
 responsible ; the other lionlike , in combating against it. 
 But these opposite moods, the active as well as the 
 passive, were determined in Him out of the same spirit 
 of fidelity to the honour of God, in labouring against his 
 enemy, sin. For this duty required, on one side, from 
 Him as Sponsor for man, a resistance to sin in the evil 
 consequences it had already succeeded in working upon 
 mankind, by paying the due penalty for the dishonour, 
 which mankind, whom He represented, had through it 
 inflicted upon God. This He did, by accepting patiently 
 all injuries levelled against His own individual state— 
 even to death. This atonement completed the passive 
 part of His sacrifice of praise in affirming the rights of 
 God offended. 
 
 The same right of God required from Him, on the 
 other hand—as faithfully standing for God’s Truth— 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 61 
 
 the more active form of resistance to sin—by uncom¬ 
 promising intolerance of it, when presenting itself in 
 malicious attempts of hypocrites and gainsayers. On 
 these occasions He was ever ready in defence of the 
 assailed Truth, to come forth to combat unsparingly in 
 vindication of it against all dishonouring touch. And 
 this He carried out, even to the overthrow of the 
 aggressors. These had often, on meeting Him, to skulk 
 away before the force of His withering invective. How 
 different was His manner of righteous indignation, from 
 that creeping consent to accept all insulting contradic¬ 
 tion, according to the policy of conciliating enemies. 
 Compromise of the Truth entrusted to Him was never 
 found in Him. He sought no other means of conciliating 
 enemies than that, which aims at humbling them. 
 
 No other should be the policy of His followers, little 
 or great, private or public. They must always strive at 
 overcoming. Though the ascendency they would have, 
 will never be obtained, what they have to strive for is 
 nothing less than ascendency. Trying merely to screen 
 one’s self from the enemy by buying him off with a 
 sacrifice of part of the Truth, will not serve even to save 
 the cause for the moment. For if temporary safety 
 alone, through compromise, or conciliation, is meditated, 
 without seeking to overcome, the main cause is left still 
 in the enemies’ hands, more even than before. And 
 when the enemy holds the mastery, escape is impossible. 
 There is nothing, therefore, but self-betraying weakness 
 in being content simply with preserving oneself on a 
 pinching occasion, or serving the time. To overcome is 
 the only prudent aim, which, whether it is to be success¬ 
 ful or not, is the only one ever worth while attempting. 
 And to fail in the attempt to overcome, even many times 
 
62 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 or even always, has more safety in it than to succeed in 
 making an escape. 
 
 iv. By Intellectual Shill, applied not only to enlighten 
 the well-disposed, hut to confound the enemy. 
 
 And this attempt should be made by the use of the 
 legitimate weapons of Truth—and Truth itself, armed in 
 its own native power for maintaining itself in the world. 
 For earthly honour is the product of only two things, the 
 contraries of each other: one is falsehood, arrayed in the 
 likeness of Truth ; the other is Truth itself in its own 
 likeness. These alone can reign, because these alone 
 operate in that faculty, which is the mainspring of all 
 power amongst men—the mind ; where falsehood acts 
 by the seeming light of mock ideas, like those of Victor 
 Hugo and Renan. Truth acts by the light of real ideas, 
 like those of positive science and of scholastic philosophy. 
 Whatever, therefore, proves the power of impudent 
 falsehood amongst men, shows the power of courageous 
 affirmation of Truth. Because Truth alone supplies to 
 falsehood the winning guise proper to affirmation, by 
 which it can lead the mind. 
 
 If, then, we see what an enormous power falsehood 
 wields, simply because it is equipped in Truth-like ap¬ 
 pearances, the same argument only proves how unlimited 
 a power Truth itself would find in the world, if its 
 trustees were always to present it in its own command¬ 
 ing shape, by bravely affirming its honour in their public 
 testimony to it. It is this practical power of boldly- 
 avowed Truth and boldly-denounced falsehood—not 
 worldly-wise prudence or conciliation and gentlemanly 
 fellowship with wickedness—in which the Truth-de¬ 
 fender must trust for his means of opposing the power 
 of falsehood in the minds of men. 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 63 
 
 But, in order that the Truth, which we rely on for its 
 own guardianship, may be efficient against its enemies, 
 it must be employed in the spirit, in which our Lord 
 used it, when in congress with His enemies. And that is 
 —not as to f riends , for teaching or persuading—but as a 
 weapon to confound them. For the character of His 
 enemies did not admit of a friendly proffer to them of 
 the Truth, set in a calm, constructive way. This manner 
 is only for studious disciples. Nor either were they fit 
 for such measured dialectic method, as would be repre¬ 
 sented in the alternate modes of players in a game of 
 chess or in a Platonic dialogue, where there are acknow¬ 
 ledged rules and a security of their being observed fairly 
 on both sides. This is only for fair disputants. But our 
 Lord’s enemies were neither disciples nor fair disputants. 
 The} 7 were cavillers, and He therefore did not answer 
 their questions as He did for His disciples, or even as 
 much as He did to the timidly inquiring Nicodemus. 
 To His insidious foes He presented Truth in a posture 
 apt only to confound—not to teach, or to teach only in 
 confounding, by words sent from the mouth as stones 
 from a sling—not as a gift from the hand. A like need 
 of combative skill remains as the inheritance of all our 
 Lord’s followers ; to whom betides the duty of encounter¬ 
 ing the enemies of His Truth now. The only attitude, 
 which Truth-loving reason has accommodated to the 
 needs of unprincipled adversaries, is that, in which it 
 seeks first of all to humiliate them with its teaching 
 stroke—not the impossible task of instructing them in 
 friendly conference. 
 
 v. From a Standpoint of Independence. 
 
 But, in order to give the confounding power of Truth 
 its proper purchase, its stroke must be delivered, not under 
 
64 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 leave of the enemy, but from an independent standpoint of 
 equality, according to the requisite condition of logical 
 equity—very different from the abject position, which 
 modern Catholic trustees of Truth have so often been 
 content to take up; not neutral ground, but inside the 
 jurisdiction of their own insolent enemies, who would 
 bind them to frame their arguments within such lines 
 and such conditions as they themselves choose to fix. 
 Thus, in reply to a wild and flippant challenge made by 
 some infidel to demonstrate to him the inspiration of 
 Scripture, the innocent Christian champion will take 
 the whole responsibility of answering for the claims of 
 Scripture upon himself. His engagement is therefore 
 like a game undertaken by a player, who should venture 
 all the stakes himself, without requiring any stake from 
 his opponent; and after that deposit his stakes into his 
 own opponent’s hand. If, after these preliminaries, he 
 should then, at his opponent’s bidding, commence the 
 work of winning the game from his opponent without 
 pieces, or without power to make his own moves, the 
 policy he would be showing would not be a bit more 
 stupid, or self-selling than that show T n by our generous 
 Catholic controversialist, who would take upon himself 
 the whole risk of establishing the honour of scriptural 
 inspiration, without requiring the challenger of it to 
 undertake any like risk himself in his impugning it. 
 After charging himself with the burden of proof, he 
 makes the impugner himself the umpire of the whole 
 contest. On such terms it is that he sets about the work 
 of winning from him a favourable verdict for scriptural 
 inspiration ; and that must be done by a pleading in 
 which he must, by virtue of his very contract with him, 
 make use of no argument which is taken from grounds 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 65 
 
 not allowed by the challenger himself, who allows 
 none. 
 
