of the canons to be observed in disputation. Catholics would have cause to congratulate themselves, though they were able to proceed no further, than to persuade Protestants to argue out one point before going on to another. It would be much to get them to give up what they could not defend, and to promise they would not return to it. It would be much to hinder them from making a great deal of an objection till it is refuted, and then suddenly considering it so small that it is not worth withdrawing. It would be much to hinder them from eluding a defeat on one point by digressing to three or four others, and then presently running back, and to and fro, to the first, second, and third, and treating each in turn as quite a fresh subject on which not a word had yet been said. In all controversy it is surely right to mark down and record what has been proved, as well as what has not; and this is what the Author claims of the reader as regards the following Volume. He claims, and surely with justice, that it should not be urged against his proof that Protestant views of Catholics are wrong, that he has not thereby proved that Catholicism is right. He wishes his proof taken for what it is. He certainly has not proved what he did not set about proving: and neither he, nor any one else, has any encouragement to go on to prove something more, until what he actually has accomplished is distinctly acknowledged. The obligations of a controversialist lie with Protestants equally as with us. As regards his Catholic readers, he would ask leave to express a hope, that he may not be supposed in his con cluding Lecture to recommend to the Laity the cultivation of a controversial temper, or a forwardness and rashness and unseasonableness in disputing upon religion. No one knows so clearly the difficulty of arguing on religious topics, consistently with their sacredness and delicacy, as he who has taken pains to do so well. No one shrinks so sensitively from its responsibility, when it is not a duty, as he who has learned by experience his own unavoidable inaccuracies in statement and in reasoning. It is no easy accomplishment in a Catholic to know his religion so perfectly as to be able to volunteer a defence of it. He has, besides, to apologize to them for having made some quotations of Scripture from the Protestant version. He has been led to do so in cases, where, points of faith not being involved, it was necessary for the argumentative or rhetorical force of the passages in which they occur. And lastly he earnestly begs their prayers that he may be prospered and blest in whatever he attempts, however poorly, for God's glory and the edification of His Church. ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, In Fest. Nativ. B. M. V. 1851. CONTENTS. 1 II. Tradition the Sustaining Power of the Protestant View 41 . 121 . 169 . 215 IV. True Testimony unequal to the Protestant View V. Logical Inconsistency of the Protestant View VI. Prejudice the Life of the Protestant View 301 LECTURE I. PROTESTANT VIEW OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. THERE is a well-known fable, of which it is to my purpose to remind you, my Brothers of the Oratory, by way of introducing to you the subject of the Lectures which I am proposing to deliver. I am going to inquire why it is, that, in this intelligent nation and in this rational nineteenth century, we Catholics are so despised and hated by our own countrymen, with whom we have lived all our lives, that they are prompt to believe any story, however extravagant, that is told to our disadvantage; as if beyond a doubt, we were, every one of us, either brutishly deluded or preternaturally hypocritical, and they themselves, on the contrary, were in comparison of us absolute specimens of sagacity, wisdom, uprightness, manly virtue, and enlightened Christianity. I am not inquiring why they are not Catholics themselves, but why they are so angry with those who are. Protestants differ amongst themselves, without calling each other fools and knaves. Nor, again, am I proposing to prove to you or to myself, that knaves B |