2021年英语四级阅读理解练习：Religious Struggle in Brit

2022-10-31

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The Continuity of theReligious Struggle in Britain

Though England was on the whole prosperousand hopeful, though by comparison with herneighbors she enjoyed internal peace, she could notevade the fact that the world of which she formed apart was torn by hatred and strife as fierce as any in human history. Men were still for fromrecognizing that two religions could exist side by side in the same society; they believed thatthe toleration of another religion different from their own. And hence necessarily false, mustinevitably destroy such a society and bring the souls of all its members into danger of hell. Sothe struggle went on with increasing fury within each nation to impose a single creed uponevery 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 stagetriumphed, but over Europe as a whole Rome was beginning to recover some of the ground ithad 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 theCatholic Powers, as in the Low Countries, where the Dutch provinces were sometimes near theirlast extremity under the pressure of Spanish arms. Against England, the most important of allthe Protestant nations to reconquer, military might was not yet possible because the CatholicPowers were too occupied and divided: and so, in the 1570’s Rome bent her efforts, as shehad done a thousand years before in the days of Saint Augustine, to win England back bymeans of her missionaries.

These were young Englishmen who had either never given up the old faith, or having doneso, had returned to it and felt called to become priests. There being, of course, no Catholicseminaries left in England, they went abroad, at first quite easily, later with difficulty anddanger, to study in the English colleges at Douai or Rome: the former established for thetraining 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 yearsbefore. The seculars came first; they achieved a success which even the most eager couldhardly have expected. Cool-minded and well-informed men, like Cecil, had long surmised thatthe conversion of the English people to Protestantism was for from complete; many—Cecilthought even the majority—had conformed out of fear, self-interest or—possibly thecommonest reason of all—sheer bewilderment at the rapid changes in doctrine and forms ofworship imposed on them in so short a time. Thus it happened that the missionaries found awelcome, 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. Theywould land at the ports in disguise, as merchants, courtiers or what not, professing someplausible 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 ofthe neighbors as their hosts trusted and presently go on to some other locality to which theywere directed or from which they received a call.

1. The main idea of this passage is

[A]. The continuity of the religious struggle in Britain in new ways.

[B]. The conversion of religion in Britain.

[C]. The victory of the New religion in Britain.

[D]. England became prosperous.

2. What was Martin Luther’s religions?

[A]. Buddhism. [B]. Protestantism. [C]. Catholicism. [D]. Orthodox.

3. Through what way did the Rome recover some of the lost land?

[A]. Civil and military ways. [B]. Propaganda and attack.

[C]. Persuasion and criticism. [D]. Religious and military ways.

4. What did the second paragraph mainly describe?

[A]. The activities of missionaries in Britain.