 How stands, then, the honour of the inspiration of 
 Scripture staked in the hands of the scoffing infidel ? It 
 stands simply as a culprit before a judge in a court, not 
 neutral, but that of the infidel himself, or at the best as 
 a witness fixed in a box before a cross-examiner. The 
 better and the more theological his arguments shall be, 
 the more certainly will they bring upon the cause the}^ 
 support, the return of ridicule, dishonour, and further 
 contempt. And most deservedly so. For this is only 
 the legitimate consequence of his imprudent neglect of 
 logical equity: of which the first thing before all en¬ 
 trance upon argument, is to know on what terms you 
 stand with your adversary. This has been entirely 
 omitted by our supposed Truth-defender : who, without 
 any care about equal terms, has allowed the intruding 
 challenger to set the question for discussion—to put him 
 just where he pleases on his own ground—to demand 
 whatever he^ pleases—to put away all arguments and 
 evidence just as suits him. 
 
 In submitting to all this, the Truth-defender allows 
 his adversary to make a fool of him. He has acknow¬ 
 ledged his right to dictate to him what he may fight 
 about—the place within his lines where he is to fight— 
 as well as the arms, which he may use in fighting. 
 
 Such a sort of standpoint is not that of equality, but 
 of subjection. It is, therefore, not the one, from which 
 any wholesome shafts of Truth can be sent forth by the 
 Truth-defender for bringing his adversary to reason. 
 
 The standing ground, which the real skilful defender 
 will take, is not like that of a charmed rabbit before a 
 snake—but one selected after our Lord’s own fashion. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 In confounding His cavilling adversaries, He did not 
 allow them to hold Him in their string, or to set to Him 
 the terms, in which He should give them their answer. 
 He would not let Himself be forced to give a categorical 
 answer ‘Yes/ or ‘No/ or ‘So it is/ On the contrary; 
 standing outside their lines and terms of dialectic, He 
 entirely ignored their right of questioning Him aggres¬ 
 sively. This is the reason why we find Him so fre¬ 
 quently leaving their questions without any direct 
 answer, but rather turning the questions upon the 
 questioners themselves, with a reproof and vituperation: 
 as when they tried to trip Him up by a see-saw set 
 between duty to God and duty to Caesar, concealed in 
 the question whether it was ‘ lawful to give tribute to 
 Caesar or not/ There was a question, which would have 
 been said, according to our approved fashion of talking 
 nowadays, to ‘ deserve at least a polite answer render¬ 
 ing the precise information required. Because, however 
 much the Pharisees might be opponents, the opponents 
 were at least gentlemen/ Our Lord treated their 
 question as deserving of neither. Because it was put in 
 hypocrisy, as He knew. Instead, therefore, of submitting 
 to be held in His reply within the tether of their terms. 
 He at once shook Himself free of their usurped logical 
 jurisdiction, and took for Himself, without asking their 
 leave, the standing of independence which logical equity 
 gave Him, saying, ‘ Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ? 
 Show me a penny/ In seizing their question at once by 
 its head, in its malicious motive, as a personal offence to 
 Himself, a teacher of the Truth—not as an inquiry after 
 Truth, He baulked them from advancing a step beyond 
 their first question: so that all further discussion under 
 their own lead was at once rendered impossible to them, 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 67 
 
 and they felt confounded by His reply. And the reply 
 took its confounding force from this: that, instead of 
 being offered apologetically and conciliation-wise* it was 
 sent by Him from a standing-ground suitable for meeting 
 His hypocritical cavillers—that of an equal right with 
 them to take a lead in the discussion. It was this pur¬ 
 chase of a free-standing, that gave to His reply the effect 
 of thrusting them back into a fit state of confusion for 
 receiving afterwards a drenching shower of satisfaction 
 thrown at their first question in the answer, ‘ Render unto 
 Csesar the things of Csesar, and to God the things of God/ 
 The fashion set by Him, is the one, which all defenders 
 of His Truth, should take as a lesson, in choosing their 
 standpoint against the unbelievers* heretics and infidels 
 of our own day, who now succeed to the place of the 
 Jewish prevaricators. If we want to send any shaft 
 which may profit them, those who undertake it must 
 stand by themselves on their own grounds, clear and 
 separate from all complicity with the enemy, where they 
 can at once, previous to all debates, refuse him his 
 assumed right of setting the question to be asked, or the 
 terms on what it is to be debated. 
 
 3, In the Spirit of complete Disengagement from 
 the Enemy’s toils, the Truth-defender should 
 
 —AFTER OUR LORD’S EXAMPLE OF ACTIVE-RESISTANCE— 
 
 i. Set at nought the Enemy's usurped pretences of 
 Loyalty , Science, Scripture, etc. 
 
 In this spirit of perfect disengagement from the 
 enemy’s authority as to right of standing on the terri¬ 
 tory of Truth, or of using its instrument of language, let 
 the independent Truth-affirmer, as a soldier of counter¬ 
 revolution, set at nought the titles, which the enemy 
 
 5—2 
 
68 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 impudently usurps to himself as champion of liberty, 
 science, loyalty, and Scripture, etc. 
 
 These pretentions should receive from him the same 
 treatment, as that which our Lord Himself showed to 
 those of His Pharisaic adversaries, who presumed to 
 confront Him, as if they were the representatives of 
 Moses and the Prophets, and of Caesar, taking to task one 
 who was a rebel against all of them. 
 
