This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ...in which they have been placed have been unfavourable to the growth of a race of students, to be compared, even at a distance, with the learned scholars of Catholic Germany. They have been, ever since the Reformation, essentially a missionary or a parochial clergy. The laity to whom they have ministered have ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ...in which they have been placed have been unfavourable to the growth of a race of students, to be compared, even at a distance, with the learned scholars of Catholic Germany. They have been, ever since the Reformation, essentially a missionary or a parochial clergy. The laity to whom they have ministered have been content with a humble standard of culture, and their whole energies have been devoted to purposes inconsistent with the leisure necessary for the formation of a generation of profound thinkers and accomplished scholars. Here and there exceptions have been seen. But the examples of historians or antiquaries like Lingard and Dr. Rock, are rather illustrations of the irresistible force with which personal character will sometimes shape a man's career in the midst of adverse circumstances. It is to be noted, too, that the most learned men among the English Catholic clergy have not been of the Ultramontane school. The first edition of Lingard's history was, indeed, actually put upon the Index Expurgatorius by the Roman "Holy Office;" but nevertheless--so different was the temper of Rome in those days--it was undoubtedly the intention of Pope Leo XII., if he had lived, to make the historian himself a cardinal. Nor has the immigration of the Oxford converts gone far to introduce a love for historical and critical studies among the English Catholic priesthood. With the one great exception of Dr. Newman, not one of the converts of the last twenty-five years has been a man of much historical knowledge, or distinguished for Biblical criticism of a high order. Their tendencies have been generally Ultramontane in a marked degree, the aim of most of them having been to solve the religious difficulties of the day by the application of a test which is...
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