INVINCIBLE PREJUDICE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Your correspondent Mr. Archer Gurney, speaking in reference to the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, says, "The most extreme Ultramontane allows of invincible prejudice." I should be glad to think this the case, but in an article in the- Dublin Review (if I am not mistaken, the first article in the July number of last year), the writer, who is unmistakably Dr. Ward, stated, on the authority of the Pope himself, that the explicit' acknowledgment of a personal God is an indispensable condition of salvation. It is difficult to see how such an opinion leaves any room even for invincible ignorance, much less for invincible prejudice, as an excuse for unbelief, in the supposed case.
I am aware that from the Maurician point of view the opinion enunciated in the Dublin Review (and even much more apparently intolerant opinions) may be held, without involving any specially painful conclusions ; for to Maurice, salvation, and its opposite, damnation, were not states to be entered on at one fixed moment of time, namely, the moment of death, but states transcending all time. It is, however, scarcely possible to suppose that this is the meaning of the Pope and of the Dublin Review.—I am, Sir, &c., J. R. M.
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