Publisher's Synopsis
The world has grown somewhat tired of theological controversy, of which our latter ages have produced so much more than enough. It is a dreary and disheartening thing to see men wrangle over the unessentials of a religion the first great lesson of which teaches them love and peace. Occasionally, however, controversy takes a shape interesting to those outside the narrow limits of sectarian polemics, and of such is the pamphlet before us. The questions debated in it are rather historical than theological, involving the influence of human institutions over society and man, rather than subtle points of speculation on transubstantiation and original sin. It deals with facts, and not with dogmas; and no one can watch the rapid progress making by the Catholic organization in the United States, without feeling an interest in investigating the policy and tendencies of a Church which must wield a powerful influence in moulding the national character.
The Rev. Mr. Vickers is the pastor of a congregation of Liberal Christians in Cincinnati. We should judge him to be a man who can tolerate anything but intolerance, and this he seems to detest with a holy fervor. Archbishop Purcell is too well known as an earnest and enlightened Catholic prelate to require aught but the mention of his name. The subject of the disputation is, whether the Catholic Church favors and fosters free thought, or whether she persecutes and stifles it. The Archbishop, probably judging of his Church from his own liberal sentiments, and apparently having little accurate knowledge of its history, had the hardihood to affirm that it had always permitted the free exercise of human reason, and that there was nothing in its policy, past or present, that tended to shackle 'the human understanding. In taking this ground he places himself at the mercy of his antagonist, who remorselessly overthrows his arguments, disproves his assertions, turns his facts back upon him, and, in short, leaves him in as sorry a plight as ever befell a gallant champion of an infallible Church....
--The North American Review, Vol. 106
