authority was acknowledged throughout England for over one thousand
years, yet at the time of the so-called Reformation, that Voice of
God, speaking through Peter, was admitted no longer. Hence, as
Cardinal Manning most truly observes: "The old forms of religious
thought are now passing away in England. The rejection of the Divine
Voice has let in the flood of opinion; and opinion has generated
scepticism; and scepticism has brought on contentions without end.
What seemed so solid once, is disintegrated. It is dissolving by the
internal action of the principle from which it sprung. The critical
unbelief of dogma has now reached to the foundation of Christianity,
and to the veracity of Scripture. Such is the world the Catholic
Church Sees before it at this day. The Anglicanism of the Reformation
is _upon the rocks_, like some tall ship stranded upon the shore, and
going to pieces, by its own weight and the steady action of the sea.
We have no need of playing the wreckers. It would be inhumanity to do
so. God knows that the desires and prayers of Catholics are ever
ascending that all that remains of Christianity in England may be
preserved, unfolded and perfected into the whole circle of revealed
truths, and the unmutilated revelation of the Faith.

"It is inevitable that if we speak plainly we must give pain and
offence to those who will not admit the possibility that they are out
of the Faith and the Church of Jesus Christ. But, if we do not speak
plainly, woe unto us, for we shall betray our trust and our Master.
There is a day coming, when they who have softened down the truth, or
have been silent, will have to give account. I had rather be thought
harsh than be conscious of hiding the light which has been mercifully
shown to me" (_Temp. Mission_, etc., p. 215).

It would be well if all Catholics took to heart these noble words of