not know whether they themselves thought it quite decisive of the controversy. But since it is proved, I conceive with certainty, that the sparingness with which they appealed to miracles was owing neither to their ignorance nor their doubt of the facts, it is at any rate an objection, not to the truth of the history, but to the judgment of its defenders."1 And, in like manner, Christians were not likely to entertain the question of the abstract allowableness of images in the Catholic ritual, with the actual superstitions and immoralities of paganism before their eyes. Nor were they likely to determine the place of St. Mary in our reverence, before they had duly secured, in the affections of the faithful, the supreme glory and worship of God Incarnate, her Eternal Lord and Son. Nor would they recognise Purgatory as a part of the Dispensation, till the world had flowed into the Church, and a habit of corruption had been superinduced. Nor could ecclesiastical liberty be asserted, till it had been assailed. Nor would a Pope arise, but in proportion as the Church was consolidated. Nor would monachism be needed, while martyrdoms were in progress. Nor could St. Clement give judgment on the doctrine of Berengarius, nor St. Dionysius refute the Ubiquists, nor St. Irenæus denounce the Protestant view of Justification, nor St. Cyprian draw up a theory of persecution. There is "a time for every purpose under the heaven;" "a time to keep silence and a time to speak."

Sometimes when the want of evidence about a series of facts or doctrines is unaccountable, in the course of time an unexpected explanation or addition is found as regards a portion of them, which suggests a ground of patience as regards the historical obscurity of the rest. Two instances are obvious to mention, of an accidental silence of clear primitive testimony as to important doctrines, and 1 1 Evidences, iii. 5.

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its removal. In the number of the articles of Catholic belief which the Reformation especially resisted, were the Mass and the sacramental virtue of Ecclesiastical Unity. Since the date of that movement, the shorter Epistles of St. Ignatius have been discovered, and the early Liturgies verified; and this with most men has put an end to the controversy about those doctrines. What has happened to them, may happen to others; and though it does not happen to others, yet that it has happened to them, is to those others a sort of compensation for the obscurity in which their early history continues to be involved.

SECTION III.

METHOD OF CONDUCTING THE INQUIRY.

It seems, then, that we have to deal with a case something like the following: Certain doctrines come to us, professing to be Apostolic, and possessed of such high antiquity that, though we are able to assign the date of their formal establishment to the fourth, or fifth, or eighth, or thirteenth century, as it may happen, yet their substance may, for what appears, be coeval with the Apostles, and be expressed or implied in texts of Scripture. Further, these existing doctrines are universally considered, without any question, to be the representatives in each age of the doctrines of the times preceding them, and thus are thrown back to a date indefinitely early, even though their ultimate junction with the Apostolic Creed be denied. Moreover, they are confessed to form one body one with another, so that to reject one is to disparage the rest; and they include in their own unity even those primary articles of faith, such as that of the Incarnation, which many an impugner of the system of

doctrine, as a system, professes to accept, and which, do what he will, he cannot intelligibly separate, whether in point of evidence or of internal character, from others which he disavows. Further, those doctrines occupy the whole field of theology, and leave nothing to be supplied, except in detail, by any other system; while, in matter of fact, no rival system is forthcoming, so that we have to chose between this theology and none at all. Moreover, this theology alone makes provision for that direction of opinion and conduct, which seems externally to be the special aim of Revelation; and fulfils the promises of Scripture, by adapting itself to the various problems of thought and practice which meet us in life. And, further, it is the nearest approach, to say the least, to the religion of the early Church, nay, to that of the Apostles and Prophets; for all will agree so far as this, that Elijah, Jeremiah, the Baptist, and St. Paul are in their history and mode of life (I do not speak of measures of grace, no, nor of doctrine and conduct, for these are the points in dispute, but) in what is external and meets the eye (and this is no slight resemblance when things are viewed as a whole and from a distance),-these saintly and heroic persons, I say, are more like a Dominican preacher, or a Jesuit missionary, or a Carmelite friar, more like St. Toribio, or St. Vincent Ferrer, or St. Francis Xavier, or St. Alphonso Liguori, than to any individuals, or to any classes of men that can be found in other communions. And then, in addition, is the high antecedent probability that Providence would watch over. His own work, and would direct and ratify those developments of doctrine which were inevitable.

Last of all, it has appeared, that in practical questions we are intended to guide our course chiefly by presumptions, such as the foregoing, and only secondarily by inquiries into evidence and by direct proof; and that in the case of developments

a growth, a scantiness, a variation, an interruption of evidence, nay, even silence, are to be expected, and are sometimes even necessary, and that exactness and fulness of evidence may even prejudice the doctrine for which it is adduced, because they are improbable.

If this is, on the whole, a true view of the general shape under which the existing body of developments commonly called Catholic present themselves before us, antecedently to our looking into the particular evidence on which they stand, I think we shall be at no loss to determine what both logical truth and duty prescribe to us as to our reception of them. It is very little to say that we

should treat them as we are accustomed to treat other alleged facts and truths, and the evidence for them, which bring with them a fair presumption of evidence in their favour. Such are of every day's occurrence; and what is our behaviour towards them? We meet them, not with suspicion and criticism, but with a frank confidence. We do not in the first instance exercise our reason upon opinions which are received, but our faith. We do not begin with doubting; we take them on trust, and we put them on trial, and that, not of set purpose, but spontaneously. We We prove them by using them, by applying them to the subject-matter, or the evidence, or the body of circumstances, to which they belong, as if they gave it its interpretation or its colour as a matter of course; and only when they fail, in the event, in illustrating phenomena or harmonizing facts, do we discover that we must reject the doctrines or the statements which we had in the first instances tken for granted. Again, we take the evidence for them, whatever it be, as a whole, as forming a combined proof; and we interpret what is obscure in it by such portions as are clear. Moreover, we bear with them in proportion to the strength of the antecedent probability in their favour, we are patient with difficulties in their appli

cation, with apparent objections to them drawn from matters of fact, deficiency in their comprehensiveness, or want of neatness in their working, if their claims on our attention are considerable.

Thus the whole school of physical philosophers take Newton's theory of gravitation for granted, because it is generally received, and use it without rigidly testing it first, each for himself, by phenomena; and if phenomena are found which it does not satisfactorily solve, this does not trouble them, for they are sure that a way must exist of explaining them, consistently with that theory, though it does not occur to themselves.

Again, if we found a concise or obscure passage in one of Cicero's letters to Atticus, we should not scruple to admit as its true explanation a more explicit statement in his Ad Familiares. Eschylus is illustrated by Sophocles in point of language, and Thucydides by Aristophanes in point of history. Horace, Persius, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Juvenal may be made to throw light upon each other. Even Plato may gain a commentator in Plotinus, and St. Anselm is interpreted by St. Thomas. Two writers, indeed, may be known to differ, and then we do not join them together as fellow-witnesses to common truths; Luther has taken on himself to explain St. Augustine, and Voltaire, Pascal, without persuading the world that they have a claim to do so; but in no case do we begin with doubting that a comment disagrees with its text, when there is a prima facie congruity between them. We elucidate the one by the other, though, or rather because, the former is fuller and clearer than the latter.

Thus too we deal with Scripture, when we have to interpret the prophetical text and the types of the Old Testament. The event which is the development is also the interpretation of the prediction; it provides a fulfilment by imposing a meaning. And we accept certain events as the fulfilment of