In view
also of the peculiar bitterness of the _odium theologicum_, perhaps
it may be permitted me to say at the outset that I have no prejudice on
this subject. I am not a Roman Catholic, and therefore cannot be accused
of approaching the controversy with what Paley was wont to call an
"antecedent bias."
In this I have the advantage of Miss Stisted, who appears to be animated
by a bitter hostility not only against her aunt but against the Church of
Rome. In her book she asserts that Sir Richard Burton died before the
priest arrived on the scene, and that the Sacrament of Extreme Unction
was administered to a corpse. She also goes on to say:
The terrible shock of so fatal a termination to what seemed an
attack of little consequence, would have daunted most Romanists
desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt
Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her husband's life was
in danger, than she sent messengers in every direction for a
priest. Mercifully, even the first to arrive, a man of peasant
extraction, who had just been appointed to the parrish, came
too late to molest one then far beyond the reach of human folly
and superstition. But Isabel had been too well trained by
the Society of Jesus not see that a chance yet remained of
glorifying her Church--a heaven-sent chance which was not to
be lost. Her husband's body was not yet cold, and who could
tell for certain whether some spark of life yet lingered in
that inanimate form? The doctor declared that no doubt existed
regarding the decease, but doctors are often mistaken.
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