 Such assumed superiority of title was never for a 
 moment tolerated by Him. He refused to see in those 
 hypocrites better representatives of the Law and the 
 Prophets and Caesar than He was Himself. On the con¬ 
 trary, He affirmed against the pretenders His own right¬ 
 ful position as fulfiller of the Law and Prophets, in which 
 they professed to believe; He sent them back to learn of 
 those very authorities of which they professed to be to 
 Him the exponents; referring them, as an argumentum 
 ad hominem, to the Scriptures they pretended to think 
 so much of; where they would learn, that He Himself 
 was the one spoken of, and they themselves the nullifiers 
 of their sense. For this reason He Himself, as the right¬ 
 ful representative of Scripture teaching, urged against 
 them its own vituperating words, ‘Ye hypocrites, well 
 did Isaias prophecy of you, saying, “ This people draw 
 nigh to Me with their mouths, and honour Me with their 
 lips. But their heart is far from Me. In vain do they 
 worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of 
 men.” 1 Such was the re-acting spirit, in which He met 
 the enemies of His Truth. However gentle and unre- 
 servingly communicative of Truth He was to docile 
 ignorance, He never would allow His honour as the ful¬ 
 filler of the Law and Prophets, to pass into the hands of 
 the presumptuous cavillers, who only sought to undo 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 69 
 
 their fulfilment under pretence of seeking for fair discus¬ 
 sion about them. And the like sort of unyielding treat¬ 
 ment should be shown to those, who, whether designedly, 
 or as inert mediums of a false tradition, are busy only in 
 overthrowing the interests, of which they profess them¬ 
 selves to be the special patrons. As when they march, 
 against the friends of Truth, order, and religion in the 
 sounding names of loyalty to Caesar, or as champions of 
 Liberty, Scripture, and Science. The cant of these 
 empty braggarts of Negation should prompt the watch¬ 
 man of Truth in the interest of well-ordered reason to 
 treat their puffy pretensions with rebuke, with mockery 
 and disdain, and, as its trusty exponents, to turn against 
 them the edge of the very authority, of which they falsely 
 profess to be the upholders. 
 
 ii. Undertake no burden of Proof not required by 
 Logical Equity . 
 
 The next point in dialectic economy, which the Truth- 
 defender must, on pain of losing all his position, observe, 
 is not to suffer himself to be let in to the simpleton’s task 
 of undertaking on the enemies’ terms, the onus probandi 
 of any of the truth he holds (as the truth of miracles) at 
 the bidding of the adversaries : which would imply that 
 they were his rightfully-judging accusers, and he the 
 rightfully accused. 
 
 Such a step would be a weak-minded acknowledgment 
 of the adversary’s jurisdiction over him, which the simple 
 friends of the Truth have but too frequently made, out of 
 their mistaken idea that the insulting challenge to prove 
 their doctrines was a good opportunity for their attempt¬ 
 ing to satisfy an honest desire to be convinced of the 
 Truth. Impelled by this fond persuasion, the zealous 
 maintainer of miracles commits himself to an idle waste 
 
70 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 of well-constructed reasons upon those, who only wanted 
 to harass him by demanding them of him. The attempt 
 ends simply, as it naturally might, in the bitterness of 
 disappointed confidence, and the further profanation of 
 the honour of the Truth, which he essayed to justify. 
 
 The acknowledgment of the adversary’s jurisdiction 
 over himself, which it practically is, is the least of the 
 damage resulting from hastily undertaking to render 
 satisfactory proof of one’s belief when assailed. In re¬ 
 verse of which, the method, which logical economy would 
 dictate, should be that of our Lord Himself: Who, when 
 the Pharisaical party of Negation demanded of Him ‘ a 
 sign/ refused, knowing that they were not seeking a 
 sign for a guide into Truth, but as an insolent challenge 
 to Him, who had given signs already. For which reason 
 He declared that ‘No sign ’ should be given, save one; 
 which they would laugh to scorn—the sign of Jonas the 
 prophet, in His resurrection. So, too, when after having 
 flogged the money-changers out of the Temple, and cursed 
 the barren fig-tree, the enemies of His truth demanded 
 f by what authority he did these thingsHe refused to 
 tell them, upon the strict grounds of logical equity, as 
 having no less a right in the territory of Truth than 
 they. Standing stiffly upon this ground, He gave them 
 to understand, that He would not tell them His authority, 
 unless they could first tell Him, as indeed they were 
 bound to do, whether they did or did not, acknowledge 
 the baptism of John. And as they could not give an 
 honest reply to that preliminary question, He said, 
 ‘ neither will I tell you by what authority I do these 
 things/ Instead of that He treated them to two parables, 
 in which they found themselves denounced as less likely 
 to go into Heaven than the publicans and harlots; and 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 71 
 
 then as a set of robbers and murderers of ‘ the Lord of 
 the vineyard/ and as liable to be ground to powder for 
 coming under the crushing fall of the ‘ stone of the 
 corner.’ This only shows how sternly our Lord, the 
 model soldier of Affirmation, guarded all His rights in 
 logical equity from any disrespectful touch, by refusing, 
 on principle, to offer proof when demanded, otherwise 
 than in good faith, for the purpose of learning the truth 
 as children. 
 
 This wise behaviour is the example for His disciples, 
 now, in Truth guarding, never to allow their zeal for 
 justifying their Truth to beguile them into a surrender 
 of their own ground in logical equity, by undertaking 
 a costly expenditure of their best treasures of reason 
 upon captious adversaries, who only put forth their 
 demands for proof as a way of boasting, that the demands 
 cannot be satisfied. 
 
 iii. Demand from the Assailants proofs of his own 
 right to attack. 
 
 Instead of that, they should rather use the right, 
 which dialectic equity gives to the party assailed on 
 his own territory, of making counter-demands upon 
 the assailant, as to the authority he has assumed. This 
 rule of common law—and common sense—is generally 
 omitted, or but feebly and ineffectually followed by 
 the Truth-holder in his submissive style of dialectic. But 
 in neglecting to require satisfaction from his adversary to 
 show his right of calling him to account, he not only 
 tacitly admits that the adversary has a righteous claim to 
 demand from him an account of his belief, but admits 
 along with it, that he himself has no equal right to ask 
 satisfaction for being invaded on his own territory. 
 
 This logical iniquity consisting of a transposition of 
 
72 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 the merits of right and wrong, is a feature, which we see 
 present throughout the whole controversy between the 
 insolent agents of Negation and the craven trustees of 
 Truth. 
 
