Page:History of Freedom.djvu/495

 CARDINAL WISEMAN

45 1

birth to an opposite schooL The attitude of timidity and concession was succeeded by one of confidence and triumph. Conciliation passed into defiance. The un- scrupulous falsehoods of the eighteenth century had thrown suspicion on all that had ever been advanced by the adversaries of religion; and the belief that nothing could be said for the Church gradually died away into the conviction that nothing \vhich was said against her could be true. A school of writers arose strongly imbued with a horror of the calumnies of infidel philosophers and hostile controversialists, and animated by a sovereign desire to revive and fortify the spirit of Catholics. They became literary advocates. Their only object was to accomplish the great work before them; and they \vere often careless in statement, rhetorical and illogical in argument, too positive to be critical, and too confident to be precise. In this school the present generation of Catholics \vas educated; to it they owe the ardour of their zeal, the steadfastness of their faith, and their Catholic views of history, politics, and literature. The services of these writers have been very great. They restored the balance, which was leaning terribly against religion, both in politics and letters. They created a Catholic opinion and a great Catholic literature, and they conquered for the Church a very powerful influence in European thought. The word" ultramontane" ,vas revived to designate this school, and that restricted term \vas made to embrace men as different as De Maistre and Bonald, Lamennais and Montalembert, Balmez and Donoso Cortes, Stolberg and Schlegel, Phillips and Tapparelli. There are two peculiarities by \vhich we may test this whole group of eminent writers: their identification of Catholicism \vith some secular cause, such as the interests of a particular political or philosophical system, and the use they make of Protestant authorities. The views which they endeavoured to identify with the cause of the Church, however various, agreed in giving them the air of partisans. Like advocates, they \vere \vont to defend their cause with the ingenuity of those who kno\v that all