nt can be made out. I am not so
presumptuous as to suppose that I can give it to you; still less can you
expect me to try to do so within the compass of two or three lectures.
If I cannot do everything, however, I believe I can do a little; at any
rate I can give you a sketch, such as you may place moderate confidence
in, of the state of the Church as it was before the Reformation began. I
will not expose myself more than I can help to the censure of the divine
who was so hard on Protestant tradition. Most of what I shall have to
say to you this evening will be taken from the admissions of Catholics
themselves, or from official records earlier than the outbreak of the
controversy, when there was no temptation to pervert the truth.

Here, obviously, is the first point on which we require accurate
information. If all was going on well, the Reformers really and truly
told innumerable lies, and deserve all the reprobation which we can give
them. If all was not going on well--if, so far from being well, the
Church was so corrupt that Europe could bear with it no longer--then
clearly a Reformation was necessary of some kind; and we have taken one
step towards a fair estimate of the persons concerned in it.

A fair estimate--that, and only that, is what we want. I need hardly
observe to you, that opinion in England has been undergoing lately a
very considerable alteration about these persons.

Two generations ago, the leading Reformers were looked upon as little
less than saints; now a party has risen up who intend, as they frankly
tell us, to un-Protestantise the Church of England, who detest
Protestantism as a kind of infidelity, who desire simply to reverse
everything which the Reformers did.

One of these gentlemen, a clergyman, writing lately of Luther, called
him a heretic, a heretic fit only to be ranked with--whom, do you
think?--Joe Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Joe Smith and Luther--that is the
combination with which we are now presented.

The book in which this remarkable statement appeared was presented by
two bishops to the Upper House of Convocation. It was received with
gracious acknowledgments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was placed
solemnly in the library of reference, for that learned body to consult.

So, too, a professor at Oxford, the other day, spoke of Luther as a
Philistine--a Philistine meaning an oppressor of the chosen people; the
enemy of men of culture, of intelligence, such as the profes