TEXT C Though England was on the
whole prosperous and hopeful, though by comparison with her neighbors she
enjoyed internal peace, she could not evade the fact that the world of which she
formed a part was torn by hatred and strife as fierce as any in human history.
Men were still for from recognizing that two religions could exist side by side
in the same society; they believed that the toleration of another religion
different from their own. And hence necessarily false, must inevitably destroy
such a society and bring the souls of all its members into danger of hell. So
the struggle went on with increasing fury within each nation to impose a single
creed upon every subject, and within the general society of Christendom to
impose it upon every nation. In England the Reformers, or Protestants, aided by
the power of the Crown, had at this stage triumphed, but over Europe as a whole
Rome was beginning to recover some of the ground it had lost after Martin
Luther’s revolt in the earlier part of the century. It did this in two ways, by
the activities of its missionaries, as in parts of Germany, or by the military
might of the Catholic Powers, as in the Low Countries, where the Dutch provinces
were sometimes near their last extremity under the pressure of Spanish arms.
Against England, the most important of all the Protestant nations to reconquer,
military might was not yet possible because the Catholic Powers were too
occupied and divided: and so, in the 1570’s Rome bent her efforts, as she had
done a thousand years before in the days of Saint Augustine, to win England back
by means of her missionaries. These were young Englishmen who
had either never given up the old faith, or having done so, had returned to it
and felt called to become priests. There being, of course, no Catholic
seminaries left in England, they went abroad, at first quite easily, later with
difficulty and danger, to study in the English colleges at Dubai or Rome: the
former established for the training of ordinary or secular clergy, the other for
the member of the. Society of Jesus, commonly known as Jesuits, a new Order
established by St. Ignatius Loyola same thirty years before. The seculars came
first; they achieved a success which even the most eager could hardly have
expected, Cool minded and well-informed men, like Cecil, had long surmised that
the conversion of the English people to Protestantism was for from complete;
many—Cecil thought even the majority—had conformed out of fear, self-interest
or—possibly the commonest reason of all—sheer bewilderment at the rapid changes
in doctrine and forms of worship imposed on them in so short a time. Thus it
happened that the missionaries found a welcome, not only with the families who
had secretly offered them hospitality if they came, but with many others whom
their first hosts invited to meet them or passed them on to. They would land at
the ports in disguise, as merchants, courtiers or what not, professing some
plausible business in the country, and make by devious may for their first house
of refuge. There they would administer the Sacraments and preach to the house
holds and to such of the neighbors as their hosts trusted and presently go on to
some other locality to which they were directed or from which they received a
call. What did the second paragraph mainly describe
A.The activities of missionaries in Britain. B.The conversion of English people to Protestantism was far from complete. C.The young in Britain began to convert to Catholicism. D.Most families offered hospitality to missionaries.