FOR FAIR MINDS AN APPEAL TO CANDOR BY GEORGE M. SEARLE Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle; Professor of NEW YORK THE CATHOLIC BOOK EXCHANGE 120 West 60th Street COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY "THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE IN THE STATE PRINTED AT THE COLUMBUS PRESS, 120 WEST 60TH ST. THIS book has been written, not with the view of controversy, but of simply stating the Catholic doctrine. In these days there seems little need of controversy on our part with the majority, at least, of Protestant Christians; for their belief mainly consists of remnants of our own, and so far are we from objecting to it, that we thank God that they have preserved such important parts of His revelation as are the dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption of man by the great Sacrifice of the Cross. Some tenets they have, no doubt, which we cannot approve, but these are generally regarded as non-essential, and are losing their hold even in the churches which nominally maintain them. What they prize, we also teach. They, however, are not tired of controversy. The very essence of Protestantism is in protesting against the Catholic Church. In its beginning these protests were based on really divergent beliefs; but now they are principally directed against what has no real existence. Those who make them are, for the most part, as we Catholics well know, simply fighting a man of straw; a creature of their own imagination, and of the false traditions received from their ancestors. The only way in which their objections can be answered, except by such examples of virtue as we can show, is by plain statements of what our belief really is. If they can be induced to listen to us, and to believe that we actually teach and hold what we say we do, as every instinct of fairness and candor and honesty would compel them to do in any other question; if they will take our doctrine from our own account of it, not from those of others prejudiced like themselves, we need not fear the outcome. There seems at the present time to be a better disposition than formerly on the part of those outside to listen to our own statements about our faith, rather than to those coming from second-hand sources. What is said in these pages has, of course, been said before; but perhaps it may fall now on more willing ears and more candid minds. In these pages the truth of the Christian religion is practically assumed. This book is not intended to prove the existence of God, or the fact of a Divine revelation to the atheist, the agnostic, or the infidel. Neither is it directed against such as may believe in some revelation additional or supplementary to that given to us by Christ; nor does it deal with every theory regarding the Church which may be held-as, for example, that of the Anglicans. It is addressed principally to what are commonly called Bible Christians, who form the majority of our Protestant population, in order to show them that the Catholic religion, while thoroughly in accordance with Scripture and based on it, also agrees with reason and common sense, and has nothing to fear from the discoveries or legitimate conclusions of science; that having the historical presumption in its favor, it also in every other way satisfies the demands of the intellect, as well as the needs of the soul. And to show the reasonableness of what is really |