TRANSFIGURATION OF MARYLAND CULTURE, 1791-1802	51

itself by the expectation of the reward, which in Christ's name he
promises to all them that follow his directions & admonitions.73

The contrast between Carroll and Ashton's perceptions can best be under-
stood in terms of their disparate backgrounds. Both men were ex-Jesuits who
had played important roles in the restructuring of American Catholicism fol-
lowing the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV.
As Procurator General, Ashton supervised the church's finances. He also ran
a mission at White Marsh where Mahoney and his family were enslaved.
Such duties taught Ashton the importance of strict discipline and obedience.
His efficiency at administering these tasks prompted Carroll to remark in
1780, 'Ashton...is the most industrious man in Maryland: it is a pity that he
could not have the management of all the estates belonging to the clergy in
this country: they would yield thrice as much as they now do'.74

While Ashton looked after the temporal side of church affairs, Carroll
attended to spiritual matters. Deeply influenced by the intellectual currents of
revolutionary America, Carroll became the nation's principal spokesman for
an enlightened form of Catholicism which, according to Father R. Emmett
Curran, 'stressed the reasonable person, the intelligibility of Christianity, the
continuity between nature and grace, and a latitudinarian ecclesiology that
included all believers'.75 In recent years historians have begun to question the
liberal nature of Carroll's theology. Some have argued that the Enlightenment
did not have much of an impact upon his convictions.76 For the most part,
however, these scholars have failed to distinguish between Carroll's earlier
and later writings. The man who in 1791 disagreed with Ashton grew increas-
ingly conservative as the decade wore on. Confronted with the 'horrible
excesses' of the uprisings in France and Saint Domingue, Carroll lamented
the 'manifest insufficiency of reason' and articulated a spiritual vision steeped
in the 'cheering light of revelation'.77 In 1796 he wrote:

The best, and indeed, the only solid rock of assurance in such disastrous
times, are the promises of the Gospel, and the providential interference
of the great Governor of the universe to perpetuate and render his
Church conspicuous, amidst all the efforts of impiety, rage, and mortal
enmity to destroy and obliterate her. Here is our anchor of faith, and
foundation of our hope.78

From its outset Carroll was deeply shaken by the 'anti-christian skepti-
cism' of the revolution in France. Early in 1791 he applauded Edmund
Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution and condemned 'the conduct of
the savage wretches who committed the murders, & insulted their Sovereigns
at Versailles'. As the 1790s wore on, Carroll tempered the republican vision