 Here again for our guidance we can get some help from 
 the before-cited example of our Lord Himself, when He 
 turned upon His cavilling besiegers counter-questions, by 
 which He would bring them to a sense of their empti¬ 
 ness, saying, ‘ I also would ask you a question. The 
 baptism of John, whence was it ? From Heaven or 
 from men V And again, with the view of confounding 
 them, ‘ What think ye of Christ ? whose Son is He V 
 And when they said ‘ of David/ He turns upon them with 
 the question ‘ How, then, does David in spirit call Him 
 Lord/ ‘ How is He then His son V How efficacious 
 the use of His logical right of demanding was, we see 
 from its result, that ‘ from that day forth they durst not 
 ask Him any questions/ 
 
 These and many other instances of self-assertion and 
 and self-respect only show how unexceptionally jealous 
 our Lord always was, that His dialectic right should not 
 suffer any diminution in His hands. His example might 
 encourage the Truth-holder of the present day in a firm 
 determination not to forego the use of the inexhaustible 
 right, which his affirmative position gives him, of putting 
 questions to those, who are arrogant invaders of the posi¬ 
 tive territory of Truth, of which he himself is a free 
 citizen. 
 
 iv. Not allow the Adversary to draw him away from 
 his proper basis of*Argument. 
 
 Another caution, which the care for logical equity will 
 dictate to the Truth-guarder, is not to allow the adversary 
 to draw him from his own standpoint in argument, to 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 73 
 
 some false ground of his own, upon which he would like 
 him to stake the issue of his cause. Which is sure to be 
 attempted. As, for instance, when the French infidels would 
 try to make the Christian people rest the whole right to 
 associations as Religious Orders and congregations upon a 
 decision of the fictitious question, whether they had been 
 authorised by the State or not. This is a surreptitious way 
 of getting in underhand the recognition of an antecedent, 
 or underlying mock-principle, viz., that State Authority 
 is the foundation of men’s rights to associate as a congre¬ 
 gation. Which it is not, never was, or could be. The 
 right of association for religious purposes, or for charity, 
 or for trade, is the legitimate growth of natural freedom 
 inherent in the members of society; which the State is, 
 of its own duty, bound to recognise and protect, not to 
 put down, or treat as something to be restrained. 
 
 If the State, therefore, arrogates to itself a claim to be 
 the fountain, of a right in men, which belongs to man as 
 man, and to Christian as Christian, it is guilty of an 
 invasion of their natural liberty, instead of being, as it is 
 bound to be, the protector of it. 
 
 And this false claim is what the French Atheistic 
 tyrants are now straining hard to compel the Christian 
 congregations to acknowledge in their practice. 
 
 And if the congregations should weakly allow them¬ 
 selves to make such an acknowledgment, they would be 
 forsaking the invincible position they possess upon the 
 ground of natural inalienable right, and letting them¬ 
 selves fall into the trap of a false anti-principle, which 
 their atheistic enemies had prepared for them. 
 
 Nothing can, therefore, be more vital for anyone’s 
 safety than to take care to have the setting of his position 
 on his own ground, and not to allow the enemy—such 
 
74 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 as the French State—to put him just where it pleases, so 
 as to hold him captive within the grasp of a false postu¬ 
 late of their own. 
 
 v. Make a Sceptical Examination of the Adversary's 
 phraseology, which is always fraudulent. 
 
 Another point which militant economy requires of the 
 defender for keeping any hold upon his territory of Truth, 
 is to keep a sceptical watch over all the enemy’s use of 
 phraseology. Embodying, as it does, the organic structure 
 of Truth, language, wdien perverted, is the most subtle 
 instrument that the power of falsehood uses for main¬ 
 taining its dominion in the minds of men, as it does 
 in all the verbal shapes, in which it casts questions for 
 discussion, and the modes of discussing them, as was 
 partly described in the last chapter. This misleading 
 action comes from the convertible, or, rather, pervertible, 
 nature of language itself; which may be made the instru¬ 
 ment of either of two very contrary things—one of cant 
 for demoralizing, and the other of proper diction for 
 enlightening. This two-handed character makes lan¬ 
 guage the real weapon, with which the battle of Truth and 
 anti-truth must be fought, if it is ever to be fought 
 at all. Whoever has the direction of its phrases, whether 
 for cant and slang, or for honest rhetoric, has so much 
 victory in his own hand over the pliable minds of men. 
 The amount of mastery, or of depression in either will 
 vary according to the varying prevalence in public of the 
 two opposite applications of rhetoric, whether as honour¬ 
 ing Truth in its watchwords, or as honouring falsehood 
 in cant and slang. It is in this service, as an instrument 
 of cant, for transposing the titles of right and wrong, 
 that our English language is now universally abused, 
 in all its denoting powers, to an extent beyond the 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 75 
 
 power of more than imperfectly estimating. Steaming 
 forth day by day incessantly in volumes, like effluvia, 
 from an open drain, from the minds of our press¬ 
 writing men, corrupted in all their thinking by a debas¬ 
 ing materialism, it spreads its enveloping influence over 
 the understandings of its recipients, as closely as the 
 drain-sent vapour clasps the body of the breathing man. 
 And as the foully-laden atmosphere shows its baneful 
 power in engendering disease, or else in lowering the 
 bodily health down to a temper compatible with its 
 impure self; so the constant action of the prostituted 
 medium of English thought, impregnated with the spirit 
 of lies, reduces the unsuspecting understandings of those, 
 who mentally inhale it, to a habit accommodated to its 
 own demoralizing strain. And that habit is one, in 
 which all the native principles of human reason are sub¬ 
 verted. If example of this were wanted, only look for a 
 moment how in the modern English mind the wholesome 
 idea of vital form , as contrasted with brute matter, is 
 absent from every thought that wins its way into speech, 
 except when it is wanted for lending to something 
 worthy a contemptible imputation; while the only things 
 that are allowed to have any honour as essential or 
 determining, must be those, which have the servile 
 character of tangible matter—dregs, inert dregs—the 
 dregs of organisms in nature for causes of life ; the dregs 
 of society for the sources of sovereign power and decisive 
 wisdom in politics ;the dregs of the people for authority, 
 to be appealed to in religious government; the dregs 
 of doctrine for spiritual food in religious teaching; the 
 dregs of knowledge for mental culture in education. 
 These are the stuff that modern English thought upholds 
 for the leading principles of all its things, its economy, its 
 
