LECTURE VIII.

WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW.

You may have asked yourselves, Brothers of the Oratory, why it was, that in exposing, as I did last week, the shallowness of the philosophy on which our opponents erect their structure of argument against us, I did not take, as my illustration, an instance far more simple and ready to my hand than that to which I actually directed your attention. It was my object, on that occasion, to show that Protestants virtually assume the point in debate between them and us, in any particular controversy, in the very principles with which they set out; that those first principles, for which they offer no proof, involve their conclusions; so that, if we are betrayed into the inadvertence of passing them over without remark, we are forthwith defeated and routed even before we have begun to move forward to the attack, as might happen to cavalry who manoeuvred on a swamp, or to a guerilla force which ventured on the open plain. Protestants and Catholics

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each have their own ground, and cannot engage on any other; the question in dispute is more elementary than men commonly suppose; it is about the ground itself, on which the battle is legitimately and rightfully to be fought; the first principles assumed in the starting of the controversy determine the issue. Protestants in fact do but say, that we are superstitious, because it is superstitious to do as we do; that we are deluded, because it is a delusion to believe what we believe; that we are knaves, because it must be knavery to teach what we teach. A short and pleasant argument, easier even and safer than the extempore and improvisatore mode of fabricating and fabling against us, of which I have said so much in former Lectures; easier and safer, inasmuch as, according to the proverb, "great wits ought to have long memories," when they deal with facts. In such cases, there must be consistency, and speciousness, and proof, and circumstantial evidence; private judgment in short becomes subject to sundry and serious liabilities when it deals in history and testimony, from which it is comparatively free when it expatiates in opinions and views. Now of this high à priori mode of deciding the question, the specimen I actually took was the Protestant argument against relics and miracles; and I selected this instance for its own sake, because I wished to bring out what I thought an important truth as regarded them; but a more obvious instance certainly would have been the surprising obtuseness, for I can use no other word, with which the Protestant Rule of Faith, which Catholics disown, is so often obtruded on us, as a necessary basis of discussion, which it is thought absurd and self-destructive not to accept, in any controversy about doctrine.

All the world knows, that Catholics hold that the

Apostles made over to the next generation the divine revelation, not only in writing, but by word of mouth, and in the ritual of the Church. We consider that the New Testament is not the whole of what they left us; that they left us a number of doctrines, not in writing at all, but living in the minds and mouths of the faithful: Protestants deny this. They have a right to deny it; but they have no right to assume their denial to be true without proof, and to use it as self-evident, and triumph over us as beaten, merely because we will not admit it. Yet this they actually do: can any thing be more preposterous? however, men do this as innocently and naturally as if it were the most logical of processes, and the fairest and most unexceptionable of proceedings. For instance, there was a country gentleman in this neighbourhood, in the course of last year, who, having made some essays in theology in his walks over his estate, challenged me to prove some point, I am not clear what, but I think the infallibility of the Holy See, or of the Church. Were my time my own, I should never shrink from any controversy, having the experience of twenty years, that the more Catholicism and its doctrines are sifted, the more distinct and luminous will its truth ever come out into view; and in the instance in question I did not decline the invitation. However, it soon turned out that it was a new idea to the gentleman in question, that I was not bound to prove the point in debate simply by Scripture; he considered that Scripture was to be the sole basis of the discussion. This was quite another thing. For myself, I firmly believe that in Scripture it is contained; but, had I accepted this gratuitous and officious proposition, you see I should have been simply recognizing a Protestant principle, which I disown. He

would not controvert with me at all, unless I subscribed to a doctrine which I believe to be, not only a dangerous, but an absurd error; and, because I would not allow him to assume what it was his business to prove, before he brought it forward, and because I challenged him to prove that Scripture was, as he assumed, the Rule of Faith, he turned away as happy and self-satisfied as if he had gained a victory. That all truth is contained in Scripture was his first principle; he thought none but an idiot could doubt it, none but a Jesuit could deny it; he thought it axiomatic, and that proof was even a profanation of so self-evident a point; but this, I repeat, was no extraordinary instance of Protestant argumentation; it occurs every other day.

The instance in controversy, to which I have been alluding, leads by no very difficult nor circuitous transition to the subject to which I mean to devote the present Lecture. Let it be observed that the fallacy involved in the Protestant Rule of Faith is this,-that its upholders fancy most unnaturally, that the accidental and occasional writings of an Apostle convey to them of necessity his whole mind. It does not occur to them to ask themselves, whether possibly, as he has in part committed his teaching to writing, so he may not have expressed it through other channels also. Very different this from their mode of acting in matters of this world, in which nothing men are more distrustful of, or discontented with, than mere writing, when they would arrive at the real state of a case in which they are interested. When a government, or the proprietors of a newspaper, would gain accurate information on any subject, they send some one to the spot, to see with his eyes. When a man of business would bring a negotiation to a safe and satisfac