be matters of indifference to none of us.

We have not to do with a story which is buried in obscure antiquity. The
facts admit of being learnt. The truth, whatever it was, concerns us all
equally. If the divisions created by that great convulsion are ever to
be obliterated, it will be when we have learnt, each of us, to see the
thing as it really was, and not rather some mythical or imaginative
version of the thing--such as from our own point of view we like to
think it was. Fiction in such matters may be convenient for our
immediate theories, but it is certain to avenge itself in the end. We
may make our own opinions, but facts were made for us; and if we evade
or deny them, it will be the worse for us.

Unfortunately, the mythical version at present very largely
preponderates. Open a Protestant history of the Reformation, and you
will find a picture of the world given over to a lying tyranny--the
Christian population of Europe enslaved by a corrupt and degraded
priesthood, and the Reformers, with the Bible in their hands, coming to
the rescue like angels of light. All is black on one side--all is fair
and beautiful on the other.

Turn to a Catholic history of the same events and the same men, and we
have before us the Church of the Saints fulfilling quietly its blessed
mission in the saving of human souls. Satan a second time enters into
Paradise, and a second time with fatal success tempts miserable man to
his ruin. He disbelieves his appointed teachers, he aspires after
forbidden knowledge, and at once anarchy breaks loose. The seamless robe
of the Saviour is rent in pieces, and the earth becomes the habitation
of fiends.

Each side tells the story as it prefers to have it; facts, characters,
circumstances, are melted in the theological crucible, and cast in
moulds diametrically opposite. Nothing remains the same except the names
and dates. Each side chooses its own witnesses. Everything is credible
which makes for what it calls the truth. Everything is made false which
will not fit into its place. 'Blasphemous fables' is the usual
expression in Protestant controversial books for the accounts given by
Catholics. 'Protestant tradition,' says an eminent modern Catholic, 'is
based on lying--bold, wholesale, unscrupulous lying.'

Now, depend upon it, there is some human account of the matter different
from both these if we could only get at it, and it will be an excellent
thing for the world when that human accou