76 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 politics, its philosophy, and its religion. All might be 
 briefly summed up together in one formula ‘ the human, 
 worship of dregs.’ It is dregs accordingly, to which the 
 present administration of the English language gives its 
 best places of honour, while the terms which it possesses 
 for signifying baseness are unfailingly transferred to 
 whatever is life giving, essential, and abiding, as the 
 words form and 'principle. It is for this reason, that 
 such a contemptuous employment is allotted in English 
 to every word and adjective, denoting a noble and 
 spiritual, or intellectual nature, as the word ‘ idea,’ which 
 no Englishman will condescend to fight for; ‘ abstract/ 
 ‘metaphysical/ ‘philosophical/ ‘theological,’ ‘Truth/ 
 ‘justice,’ and ‘ principle ’ and ‘ abstract right/ ‘ contempla¬ 
 tion and theory.’ These words, descriptive of the nobler 
 element of human nature, we find entering our ordinary 
 English speech usually with the contemptuous word, 
 ‘ mere’ or ‘merely’ stuck before them as ‘ merely ab¬ 
 stract/ ‘ mere theory;’ serving only as slang, to stamp 
 a damaging character upon whatever things it may be 
 wanted to pelt with ignominious imputations. Only 
 as reproachful epithets, it is, that our modern usage of 
 English admits the naming for those noble characters, by 
 ■which intellectual man is distinguished from the brute 
 creation. This preposterous elevation of the servile, degra¬ 
 dation of the noble is only one dominant feature amongst 
 others in the ordinary administration of the English 
 language. Which, as a vehicle of mental productions, 
 serves chiefly to provide the envious heart with a debas¬ 
 ing rhetorical exercise for turning upside down and down¬ 
 side up our natural conceptions of noble and servile, 
 select and common, rare-gifted height and vulgar breadth, 
 worthy and unworthy, free mind, and passive matter. 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 77 
 
 It is this prostitution of the faculties of language in the 
 service of perversion, that makes it needful on the part of 
 the Truth-holders to exercise a constant habit of suspicion 
 upon its employment. The organic structure of false¬ 
 hood, indispensible as the knowledge of it is, seems to 
 have been almost entirely neglected by them, particularly 
 in respect of watchwords, pregnant phrases, antitheses and 
 axioms, assertions obliquely made, or tacit assumptions. 
 They have, as a rule, taken any words, such as the cheating 
 word ‘ denominational,’ that the enemy might choose to 
 coin for his convenience, and have used them in the same 
 mode, as he has that one, for smothering any right of the 
 Church, as distinguished from the rights of the heretical 
 products of private will and private judgment. 
 
 In the same way we find a free unchallenged admission 
 given by the weak-wristed Truth-holder to other expres¬ 
 sions, which have a like obliterating, or deliquescent 
 force with ‘ denominational,’ such as those enumerated in 
 the last chapter, ‘ creeds 3 for e non-creeds,’ ‘ beliefs’ for 
 ^non-beliefs,’ i religions ’ for 1 non-religions,’ and shapes 
 of infidelity, ‘ sectarian ’ for f non-sectarian,’ and ‘ unsec¬ 
 tarian ’ for ‘ ultrasectarian.’ Not the slightest inquiry is 
 ever made, that I can see, into the use of the word forms 
 for deforms, and positive titles to dignify defects, and 
 ‘ conscience’ for renunciation of the obligations of con¬ 
 science. The innocent looking and indifferent particles 
 ‘ or,’ * rather than,’ ‘ but not,’ etc., never excite suspicion, 
 though they are implements of more disintegration than 
 can be computed. All smothering expressions, and crip¬ 
 pling terms of speech seem to obtain unchallenged admis¬ 
 sion with the unsuspecting Trustees of Truth—to their 
 own complete stultification. 
 
 In taking into their ears untested these perversions of 
 
78 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 language, they are steadily doing the devil’s work, by 
 learning to demoralize their understandings in the 
 devil’s own drill, which the perverted use of language is. 
 Suppose, for instance, the mind accept the phrase 
 ‘Protestant Faith,’ it puts the denial of Catholic Faith 
 on equal footing of dignity with the faith itself. And 
 this makes the choice between the two as if it were a 
 choice between two religions, not between religion and 
 its rejection. The logical consequence, which is always 
 practically realized, of this, is at least allowing the faith 
 to have no more right in the world than the denial of it. 
 
 Take the beforementioned instance of ‘ conscience,’ used 
 as it is, hypocritically in the anti-conscience clause, for 
 excluding the rights of conscience by a renunciation of 
 conscientious obligations. Just consider the consequence 
 of acquiescing in the phrase. For, notwithstanding the 
 common glib assertion, that we may trust to people’s 
 inconsistency, on the plea that they are not so bad in 
 practice as they are in their principle, consequences are 
 always carried out most logically sooner or later, and the 
 consequence of acquiescing in the false use of ‘conscience’ 
 is this : that we seal with our consent every anti-law 
 and destituting decree, by which the enemies, under the 
 advantage of the inversion, have endeavoured to extirpate 
 religion from education, and to put down its teachers. 
 There is, in fact, no impiety or profanation that we 
 have any right to complain of when we have once given 
 our sanction b } 7 silence, still more by adoption , to the 
 rule that ‘ conscience ’ and what goes along with it, 
 ‘ religious liberty,’ shall be deemed to stand, as it has in 
 England, a valid pretext for sacrificing the conscience 
 of man or Christian to the claims of heretical Negation. 
 
 Or, take the instance of the same word ‘ conscience ’ as 
 
THE TOLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 79 
 
 allowed to be pleaded for a refusal to acknowledge in the 
 Parliamentary Oath the existence of God, while we have 
 nothing of the ‘rights of conscience’ alleged for those, 
 who do not like to hear the Name of God dishonoured and 
 publicly profaned. 
 
 What has been said here of‘ conscience ’ and ‘ religious 
 liberty ’ is true of all the rest of human language, from 
 which public sin takes its terms of rhetoric, and notably 
 of law, which in the mouths of the tyrannical always 
 stands for violation of law, and of ‘institution’ for de¬ 
 institution. Those who allow their ears and minds to 
 take in its words in their subverting application are 
 helping to demoralize their understanding, to put out its 
 light, and to implant darkness. They are contentedly 
 putting on the yoke of their usurping enemy, donning his 
 uniform, and subjecting themselves to work in his cause. 
 They have not only become his in principle by acknow¬ 
 ledging his authority, but they have become one with 
 him in habitual service. And, instead of helping to the 
 counter-revolution, like real combatants, they are, like 
 Conservatives, effectively giving all their weight to the 
 revolution which they profess to hate. Prudent economy 
 will therefore dictate to the Truth-defender the necessity 
 of being extremely sceptical in accepting any phraseology 
 of the day from the parties of the world. Let him know 
 well, and become more and more convinced, that in 
 taking any word, substantive, or adjective, or even in¬ 
 offensive-sounding particle, or terms of speech as em¬ 
 ployed by them, he is really playing with verbal dice, 
 loaded against himself with lying assumptions quietly 
 inserted —petitiones principii —and consequences stolen 
 from him in advance. Knowing this, his duty plainly is 
 to disengage himself entirely from the whole system of 
 
80 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 language as administered in the camp of English litera¬ 
 ture, with all its lying traditions, whether as to fact, or 
 sentiment, in history, politics, and religion. It should, 
 without any distinction or exception, be thrown from 
 him bodily as something, which has been so prostituted 
 in the service of lying, as to be more than presumptively 
 unfit for the purposes of Truth, until it shall have first 
 undergone in his own eclectic hands a reformation to a 
 healthier habit. 
 
