Sermonizing

 I've just finished writing a paragraph on George Croly, in which I discuss Croly's own special hang-up: Catholic "credulity."  Some anti-Catholic campaigners went on about the perils of convents, some about the horrors of the confessional, and some about the blasphemies of transubstantiation; Croly wrapped all of that up into his more general disdain for Catholic, well, stupidity.  Victorian anti-Catholic sermonizers frequently avoid lambasting the Catholic laity, preferring to reserve their thunderbolts for those in charge.  Croly, however, is having none of that.  The Catholic is "punished" for his "love of error" by "the prostration of his understanding"; is convinced by Catholic theology, even though Croly has "never seen an argument, that would not discredit the brains of a child"; and is reduced to a "paralytic" mental state, thanks to the "swathings of Rome" [1].   As Croly himself admits, his attitude to Catholicism relegates it well beyond the pale of argument: there is nothing to be said about Catholicism, other than that rational Protestants find it self-evidently absurd (because it has no true theological content) and nothing to be said to Catholic true believers, other than that rational Protestants pity their willingness to abdicate their senses (because they have clearly stored their minds with rubbish).  We thus have sermons which argue that there is really nothing to argue about, strictly speaking.  But Croly intends his choice of words to be an act of charity--speaking harsh truths, the better to rouse Catholics into the proper frame of mind for seeking the truth in the Scriptures.  In effect, he is out to sting them into evangelical Protestant adulthood.  One rather wonders how effective this approach was...

[1] Respectively, Papal Rome: The Principles and Practises of Rome Alike Condemned by the Gospel.  A Sermon (London: Charles Kendrick, 1849), 9; The Popish Primacy: Two Sermons on the Conversions to Popery.  And the Coming Trial of Nations... (London: John Kendrick, 1850), 19; The Miracles of Scripture Contrasted with the Fictions of Popery.  Five Sermons... (London: John Kendrick, 1852), 4.   Croly goes on in this vein elsewhere.