Excerpt from The Elizabethan Religious Settlement a Study of Contemporary Documents Quarterly review on Macaulay neatly sums up the diff: culties created bythis spirit of national optimism, excellent though it be in itself. Examination of evidence in a critical spirit is to most persons repulsive, and it is always difficult to undertake the support of reasoned truth against eloquent sentiment. We have, moreover, to contend in the present case, not only against the W' z'udiligmtr'a um' - the dislike which the majority always feel to the investi gation of truth - but against established admiration, which in many minds rises to something like religious sentiment.l The late Lord Acton, well aware of this, once wrote There are two things which cannot be attacked in front ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qual and he rightly condemned men who study not to find out truths, but to find out proofs of what they already believe to be truths. Such a spirit is fatal to arriving at just conclusions; and I have had frequent cause to ac knowledge the justice of Lord Acton's strictures, finding that, notwithstanding the Quarterly reviewer's censure of F roude's neglect of all but contemmrary historians, they practically rule out of court mwt of the standard authorities previous to the nineteenth century, and that yet another of his sage remarks corroborates this apparently sweeping condemnation. There is as great a difference between history now and in Gibbon's tima he wrote, as between the astronomy before Copernicus and after him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.