 For this reason he should renounce it all, and declare 
 his independence of it as at present used, beginning 
 within the province of his own mind. His renunciation 
 of it should be as clear, as if it were the continuation of 
 that first renunciation of the sinful world he renounced 
 in baptism, with all the devil’s pomps, and vanities, of 
 which, indeed, modern English rhetorical phraseology 
 forms an enormous portion. After having liberated him¬ 
 self from captivity under it, the next step is, that, in 
 which he should try to rescue the language itself from 
 its polluting captivity. This will consist in his taking it 
 into his own grip, as an instrument restored to its native 
 use, free from all the lying English traditions, which it 
 has hitherto served to embody, honour, and adorn. Nor 
 will he give it the authority of his own example by using 
 it, until after it has undergone an unsparing purification 
 in the crucible of a testing process applied to its words 
 and modes of speech under questions like these : What 
 does the word or phrase mean ? Anything, or nothing ? 
 If so, what ? Is the application a partial sense for the 
 whole one, as of a penny for a shilling ? Is it a bit for 
 the entirety, or a mere material part for a vital element ? 
 Is it the thing itself that is meant, or the direct contrary 
 of the thing ? like 4 conscience,’ as English for repudiation 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 81 
 
 of conscience, and ‘ religious liberty ’ as English for 
 crushing religious liberty. Is it a lying word to dignify 
 a defect, or deform under the name of a ‘ form/ or of a 
 positive guise like ‘Unitarian/ to dignify the extinction 
 of the belief in the Holy Trinity. 
 
 The same scrutiny should be rigorously applied to all 
 mendacious combinations and terms of speech, contrasts, 
 antagonisms and see-saws, operated, as we have seen, so 
 cunningly under the particles ‘or/ ‘rather than/ ‘but 
 not/and even the definitive word ‘ the.’ To counteract 
 the effect that comes by this abuse of words, it would be 
 advisable, even at the risk of sounding new and strange, 
 to have truthful expressions coined to take the place 
 of the lying ones: so that the things to which we 
 have been in the habit of according the credit of 
 ‘ principles/ ‘ theories/ ‘ philosophy/ ‘ science/ would be 
 denominated ‘ non-principles/ anti-philosophy, anti¬ 
 doctrines, anti-theory, and anti-science. If the same 
 reformed measure were dealt out to political parties 
 ‘ Tyrannicals ’ would be the name used for the people 
 who have dubbed themselves ‘ Liberals / and ‘ Sub- 
 tyrannicals/ the description for the vast medley of help¬ 
 less mortals, who have got themselves called Conservatives, 
 for never conserving anvthing out of the hands of the 
 Tyrannicals. This caution would greatly help the Truth- 
 defender to make himself independent and free both in 
 spirit and profession, from the all-embracing net of per¬ 
 verting language, by which the Negation-master holds 
 the minds of men under his sway. 
 
 vi. Enter aggressively the territory of lying Negation 
 by— 
 
 (a) Pressing upon its agents the responsibility of the 
 Position they have Assumed in their contradictions .— 
 
 6 
 
82 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 Trusting in his weapon of a purified language the Truth- 
 defender, in the true spirit of counter-revolution must 
 proceed further in his revolt against the forces of 
 Negation, to the reactionary step of turning to invade 
 their territory. 
 
 This is to be done by pressing upon the enemy, in 
 whatever department of Negation he may be engaged, as 
 politics, or science, or history, the responsibility of all 
 the absurdities, lies, and other wickedness, which the 
 position he has assumed involves. These absurdities are 
 to be met by reason : but, mind, not reason calmly arguing 
 as with friends, or calmly expostulating as with com¬ 
 panions, or laboriously refuting as with scholars. Such a 
 work of reason is all unfit for the occasion, and would 
 bring down more than the previous weight of con¬ 
 temptuous insolence upon the reasoner. The attitude of 
 reason for meeting an adversary, with whom there is no 
 common ground, must be that fit for cavillers, i.e., of 
 reason impugning, reason accusing and denouncing, reason 
 satirising, reason laughing, reason mocking and carica¬ 
 turing. These are the only moods that reason has, pro¬ 
 portioned to the ordinary action assumed by pompous 
 emptiness. And this economy, without ever quitting 
 the dignity of reason, must be shown first by fixing the 
 enemy fast within the position, which he has dared to 
 assume, on the side of Negation. This will be usually at 
 least the contradictory , if not the contrary , of the position 
 he opposes, according to a well-known axiom, the ultimate 
 principle of Truth ; that, as of two contradictories, f so,’ 
 or ‘ not so,’ one must be false and the other true ; there 
 can be no medium between them. If, therefore, he 
 attacks one, he must be deemed to espouse the other, 
 whether he own it or not; or even if he disown it. 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 83 
 
 Thus, for example, Mr. Gladstone, in attacking the in¬ 
 fallibility of the Pope, as something not to be held by 
 Catholics, but to be expostulated against, assumes, by his 
 very position, that the contradictory of infallibility, which 
 is fallibility of the head of the Church, is the tenet that 
 Catholics ought to bold. 
 
 (b) And also of the latent 'postulates which their con¬ 
 tradictions (like those in Mr. Gladstone's Anti-Vatican¬ 
 ism) imply. —And together with this quasi-dogma of 
 Papal fallibility as the right Catholic belief, he has to be 
 charged with all its obvious consequences, whether he 
 likes it or not, or however he may disclaim them. Now, 
 to maintain that the fallibility of the head of God’s 
 Church is the reasonable tenet for Catholics to hold, is to 
 say, that they ought to be convinced that the head of 
 their Church can mislead them, and the whole Church, 
 in his ex-cathedrd pronouncements concerning the 
 Christian faith and morals. This is bad enough. 
 
