Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity, and on the Attacks Which Are Now Being Made Upon It

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Guizot François. Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity, and on the Attacks Which Are Now Being Made Upon It

Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity, and on the Attacks Which Are Now Being Made Upon It

Table of Contents

New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 654 Broadway

Preface

Meditations On The Actual State Of The Christian Religion

First Meditation. The Awakening Of Christianity In France In The Nineteenth Century

II. Awakening Of Christianity In France

III. Awakening Of Christianity In France

Second Meditation. Spiritualism

Third Meditation. Rationalism

Fourth Meditation. Positivism

Fifth Meditation. Pantheism

Sixth Meditation. Materialism

Seventh Meditation. Skepticism

Eighth Meditation. Impiety, Recklessness, And Perplexity

The End

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François Guizot

Published by Good Press, 2021

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[Footnote 4: Essai sur l'indifférence en matiére de religion, t. ii, p. 59. Défense de l'Essai sur l'indifférence, chap. x, pp. 133-148.]

In holding this language in his very first work, the Abbé de la Mennais was already forgetting that he was a Christian and a Catholic. When a man demands here below an infallible authority, he must not seek it from any human source. The reason of all? (That is, the reason of the majority of men in all the ages of the world, for the reason of all is a fallacy.) What is such reason, but the sovereignty of superior numbers in the spiritual order? Having fixed his principle, the Abbé de la Mennais kept it in sight everywhere. After having established an infallible authority in the name of the reason of all, he proclaimed the absolute sovereignty in the name of universal suffrage. But this apostle of universal reason was at the same time the proudest worshiper of his own reason. Under the pressure of events without, and of an ardent controversy, a transformation took place in him, marked at once by its logical deductions and its moral inconsistency: he changed his camp without changing his principles; in the attempt to lead the supreme authority of his Church to admit his principles he had failed; and from that instant the very spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked broke loose in his soul and in his writings, finding expression at one time in an indignation full of hatred leveled at the powerful, the rich, and the fortunate ones of the world; at another time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of humanity. The "Words of a Believer" are the eloquent outburst of this tumult in his soul. Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most contradictory, and yet claiming to be always consistent with himself, the champion of authority became in the State the most baited of democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest of rebels.

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