Note o — Chapter IX · [a]

This hesitation about so important a question is what I would by no means repeat. Beyond every doubt, the evils of superstition in the middle ages, though separately considered very serious, are not to be weighed against the benefits of the religion with which they were so mingled. The fashion of the eighteenth century, among protestants especially, was to exaggerate the crimes and follies of mediæval ages—perhaps I have fallen into it a little too much; in the present we seem more in danger of extenuating them. We still want an inflexible impartiality in all that borders on ecclesiastical history, which, I believe, has never been displayed on an extensive scale. A more captivating book can hardly be named than the Mores Catholici of Mr. Digby; and it contains certainly a great deal of truth; but the general effect is that of a mirage, which confuses and deludes the sight. If those "ages of faith" were as noble, as pure, as full of human kindness, as he has delineated them, we have had a bad exchange in the centuries since the Reformation. And those who gaze at Mr. Digby's enchantments will do well to consider how they can better escape this consequence than he has done. Dr. Maitland's Letters on the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that comes from the pseudo-Anglican or Anglo-catholic press, converge to the same end; a strong sympathy with the mediæval church, a great indulgence to its errors, and indeed a reluctance to admit them, with a corresponding estrangement from all that has passed in the last three centuries. [1848.]