 But the untrustworthiness of the Head of God’s 
 Church for guarding the Truth is not the whole burden, 
 
 O O 7 
 
 for which Mr. Gladstone makes himself responsible. 
 That goes further to the idea, that the Head of the 
 Church has failed in guarding the Christian Faith. 
 Because poicer to fail is certain to realize itself in act 
 whenever the liability is put to the test. Asa lame man 
 must halt when he puts his walking power to the test; 
 so the fallible Pope must fail, when duly tried. Now 
 the Pope has been tried for 1800 years, and therefore, 
 being fallible, his guidance must have failed. To have 
 failed, therefore, is necessarily contained in the liability 
 to failure, ascribed so earnestly by Mr. Gladstone to the 
 Pope as his rightful property. Thus he makes himself 
 chargeable with upholding as a quasi-religious dogma an 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 opinion, not for Protestants, but for Catholics, that the 
 Head of God’s Church can commit them and the whole 
 body of the Church of the faithful to error , that he must 
 do so, and that he consequently has done so. The failure 
 of the guiding Head entails the failure of the guided 
 body, and that irretrievably. For the ex-cathedrd 'pro¬ 
 nouncements are irre tractable. That the Catholic 
 Church, with all who are in it, is in irretrievable error 
 with regard to Christian faith and morals, is what Mr. 
 Gladstone would have Catholics make a precious part of 
 their Christian faith. Next, he goes on to make himself 
 duly chargeable with another endless train of absurdities, 
 by virtue of the law of contradiction. According to this, 
 he has to maintain, that a regular suite of most elegant 
 virtues in Catholics depends upon their having an un¬ 
 trustworthy and actually misleading guidance in the 
 Head of the Church. He makes out, that the idea of 
 safety from error in the Head of God’s Church ought to 
 be regarded by Catholics, with whom he expostulates, as 
 a positive evil; being a danger to the people, a menace to 
 states, taking away the subject’s responsibility, and, as 
 Penan says expressly, their merit, their virtue, and their 
 capacity for loyalty. These being the evils flowing from 
 the holding the trustworthiness of their Christian Head ; 
 just so much amount of impediment to loyalty, virtue, 
 and obedience, etc., is removed from the Catholics by 
 their renouncing the Pope as trustworthy: which of 
 course, therefore, the Catholic ought to do for his own 
 peace of mind. For to be without a chance of being 
 misled by the Head of his Church in his religious belief 
 is a condition, according to Mr. Gladstone, positively bad 
 for his soul’s health, as being destructive of his virtue, 
 merit, and loyalty. The assurance of having to be misled 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 85 
 
 by him would be consequently a desirable condition, in 
 which the rational Catholic should rejoice. As the grace 
 to lead right is in the Pope a tyranny, the fatality of his 
 being led wrong would be therefore, in the Catholic, a 
 requisite for liberty. In the interest of human liberty, 
 human virtue, and peace of states, the head of God’s 
 Church is bound to mislead the Church and its members : 
 and they ought to think it a great blessing to be misled 
 by him. These absurdities with which Mr. Gladstone 
 and his likes recklessly make themselves chargeable, are 
 too evident to need proof. But it is necessary to guard 
 against the slippery trick, by which they would make 
 their escape from these consequences. That escape 
 would be very easy, if you let them use it. It is this. 
 They would say all this is mere logic : it is pushing things 
 to extremes. In every charge they make against the 
 Catholic Church, they choose to hold themselves free of 
 all responsibility for the consequences of their position. 
 Either they don’t care to think of them, or if they are 
 reminded, the}' simply give reason the slip by saying, 
 
 ‘ We Englishmen have the lordly privilege of being un¬ 
 reasonable without having to be called to account. You 
 must let us violate the light of reason as much as we 
 please, we don’t choose to hold ourselves responsible for 
 the evident consequences, however monstrous, of anything 
 that we may say.’ 
 
 This charter for unlimited recklessness is required as 
 an escape from the next monstrous absurdity in Mr. 
 Gladstone’s anti-infallibility position, as the right one 
 for the Catholic. If trustworthy guidance in the head 
 of God’s Church is a menace to states, and the civil 
 order; then, of course, the safety of the civil order would 
 have been best provided for by God in giving to his 
 
86 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 people a head that will commit the Church and all its 
 members to irretrievable error, in faith and morals. If it 
 should be alleged in excuse, that it is not said that infal¬ 
 libility itself is an evil, but only the false belief in it, this 
 would be unsaying the whole charge made by him. 
 Because He makes infallibity itself to be intrinsically an 
 evil—since it would be tantamount to taking away man’s 
 responsibility , and giving his intellect ‘ over by power of 
 attorney’ to the Pope. There is no loophole here pos¬ 
 sible for him in distinguishing between real infallibility 
 and the mere persuasion of its truth. No due sense 
 of responsibility, no virtue, no merit, no loyalty, and in 
 fact, no natural virtue is allowed by Mr. Gladstone to 
 be compatible with the idea, false or true, of having 
 a trustworthy ecclesiastical head. This the Catholic, 
 however, holds, and there is therefore no way of being a 
 good Catholic but by being a bad man, or a good man, 
 except by being a bad Catholic. 
 
 The same reasoning of course holds good for every 
 grade of trustworthiness. In so far as a leader ap¬ 
 proaches trustworthiness, in so far does he tend to make 
 his followers disloyal, incapable of virtue, or merit. 
 Hence we learn what would be the requisite property 
 in a church, which Mr. Gladstone could find it in his 
 conscience to patronise. The church he would conde¬ 
 scend to belong to, must have for its head one, who is 
 fallible—certain to fail, actually failing—misled and 
 misleading, or, in other words, a church, concerning 
 which it might be opportunely asked, as he had asked, 
 about the Establishment, saying, f Is it worth preserving?’ 
 Such a Church alone would he think it safe to belong to. 
 In a Church not worth preserving, that could not go right, 
 there might flourish loyalty, merit, manliness, and all 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 87 
 
 the other fine things, of which Mr. Gladstone professes to 
 be the patron. If all these virtues be the fruits of 
 fallibility, and of unlimited wrong-going, it is no wonder 
 if Mr. Gladstone should find himself supremely happy in 
 his religion. For whatever one might decide as being 
 the head of the Establishment he belongs to, whether 
 it be the Queen, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the 
 House of Commons, or the will of the people, or Lord 
 Penzance, or all these heads together, or no head at all; 
 no one could deny it the Protestant credit of having lots 
 of the fallibility and untrustworthiness Mr. Gladstone 
 prizes so much, sufficient to satisfy the purest idea of 
 modern statesmanship. Whatever danger there may 
 be in it, it is at least free from that one, which alone Mr. 
 Gladstone holds to be worth pamphleteering against—the 
 danger of ever going right. If we were to pursue the 
 subject to its immediate issues, the absurdities which Mr. 
 Gladstone embraces without heed increase to such a 
 degree, as to make all infallibility, whether of Pope, 
 Church, or of aught else, an evil, oppressive of human 
 liberty. There must be no infallible guidance in any¬ 
 thing, not even in Scripture , nor even in a single text of 
 it. It would have in it the same formal ground that 
 makes the Pope’s infallibility so dreadful to the interests 
 of the human race. To save us from the danger of 
 Scripture’s infallible guidance, the only security is—that 
 no one, who professes to take it as the sole rule of faith 
 ever thinks he need be guided by it at all, more than 
 suits his private taste. This is what has hitherto saved 
 its infallibility in some measures from attack. Else we 
 might have a statesman coming out with an expostula¬ 
 tion against believing in the Bible, or in a bit of it, under 
 peril of men losing all their loyalty to the sovereign— 
 
88 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 their virtue, and manliness, and of upsetting all govern¬ 
 ments and states. 
 
