THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 



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We cannot doubt, for instance, that the feeling with which Mr. 

 Whalley or Mr. Newdegate regards Roman Catholicism must cause 

 extreme reluctance to admit the services which Roman Catholicism 

 rendered to European civilization in the past ; and must make almost 

 impossible a patient hearing of any one who thinks that it renders 

 some services now. Whether great benefit did not arise in early times 

 from the tendency toward unification produced within each congeries 

 of small societies by a common creed authoritatively imposed ? 

 whether papal power, supposed to be divinely deputed, and therefore 

 tending to subordinate the political authorities during turbulent feudal 

 ages, did not serve to curb warfare and further civilization ? whether 

 the strong tendency shown by early Christianity to lapse into separate 

 local paganisms, was not beneficially checked by an ecclesiastical sys- 

 tem having a single head supposed to be infallible ? whether morals 

 were not improved, manners softened, slavery ameliorated, and the 

 condition of women raised, by the influence of the Church, notwith- 

 standing all its superstitions and bigotries ? are questions to which 

 Dr. Cumming, or other vehement opponent of popery, could not bring 

 a mind open to conviction. Similarly, it is beyond the power of the 

 Roman Catholic to see the meaning of Protestantism, and recognize its 

 value. To the Ultramontane, holding that the temporal welfare no 

 less than the eternal salvation of men depends on submission to the 

 Church, it is incredible that Church-authority has but a transitory 

 value, and that the denials of authority which have come along with 

 accumulation of knowledge and change of sentiment, mark steps from 

 a lower social regime to a higher. Naturally, to the sincere Papist, 

 schism is a crime, and books that throw doubt on the established be- 

 liefs are accursed. Nor need we wonder when from such a one there 

 comes a saying like that of the Mayor of Bordeaux, so much applauded 

 by the Comte de Chambord, that " the Devil was the first Protestant ; " 

 or when, along with this, there goes a vilification of Protestants too 

 repulsive to be repeated. Clearly, with such a theological bias, fos- 

 tering such ideas respecting Protestant morality, there must be ex- 

 tremely false estimates of Protestant institutions, and of all the insti- 

 tutions going along with them. 



In less striking ways, but still in ways sufficiently marked, the spe- 

 cial theological bias warps the judgments of Conformists and Noncon- 

 formists among ourselves. A fair estimate of the advantages which 

 our State-Church has yielded is not to be expected from the zealous 

 dissenter : he sees only the disadvantages. Whether voluntaryism 

 could have done centuries ago all that it can do now ? whether a 

 State-supported Protestantism was not once the best thing practicable ? 

 are questions which he is unlikely to discuss without prejudice. Con- 

 trariwise, the churchman is reluctant to believe that the union of Church 

 and State is beneficial only during a certain phase of progress. He 

 knows that within the Establishment divisions are daily increasing, 



