Fifth—While Mary had no private or personal motives in oppressing Protestants, Elizabeth's hostility to the Catholic Church was intensified, if not instigated, by her hatred of the Pope, who had declared her illegitimate. Her legitimacy before the world depended on the success of the new religion, which had legalized her father's divorce from Catherine.
Sixth—Hence as Macaulay says, Mary was sincere in her religion; Elizabeth was not. “Having no scruple about conforming to the Romish Church when conformity was necessary to her own safety, retaining to the last moment of her life a fondness for much of the doctrine and much of the ceremonial of that Church, she yet subjected that Church to a persecution even more odious than [pg 264] the persecution with which her sister had harassed the Protestants. Mary ... did nothing for her religion which she was not prepared to suffer for it. She had held it firmly under persecution. She fully believed it to be essential to salvation. Elizabeth, in opinion, was little more than half a Protestant. She had professed, when it suited her, to be wholly a Catholic.... What can be said in defence of a ruler who is at once indifferent and intolerant?”[324]
An intelligent gentleman in North Carolina once said to me tauntingly, What do you think of bloody Mary? Did you ever hear, I replied, of her sister's cruelties to Catholics? He answered that he never read of that mild woman persecuting for conscience' sake. I was amazed at his words, until he acknowledged that his historical library was comprised in one work—D' Aubigné's History of the Reformation. That veracious author has prudently suppressed, or delicately touched, Elizabeth's peccadilloes as not coming within the scope of his plan. How many are found, like our North Carolina gentleman, who are familiar from their childhood with the name of Smithfield, but who never once heard of Tyburn!
Chapter XIX.
Grace—The Sacraments—Original Sin—Baptism—Its Necessity—Its Effects—Manner Of Baptizing.
The grace of God is that supernatural assistance which He imparts to us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for our salvation. It is called supernatural, because no one by his own natural ability can acquire it.
Without Divine grace we can neither conceive nor accomplish anything for the sanctification of our souls. “Not that we are sufficient,” says the Apostle, “to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.”[325] “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish”[326] anything conducive to your salvation. “Without Me,” says our Lord, “you can do nothing.”[327] But in order that Divine grace may effectually aid us we must co-operate with it, or at least we must not resist it.
The grace of God is obtained chiefly by prayer and the Sacraments.