John Morley

He has been dispossessed, not for any fault of his own, but because clerical dominion was deemed intolerable.

The fanaticism of the middle ages is really sober compared with that of the nineteenth century.” “The proclamation of Infallibility,” he said to Bishop Moriarty, “I must own I look upon as the most portentous (taking them singly), of all…

The whole proceeding has been monstrous, and it will hereafter become one of the laughing-stocks of history.

In my view, the size of the minority, though important, is not nearly so important as the question whether there will be a minority at all.

My grief is sincere and deep, but it is at the whole thing, so ruinous in its consequences as they concern faith.

Of all the prelates at Rome, none have a finer opportunity, to none is a more crucial test now applied, than to those of the United States.

The truth is that ultramontanism is an anti-social power, and never has it more undisguisedly assumed that character than in the Syllabus.

For the first time in my life, I shall now be obliged to talk about popery; for it would be a scandal to call the religion they are manufacturing at Rome by the same name as that of Pascal, or of Bossuet, or of Ganganelli.

A few bold men would easily insure themselves a noble immortality.

For if the best result arrive in the triumph of the fallibilitarians, will not even this be a considerable shock to the credit and working efficacy of the papal system?

The assumptions, the standards, the ruling types of the modern age, they boldly encountered with rigid iteration of maxims of old time, imposing obedience and submission to a fixed social order and a divinely commissioned hierarchy.

The ultramontanes held that the revolutionary welter and confusion of the modern world could only be healed by solemn affirmation of the principle of sovereign authority lodged in an infallible pope, with absolute power to define by that…

A movement of the first magnitude was accentuated by Pius IX., when by the Syllabus of 1864 he challenged modern society in all its foundations, its aims, its principles, in the whole range of its ideals.

The moral crisis is what reaches furthest and matters most.

English statesmen are wont to be either blind to the existence of such a question, or else they seek an easy refuge from it in a perfunctory erastianism, sometimes intellectually refined, sometimes a little brutish, but always shallow.

It is indeed a centre which repels as well as attracts; which probably repels even more than it attracts; but which, whether repelling or attracting, influences.—-GLADSTONE (1875).

Let no susceptibilities, puritan, protestant, anglican, or other, be startled if we observe that Rome is, and may long be, in some important respects, the centre of the Christian world.

He has far more than discharged any debt that he could have owed to the nation.” These words are a just remonstrance against the somewhat tyrannical conventions of English public life.

He, beyond all other modern statesmen, with perhaps here and there a doubtful exception, gave us the impression of a man who regarded politics as a part of Christian duty.” And the same writers most truly added, “We do not know what the…

Whether you come back to the political field or turn wholly to study and to literature, I am sure you will be usefully employed, and I hope that nothing but blessing may rest upon all your labours.

I have had so much pleasure in your friendship, and have gained so much from it, that I would fain hope it need not cease now, when our association will necessarily be less frequent than it has been of late years.

If it is also to become a debased copy of an ecclesiastical council, all the worst men and worst qualities of the worst men will come to the front, and the place will become intolerable.

As a church, I believe she is strong enough, by virtue of the prayer-book, to hold together under all circumstances; but as an establishment, in my opinion, she is not strong enough to bear either serious secession or prolonged…

My object and desire has ever been and still is, to keep the church of England together, both as a church and as an establishment.

There is no doubt at all that all the evils, of whatever kind, at which they were aimed, exist at this moment among us in a far more aggravated shape than when they began....