But
slaughter, desecration and wanton destruction, were no remedies for its
sins, or its failings; nor was covetous rapacity the spirit of
reformation."
Hume observes that "during times of faction, especially of a religious
kind, no equity is to be expected from adversaries; and as it was known
that the king's intention in this visitation was to find a pretext for
abolishing the monasteries, we may naturally conclude that the reports
of the commissioners are very little to be relied upon." Hallam declares
that "it is impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in
which the proceedings were conducted."
But these and other just and honorable concessions in the interests of
truth, which are to be found on the pages of eminent Protestant
historians, are made to prove too much. It must be said that writers
favorable to monasticism take an unfair advantage of these admissions,
which simply testify to a spirit of candor and a love of truth, but do
not contain the final conclusions of these historians. Employing these
witnesses to confirm their opinions, the defenders of monasticism
proceed with fervid, glowing rhetoric, breathing devotion and love on
every page, to paint the sorrows and ruin of the Carthusian Fathers, and
the abbots of Glastonbury and Reading. They ask, "Is this your boasted
freedom, to slay these men in cold blood, not for immorality, but
because they honestly did not acknowledge what no Protestant of to-day
admits, viz.
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