Page:History of Freedom.djvu/482

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

time of l\lilner has grown up under his influence, and has been in great part his work. We owe it to him that we have been brought into closer intercourse with Rome, and into contact \vith the rest of Europe. By his preaching and his spiritual direction he has transformed the devotions of our people; ,,,hile his lectures and writings have made Protestants familiar with Catholic ideas, and have given Catholics a deeper insight into their own religion. As a controversialist he influenced the Oxford movement more deeply than any other Catholic. As director of the chief literary organ of Catholics during a quarter of a century he rendered services to our literature, and overcame diffi- culties, which none are in a better position to appreciate than those \\Tho are engaged in a silnilar work. And as President of Oscott, he acquired the enduring gratitude of hundreds who o\ved to his guidance the best portion of their training. These personal relations with English Catholics, which have made him a stranger to none and a benefactor to all, have at the same time given him an authority of peculiar weight amongst them. With less unity of view and tradition than their brethren in other lands, they \\Tere accustomed, in common with the rest of Englishmen, to judge more independently and to speak more freely than is often possible in countries more exclusively Catholic. Their minds are not all cast in the same mould, nor their ideas derived from the same stock; but all alike, from bishop to layman, identify their cause with that of the Cardinal, and feel that, in the midst of a hostile people, no diversity of opinion ought to interfere \vith unity of action, no variety of interest with identity of feeling, no controversy \vith the universal reverence which is due to the position and character of the Archbishop of Westminster. In this spirit the Catholic body have received Cardinal Wiseman's latest publication-his" Reply to the Address of his Clergy on his return from Rome." He speaks in it of the great assemblage of the Episcopate, and of their address to the Holy Father. Among the bishops there