“A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes’ intelligent talk is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create; for he is making an outline and a shape. Mahomet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. The first French Republic created, when it affirmed property and abolished peerages; France still stands like a square, four-sided building which Europe has besieged in vain. The men of the Oxford Movement would have been horrified at being compared either with Moslems or Jacobins. But their subconscious thirst was for something that Moslems and Jacobins had and ordinary Angelicans had not: the exalted excitement of consistency. If you were a Moslem you were not a Bacchanal. If you were a Republican you were not a peer. And so the Oxford men, even in their first and dimmest stages, felt that if you were a Churchman you were not a Dissenter. [...] It was an appeal to reason: reason said that if a Christian had a feast-day he must have a fast-day too. Otherwise, all days out to be alike; and this was the very Utilitarianism against which their Oxford Movement was the first and most rational assault.”
Quote by G.K. Chesterton
Work
The Victorian Age in Literature
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader
Source: As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader
Source: As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader
“Most of my life is passed in discovering with a deadly surprise that I was quite right.”
Source: Selected essays
Source: Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Source: El candor del padre Brown (Literatura universal)
Source: El candor del padre Brown
Source: El candor del padre Brown