"Is IT HONEST to make these and many other similar charges against Catholics—when they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church really teaches? AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY."
In spite of all that sectarian preachers and journals can say, the unprejudiced and fair-minded American will answer, to each question the tract puts, No! it is not honest, but gravely dishonest; for every one is bound to judge Catholics by the standards of the church, open to all the world. And these manifestly disprove the accusations.
We have attempted no defence in this article of our holy religion itself. We have only attempted to show our Protestant accusers that their efforts to prove themselves honest, in their false charges against the church and her faithful children, are unsuccessful. They have not successfully impeached the tract in a single instance, nor vindicated themselves from a single one of its charges; nor can they do it. Many things may be said against the immaculate spouse of Christ; the daughters of the uncircumcised may call her black, may rail against her, and call her all manner of hard names; but she stands ever in her loveliness, all pure, and dear to her Lord, who loves her, and gave his life for her, and dear to the heart of every one of her loving children, and all the dearer from the foul aspersions cast upon her by the ignorant, the foolish, and the malicious.
We have not taken much notice of the professions of candor and independence of the preacher; for we have never much esteemed professions which are contradicted by deeds; nor are we easily won by fine things said of individual Catholics by one who in the same breath calumniates the holy Catholic Church. Few sermons have we read that show a more decided hostility to our religion than these of the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Brooklyn, which are unredeemed from their low sectarian character by any depth of learning, extent of historical research, force of logic, richness of imagination, flow of eloquence, or sparkle of wit. We have found them very commonplace and dull; we have found it a dull affair to read and reply to them; and we fear that our readers will find our reply itself very dull, for dulness is contagious.
Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.
Chapter IX.
"She is bewitched, my lord," said her attendants to Magas, as he stood the next day by the bedside of Chione, and she knew him not. "She is bewitched. Chloe and two or three others heard the spell muttered just before she fell."
Magas looked incredulously, yet half-believing what they said. "Why, who can have bewitched her?"