"I have expressed my abhorrence of the sectarian spirit of the Roman Catholics; but in that, as in all other churches, individuals are better than their creed; and amidst gross error and the inculcation of a narrow spirit, noble virtues spring up, and eminent Christians are formed. It is one sign of the tendency of human nature to goodness, that it grows good under a thousand bad influences.
The Romish Church is illustrated by great names. Her gloomy convents have often been brightened by fervent love to God and man. For example, St. Louis, and Fenelon, and Massillon, and Cheverus; and her missionaries, who have carried Christianity to the ends of the earth; her sisters of charity, who have carried relief and solace to the most hopeless want and pain.; do not these teach us that in the Romish Church the Spirit of God has found a home?
How much, too, have other churches to boast! In the English Church we meet the names of Latimer, Hooker, Barrow, Leighton, Berkeley, and Heber.
In the Dissenting Calvinistic church, we have Baxter, Howe, Watts, Doddridge, and Robert Hall; and among the Quakers, George Fox, William Penn, Robert Barclay and our own Anthony Benezet, and John Woolman; and in the Anti trinitarian church, there is John Milton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, Price and Priestley.
To repeat these names does the heart good. They breathe a fragrance through the common air. They lift up the whole race to which they belonged." William Ellery Channing.
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