 From these absurd postulates follow others with equal 
 certainty, which the holders can only try to escape from, 
 by calling obvious consequence and consistency, as they 
 always do, by the name of ‘ pushing principles to their 
 extremes.’ If darkness, uncertainty, liability to mislead 
 and to be misled, are such excellent conditions, as Mr. 
 Gladstone teaches us to conclude they are, for human 
 freedom, for virtuous merit, and for security of states; 
 then it obviously follows, that it is the duty of all men 
 to procure as much of them as possible. There is no 
 extreme in virtue. And as virtue has for its condition 
 ail the aforesaid qualities; it would require all the usual 
 Liberal contempt for logic and consistency to get rid of 
 this natural consequence—that it is the duty of men to 
 get all the securities they can, to keep them in uncer¬ 
 tainty, wrong-going, blundering, and darkness about their 
 spiritual interest. All this compound nonsense follows 
 Mr. Gladstone’s and Kenan’s professions, as absolutely as 
 5 follows the addition of 2 and 3. Whether they know 
 it or not, as they are bound to know it, they are re¬ 
 sponsible for it all, and they and their likes ought to be 
 lashed with the tails of their own consequents, whether 
 they like it or not. 
 
 In this form of meeting the aggressor of Infallibility, the 
 aggressor himself is not politely entertained upon the 
 premises he has invaded, of Catholic doctrine, as if lie 
 had an. undoubted right to stand there, and take the 
 Catholic to task for his believing in a vital article of his 
 own religion. No defence is proffered to him. But 
 repellent as the reply is, to which he is treated, it is, at 
 the same time, pregnant with the virtue of the positive 
 
THE POLICY OF THE GENUINE TRUTH-DEFENDER. 
 
 89 
 
 argument, turned the adverse side out, which, if reduced 
 to a state of still life, would form the parts of a calmly 
 constructed reasoning in support of Papal Infallibility. 
 This, however, if submitted in cold, didactic form to the 
 cowardly aggressor for his unbiassed consideration, would 
 only have the effect of bringing down from him a shower 
 of more profane insolence about the doctrine he was bent 
 upon calumniating. 
 
 The same troop of inevitable postulates follow in all 
 the other departments of modern error, as of science, 
 morals, and political philosophy. They all equally con¬ 
 tain lurking and manifest fatal lies, self-contradictions, 
 confusions and darkness in all their postulated definitions, 
 their postulated axioms, their postulated disjunctions, and 
 postulated combinations. 
 
 The exposure of their postulated falsehoods would be a 
 fruitful source of public service in the cause of Truth, as 
 well as affording splendid sport to the volunteer dialec¬ 
 tician, who should enter into the field with his dogs and 
 guns of logical precision. 
 
 These are some few rudiments of the modes of Christian 
 warfare with error; which, effective as they may be 
 made, are not difficult. For real contest with it does 
 require entering into the special department of science, 
 in which the error takes its seat. Darwinism, as error, 
 is not a matter of natural science, or of natural history; 
 though natural history is its seat. It consists in the 
 obtrusion of a structureless assertion without any other 
 reasoning, than what is based upon some outrageous 
 allegations, he chooses to call ‘ facts/ which he asks you 
 throughout to take for granted, viz., that man has no 
 need of a sense of smell, of ears, of wisdom-teeth, or of 
 hair, and of many other things less observed. These are 
 
90 THE ART OF CHRISTIAN WARFARE WITH WRONG. 
 
 what he calls his ‘ facts.’ Now for the reasoning. Not 
 being of any good to him, he must have derived these 
 functions and features from some other species of animal, 
 to whom ears and wisdom—teeth, hair, and smelling- 
 power were useful, as an ape: from whom, therefore, we 
 must infer, that his whole race was descended. This un¬ 
 natural mock-theory is not a mistake, or error of natural 
 science. It requires no natural history to treat it. What 
 is alone needed is the art of exposing brazen-faced impu¬ 
 dence, detecting tricks, verbal frauds and fallacies. We 
 can learn these tricks and shifts of the workers of error 
 in the same manner as a fisherman learns the ways of a 
 hooked salmon, or a sportsman the manners of a badger, 
 fox, weasel, or rat. Equally open to observations are the 
 tricks and rhetorical manoeuvres and terms of speech for 
 the concealment of structureless conclusions, which error 
 employs for ingratiating itself in the minds of men ; and 
 the art of warfare with it consists to a great extent in 
 knowing these tricks, and the way in which they should 
 be met. 
 
 If the few methods for doing so, simple and obvious as 
 they are, which I have already sketched in these papers, 
 were perseveringly used by the friends of Truth, there 
 would hardly fail to appear some little difference for the 
 better, in the position, which the timid, retreating Truth- 
 holder now occupies in front of his boasting Negationist 
 enemy; who, it is his whole wisdom to know, is strong 
 only in the force, which the Truth-holder has allowed him 
 to steal from himself. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. WASHBOURNE, PRINTER, 18 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 
 
By the Rev. F. II. LAING , D.D. 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE FAITH : Absurd Protestant Opinions con¬ 
 cerning Intention. 4d. 
 
 CATHOLIC, NOT ROMAN CATHOLIC. 4d. 
 
 CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES. Id. 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE GUIDE TO THE MASS. Is. 
 
 FAVOURITE FALLACY ABOUT PRIVATE JUDGMENT 
 AND INQUIRY. Id. 
 
 PROTESTANTISM AGAINST THE NATURAL MORAL 
 LAW. Id. 
 
 WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY ? 6d. 
 
 WHENCE THE MONARCH’S RIGHT TO RULE ? 2s. 6d. 
 
 WHAT SORT OF INTOLERANCE IS RIGHTEOUS ? Is. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 R. WASHBOURNE, 18 PATERNOSTER ROW.