[Footnote 1: I Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society.]
110. There is great danger, in the attempt to bring under analysis any
phase of religious belief, that the method of treatment may appear
unsympathetic if not irreverent. The greatest effort has been made in
these pages to avoid this fault as far as possible; for, without doubt,
any form of religious dogma, however barbarous, however seemingly
ridiculous, if it has once been sincerely believed and trusted by any
portion of mankind, is entitled to reverent treatment. No body of great
and good men can at any time credit and take comfort from a lie pure and
simple; and if an extinct creed appears to lack that foundation of truth
which makes creeds tolerable, it is safer to assume that it had a
meaning and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of time
has tended to destroy, together with the creed itself, than to condemn
men wholesale as knaves and hypocrites. But the particular subject which
has here been dealt with will surely be considered to be specially
entitled to respect, when it is remembered that it was once an integral
portion of the belief of most of our best and bravest ancestors--of men
and women who dared to witness to their own sincerity amidst the fires
of persecution and in the solitude of exile. It has nearly all
disappeared now. The terrific hierarchy of fiends, which was so real, so
full of horror three hundred years ago[1], has gradually vanished away
before the advent of fuller knowledge and purer faith, and is now hardly
thought of, unless as a dead mediaeval myth.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151