plunging and floundering amid the gloom, it is as griffins, wiverns, salamanders, the spawn of Popery, such as are said to sport in the depths of the sea, or to range amid the central sands of Africa. He forgets that he ever heard of them; he has no duties to their name; he is released from all anxiety about them. They die to him. ("Present Position of Catholics," p. 243.)

PROTESTANT TEXTS.

PROTESTANTS judge of the Apostles' doctrine, by "texts," as they are commonly called, taken from Scripture, and nothing more; and they judge of our doctrine too, by "texts" taken from our writings, and nothing more. Picked verses, bits torn from the context, half-sentences, are the warrant of the Protestant Idea of what is Apostolic truth on the one hand, and, on the other, of what is Catholic falsehood. As they have their chips and fragments of St. Paul and St. John, so have they their chips and fragments of Suarez and Bellarmine; and out of the former they make to themselves their own Christian religion, and out of the latter our Anti-Christian superstition. They do not ask themselves sincerely, as a matter of fact and history, What did the Apostles teach then? Nor do they ask sincerely, and as a matter of fact, What do Catholics teach now? They judge of the Apostles, and they judge of us, by scraps, and on these scraps they exercise their private judgment,—that is, their Prejudice, ... and their Assumed Principles, . . . and the process ends in their bringing forth, out of their scraps from the

Apostles, what they call " Scriptural Religion," and out of their scraps from our theologians, what they call Popery.

us.

The first Christians were a living body; they were thousands of zealous, energetic men, who preached, disputed, catechised, and conversed from year's end to year's end. They spoke by innumerable tongues, with one heart, and one soul, all saying the same thing. All this multitudinous testimony about the truths of Revelation, Protestants narrow down into one or two meagre sentences, which at their own will and pleasure they select from St. Paul, and at their own will and pleasure they explain, and call the Gospel. They do just the same thing with Catholics, at least, have a lively illustration and evidence of the absurdity of Protestant private judgment as exercised on the Apostolic writings, in the visible fact of its absurdity as exercised on themselves. They, as their forefathers, the first Christians, are a living body; they, too, preach, dispute, catechise, converse with innumerable tongues, saying the same thing, as our adversaries confess, all over the earth. Well, then, you would think the obvious way was, if they would know what we really teach, to come and ask us, to talk with us, to try to enter into our views, and to attend to our teaching. Not at all; they do not dream of doing so; they take their "texts;" they have got their cut-and-dried specimens from our divines, which the Protestant tradition hands down from generation to generation, and, as by the aid of their verses from Scripture, they think they understand the Gospel better than the first Christians, so by the help of these choice extracts from our works, they think they understand our doctrine better than we do ourselves. They will not allow us to explain our own books. So sure are they of their knowledge, and so superior to us, that they have no difficulty in setting us right, and in accounting for our

contradicting them. Sometimes Catholics are "evasive and shuffling," which, of course, will explain everything; sometimes they simply "have never been told what their creed really is;" the priest keeps it from them, and cheats them; as yet, too, perhaps they are "recent converts," and do not know the actual state of things, though they will know in time. Thus Protestants judge us by their "texts;" and by "texts" I do not mean only passages from our writers, but all those samples of whatever kind, historical, ecclesiastical, biographical, or political, carefully prepared, improved, and finished off by successive artists for the occasion, which they think so much more worthy of credit and reliance as to facts, than us and our word, who are in the very communion to which those texts relate. Some good personal knowledge of us, and intercourse with us, not in the way of controversy or criticism, but what is prior-viz. in the way of sincere enquiry, in order to ascertain how things really lie-such knowledge and intercourse would be worth all the conclusions, however elaborate and subtle, from rumours, false witnessings, suspicions, romantic scenes, morsels of history, morsels of theology, morsels of our miraculous legends, morsels of our devotional writers, morsels from our individual members, whether unlearned or intemperate, which are the "text" of the traditional Protestant view against us. Yet any one is thought qualified to attack or to instruct a Catholic in matters of his religion; a country gentleman, a navy captain, a half-pay officer, with time on his hands, never having seen a Catholic, or a Catholic ceremonial, or a Catholic treatise in his life, is competent, by means of one or two periodicals and tracts, and a set of Protestant extracts against Popery, to teach the Pope his own religion, and to refute a Council. ("Present Position of Catholics," p. 322.)

R

PROTESTANT IMAGE WORSHIP.

A PROTESTANT blames Catholics for showing honour to images; yet he does it himself. And first, he sees no difficulty in a mode of treating them, quite as repugnant to his own ideas of what is rational as the practice he abominates, and that is the offering insult and mockery to them. Where is the good sense of showing dishonour, if it be stupid and brutish to show honour? Approbation and criticism, praise and blame, go together. I do not mean, of course, that you dishonour what you honour; but that the two ideas of honour and dishonour so go together, that where you can apply (rightly or wrongly, but still) where it is possible to apply, the one, it is possible to apply the other. Tell me, then, what is meant by burning Bishops, or Cardinals, or Popes in effigy? Has it no meaning? Is it not plainly intended for an insult? Would any one who was burned in effigy feel it no insult? Well, then, how is it not absurd to feel pain at being dishonoured in effigy, yet absurd to feel pleasure at being honoured in effigy? How is it childish to honour an image, if it is not childish to dishonour it? This only can a Protestant say in defence of the act which he allows and practises, that he is used to it, whereas to the other he is not used. Honour is a new idea, it comes strange to him, and, wonderful to say, he does not see that he has admitted it in principle already in admitting dishonour, and after preaching against the Catholic, who crowns an image of the Madonna, he complacently goes his way and sets light to a straw effigy of Guy Fawkes.

But this is not all; Protestants actually set up images

to represent their heroes, and they show them honour without any misgiving. The very flower and cream of Protestantism used to glory in the statue of King William, on College Green, Dublin; and, though I cannot make any reference in print, I recollect well what a shriek they raised some years ago, when the figure was unhorsed. Some profane person one night applied gunpowder, and blew the King right out of his saddle, and he was found by those who took interest in him, like Dagon, on the ground. You might have thought the poor senseless block had life to see the way people took on about it, and how they spoke of his face, and his arms, and his legs; yet those same Protestants, I say, would at the same time be horrified had I used "he" and "him" of a crucifix, and would call me one of the monsters described in the Apocalypse did I but honour my living Lord as they their dead King. (“Present Position of Catholics," p. 180.)

THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT OR THE PRIVATE RIGHT OF JUDGMENT?

FOR all the haranguing and protesting which goes on in Exeter and other halls, this great people is not such a conscientious supporter of the sacred right of Private Judgment as a good Protestant would desire. Why should

we go out of our way, one and all of us, to impute personal motives in explanation of the conversion of every individual convert, as he comes before us, if there were in us, the public, an adhesion to that absolute, and universal, and unalienable principle, as its titles are set forth in