Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-07-10
B,shop Ireland,s Interpretations.

lands diatribe of last Sunday night which
he guilelessly calls an answer to my lee
ture of June 26. The bishops tiresome
iteration of the same exploded and an
initiated positions becomes "flat, stale
and improbable"
l write to call attention to his re-
newed charge of misquotation of Cardinal
Manning, by which he seeks to divert at
tention from his own offenses of that
kind. ! should not even do this, but for
the fact that the bishop has been guilty
F.! of one of the we'll known tricks of pro-
fessional controversialists by which they
hope to overcome plain and staightfor-
ward men, The bishop is too polished a
gentleman, and of altogether too frank
and sincere aspirit to have done this thing,
| and when less closely pressed and in a less
dangerous position, he would undoubted-
| w have made more honorable defense.
But l must proceed to expose him.
On May 18th | discussed the relation of
papal infallibility to history, and among
other preliminary remarks L asserted that
as the Roman church had sought to dodge
history in her definition, so she had since
defied it in the person of Cardinal Man.
ming, making quotations from his work
to support my position. quoted page
l25: "When, then, the church, out of
the proper fountains of truth, the word OF
God, written or unwritten, declares any
doctrine to be revealed, no difficulties OF
human histories can prevail against it."
Nv comment was: 'ln other words, and
in plain English, if now there are any facts
of history that contradict our dogmas so
much the worse for the facts"
In his review of June 20, Mr.. Ireland
says of this matter: '"No difficulties of
history says Cardinal Manning, which
words Mr.. Smith translates, mo facts of
history can prevail You see the literary
fraud" To which | rejoined, June g.
''He SAYS that translated the expression
difficulties of history into facts of his
tory Well, if this were true it would
have been proper; for what are difficulties
of history? They must be either the
statement of fact which contradict some
other statement of fact, or which contra
dict some theory or philosophy
Difficulties of history must relate to
facts and nothing else In the
nature of the case.'' Finally, Bishop
Ireland on July 3, rejoins by saying:
eyes, they must relate to facts or occur
rences of history; but they are not facts
in the meaning in which the word is
taken ordinarily-they are not undoubted
certain occurrences. The church does
not say as Mr.. Smith would interpret her
words, if facts are against me so much
the worse for the facts but in case OF
not fully explained occurrences, liable to
different interpretations, l am to be al
lowed the benefit of the doubt" Now
this does not change the matter. The
church wants the benefit of Manning's
principle, but does not want the od1um
No fact of history can be quoted but the
church will concoct different interpre-
tation, however senseless or shallow
Then having transferred a 'fact" into
difficulty" it must not prevail against
her. No charge can be brought forward
but the church will raise doubt, and
then, as Mr.. Ireland says, she wants s'the
benefit of the doubt This is only
manifestation of the well known position
that the church is always right prso7S,
and hence is not amendable to criti-
cism. 1t is defiance of both history
and culture.
On July 5, Bishop Ireland printed in
the GLOBE, in parallel columns, as fol-
lows:
The Cardinals Words. Mr.. Smiths Quotation
D. $780, ''But against neither
sBut against the one the one nor the other
nor the other of these of these things-the
things can human his two elements of ira
tories, 1crittcz bY men dition-can human his
not inspired by theItorles prevail because
spirit Of God, not sell against the church the
dom inspired bu anylgatss of hell cannot
other than the spiritlprevail."
of God prerGil be-
cause against the
church the gates of
hell cannot prevail."
The first point that call attention to is,
that this quotation as given is taken from
the Pioneer Press report of May l6, which
was only an abstract of my lecture, and
did not pretend to be anything else. Now,
in the full report of June 26. l state that
l had previously read the full passage to
my congregation, and then followed with
the use of the passage again, in ao1tsch the
italicized cords 0ccur; and yet Mr.. Ireland
has the indecency to ignore the complete
quotation in the full report OF June 26,
and 60 back to an abstract, and on July 3,
to accuse me of suppressing part which
1 never did suppress. Indeed, on June
26, make the following comment on the
words which am said to have suppressed:
'sThe plain meaning is, that the dogmas
of the church are invincible to the proofs
against her drawn from uninspired
human histories'' A falser or
more outrageous charge than this
of Bishop Ireland was never made in
public controversy. He would have been
excusable had he only been in possession
of the abstract of May 10th. But when
declared on June 9th that had read the
full passage to my congregation, and then
subsequently, re-quoted and published the
full passage with comments; for him to
utterly ignore this statement and report,
in order to make point upon the portion
of his hearers who do not read, convicts
ohe eminent controversialist of dema-
goguery of the worst form.
But again, the above quotation uses
the unlimited expression "human histo-
ries'' without the modifying difficulties"
which destroys the criticism of Bishop
Ireland on the former quotation, if it had
not been destroyed already.
In regard to his own forgery of new