The spirit of religion comes again into the world to conquer but not to usurp. Religious creeds rise and increase together, at once free and contented; free to elevate themselves, to elevate souls to heaven, restrained by their mental liberty and by the independence of the civil power. Let us honor the community in the bosom of which such a sight is possible! It needs, it absolutely needs that religion should step in to purify and strengthen it; but religion can do her work there without dishonor or sacrifice, and when she can, it becomes her bounden duty to do so.
Essay III.
Catholicism, Protestantism, And Philosophy In France.
Catholicism, Protestantism, And Philosophy In France.
(July, 1838.)
It is of Catholicism and Protestantism, not of religion or even Christianity in general, that I wish to speak.
I regret that I cannot find a word to suit me better than Philosophy. The nature of things forbids it. But in order to make myself at once and clearly understood, I hasten to say that I here call Philosophy every opinion which disclaims, under whatever name or shape, any faith as restrictive of human thought, and which leaves thought, in religious matters as in all others, free to believe or not to believe, and guide itself by its own authority.
It is also of France, and France alone, that I speak. The condition of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Philosophy is not the same in France and elsewhere, after our moral and social revolutions, as it is in countries which have not undergone such changes. I wish to say nothing but that which results from and applies to precise facts. The time has arrived in such matters for dealing with real facts, and setting aside general terms which avoid the questions they affect to settle.