The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-23 00:00:00

MR. COLERIDGE'S UNIVERSITY BILL.

We hope, and, indeed, there is every reason to
expect, that this bill will be thrown out by the
House of Lords. An English Catholic must ever
feel the keenest interest in the state of religion
among English Protestants; and it would be deplor-
able if the great Protestant universities were sunk,
more deeply than they are even now, in the mire
of rationalism and indifferentism. Already Mr.
Mill is able to declare them " the great foci of
great and manly inquiry ;" and we know what is
meant by that eulogy proceeding from Mr. Mill.
But what would be their plight if they were
assimilated—as Mr. Coleridge avowedly wishes—
to the godless universities of Germany?
In every age of the Church there is some one
doctrine especially imperilled for the moment ;
some one doctrine which evil men are conspiring
to assail, and round which supporters of the
truth cluster in its defence. In one century the
doctrine thus assailed is our Lord's Divinity ; in
another His perfect humanity; in another the
true nature of Divine faith. At this particular
time misbelievers hardly care to assail any par-
ticular dogma; rather they despise the dogmatic
principle itself. But there are two great verities
which God's enemies attack with every weapon
both of violence and treachery; while good Catho-
lics unite in struggling for them as for a matter
of life and death. There are (1) the dogmatic
principle, and (2) the intimate and indissoluble
connection between things sacred and things secu-
lar. Intellectual education divorced from religion
tends directly to the overthrow of both these veri
ties ; and you can well understand, therefore,
why it is that the Church seems to express herself
on this particular matter even more energetically
and (if we may so speak) more clamorously than
at any preceding period. Resistance to mixed
education, in every imaginable shape, may just
now be called the badge of a good Catholic.
Now, in proportion as Protestants are trained in
the dogmatic principle, they are really, however
unconsciously, moving towards the Church ; in
proportion as the opposite takes place, there
ensues the opposite result. Dr. Newman says
most truly that the National Church has hitherto
been a serviceable breakwater against doctrinal
errors more fundanaental than its own, and the
longer it can in any degree so continue, the better
for the good of souls.

Those converts wit° remember the state of Ox-
ford some twenty-fire years ago will emphatically
testify how singularly beneficial were the dogma-
tic influences of the place in helping them forward
towards the Church, On this head, again hear
Dr. Newman's testimony :- " Had I not come to
Oxford," he says, perhaps I should never have
heard of the Visible Church, or of Tradition, or
other Catholic doctrines." How, then, can it be
otherwise than a cause of great grief to Catholics,
if that large numter of young men which will
ever frequent Oxford and Cambridge, should
find those universities simply saturated with a
worldly and a profoundly anti-Christian atmos-
phere ? Yet such is the miserable issue to which
every year brings us nearer, and towards which
Mr. Coleridge's Bill would frightfully accele-
rate the progress.

We have been very glad to find the Times writ-
ing with really much sense on Mr. Coleridge's
project. It points out that the university is a
place primarily for education ; and that the
question for practical men to consider is not how
it may be made most serviceable towards the ac-
quisition of truth for the world at large, but
towards training and disciplining the youthful
mindjwithin its walls. For ourselves, of course,
as we cannot expect the Times to
we think that the method of free and independent
inquiry is as fatal to the former purpose as to the
laagrtteeer ;wibthutu,s
in
this,
we are at least grateful for
that amount of concurrence which we can obtain.
If any ordinarily pious Protestant would have a
still stronger conviction on the odiousness of Mr.
Coleridge's bill, let him read the Pall Mall Gazette
of last Saturday in its defence.
. _

The various considerations which we have ex-
pressed imprint a deep and peculiar brand of tur-
wpihtuod(eihoenretdhieblceonadaucitt ofm thoseght
appear) unhappy Catholics
send their
sons to Oxford in defiance of the Church's warn-
ing. They are in quite a special sense traitors to
their religion ; for they are abandoning that one
principle of it which at this moment is bearing the
whole brunt of attack. They are deserting to the
enemy in that very manner which will give the
enemy his greatest possible advantage from their
adhesion.