Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/11

 

PREFACE.

prospects of Protestant Christianity are improving. Light and vitality are beginning to infuse themselves into a mass, to which they had too much and too long been strangers. The genuine friends of true religion are rousing to something like preparation for a contest which they see to be unavoidable and at no great distance; and the doubtful or treacherous are doing them the favour and benefit of going over, more or less openly, to the ranks to which they really belong. Too long had Protestants been deceived and cajoled by the original enemy. They believed professions and demonstrations, because they trusted in the low honour which yet remains, and is one of the last good things to be abandoned, in simple human nature, corrupt as it is. They became the dupes of impostors, because they could not believe it to be in that nature, that individuals, professing what is called Christianity, could practise gross and deliberate deception, and could cherish a heart of settled and destructive hostility, while lips and pens