Declaration of the Catholic Bishops, the Vicars Apostolic and their Coadjutors in Great Britain

Abstract

Preamble

When we consider the misrepresentations of the Catholic religion, which are so industriously and widely propagated in this country, we are filled with astonishment. But our astonishment subsides, when we call to mind, that the character of Christ himself was misrepresented: he was charged with blasphemy; with breaking the sabbath, and with forbidding tribute to be paid to Caesar : *-- that the apostles and disciples of Christ were misrepresented,-they were charged with speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God, with exciting sedition, and with many other grievous offences entirely devoid of proof ; and that misrepresentation was the general lot of Christians in the first ages of the church. The primitive Christians were first calumniated and held up to public contempt, and then persecuted ancl deprived, not only of their civil rights and privileges, but of their property, and even of their very lives. They were charged with idolatry, with horrid cruelties, and other flagitious crimes, even in their religious worship. In a word, their whole religion was described as a system of folly and superstition, grotrnded on no one rational principle.

St. Justin and Tertullian, in their Apologies for the Christian Religion, endeavoured to dispel these misrepresentations, by exhibiting the real doctrines and precepts, and explaining some of the sacred rites of the Christian religion. They showed that these injurious misrepresentations were, in many instances, the inventions of men, who, unable to withstand the evidences of the divine establishment of Christianity, endeavoured to excite prejudices against it in the minds of the people, by holding out its doctrines as absurd and impious, and its professors as the causes of every public calamity... [Excerpts]