Page:Ernestus Berchtold or the Modern Œdipus.djvu/113

 to arise from a spirit of opposition, but, if the motives he gave were true, from a chain of thought that did honour to his heart, not head. He asserted that Catholicism was the only religion affording to the poor and to the sick of heart, a balm for their evils. Calvinism, deism and atheism, were by him called the professions of the northern nations, cold as their native rocks. Professions to which enthusiasm, and the feeling of a certain refuge, so heart-soothing in Catholicism, were unknown. He maintained that it was not for individuals, who had the advantage of education and imagination, to shelter them from the overwhelming force of mental miseries, and unlooked for mifortunesmisfortunes [sic], to attempt under a real, though vain pretence of the love of truth, to deprive the poor and uneducated millions forming the mass of mankind, of the consolation always offered by this religion, which instead of shunning the poor, gladly seeks their miserable hovel, in the