We are certainly living in “perilous times,” and it is amazing to behold the spirit of indifference in quarters where we might least expect it, not only with regard to the great strides Ritualism is making, so that Protestant Evangelicalism is well nigh eclipsed, but this indifference is as great with regard to the advance of Romanism and Jesuitism,[1] and (saddest result of all) to the building of so many hundreds of Roman Catholic convents and monasteries in the United Kingdom.
There are in existence societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, and for the prevention of cruelty to animals; but although the cruelties and tortures, called penances, which are inflicted on many a poor helpless nun are greater than those inflicted on animals, the man who raises up his voice against this worst form of inhumanity is counted unloving and bigoted. Believe me, the unloving ones are those who lend any countenance whatever to, or who do not make a righteous protest against, the conventual and monastic _system_, according to which disciplines, hair-shirts, scourgings, and various other forms of cruelty and degradation are employed.
Do we not see that, if this system is allowed to advance in the Church of England, these very penances (many of which _do_ exist, all of which _may_ exist, in the Church of England convents), which, without any doubt, exist in Romish convents, will be inflicted with equal severity in English Church convents.
Sister Mary Agnes does not speak of prison-like underground cells in Father Ignatius’s convents, and we believe, therefore, that anyhow at present they do not exist in them. But she does speak of penances, and she has felt them.
In bringing my Preface to a close, I will give a statement with regard to the Church of England convent in Woodstock Road, in the City of Oxford, founded by the late Dr. Pusey. This statement has been made by a clergyman of the Established Church, who is perfectly prepared, if need be, to give his name.
In the summer of 1866, I was travelling from Oxford to London, and there happened to be in the same railway carriage one of the leading tradesmen in the city of Oxford.
Our conversation turned upon the advances which Romanism was apparently making in the United Kingdom, and conspicuously by the influence of a certain section now well known as Ritualists in our own Church.