to listen to fables" (2 Tim. iv. 1-5), surely we may reasonably expect to find, even in our own generation, many who have fallen, or who are in danger of falling under the pernicious influence of false teachers, and who are being seduced and led astray by the plausible, but utterly fallacious, reasoning of proud and worldly spirits. It would be easy to name several, but they are too well known already to need further advertising here.

Then, she has adversaries without, as well as within. For, though the Church is not of the world, she is in the world. Which is only another way of saying that she is surrounded continually and on all sides by powerful, subtle, and unscrupulous foes. "The world is the enemy of God," and therefore of His Church. If its votaries cannot destroy her, nor put an end to her charmed life, they hope, at least, to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous allegations are often accompanied by professions of friendship and consideration, and set forth in learned treatises, with an elegance of language and an elevation of style calculated to deceive the simple and to misguide the unwary. It is Father W. Faber who remarks that, "there is not a new philosophy nor a freshly named science but what deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either explode the Church as false or set her aside as doting" (Bl. Sac. Prologue). Indeed the world is always striving to withdraw men and women from their allegiance to the Church, through appeals to its superior judgment and more enlightened experience; and philosophy and history and even theology are all pressed into the service, and falsified and misrepresented in such a manner as to give colour to its complaints and accusations against the Bride of Christ, who, it is seriously urged, "should make concessions and compromises with the modern world, in order to purchase the right to live and to dwell within it". What is the consequence? Let the late Cardinal Archbishop and the Bishops of England answer. "Many Catholics," they write in their joint pastoral, "are consequently in danger of forfeiting not only their faith, but even their independence, by taking for granted as venerable and true the halting and disputable judgment of some men of letters or of science which may represent no more than the wave of some popular feeling, or the views of some fashionable or dogmatising school. The bold assertions of men of science are received with awe and bated breath, the criticisms of an intellectual group of savants are quoted as though they were rules for a holy life, while the mind of the Church and her guidance are barely spoken of with ordinary patience."

In a world such as this, with the agents of evil ever active and threatening, with error strewn as thorns about our path at every step, and with polished and seductive voices whispering doubt and suggesting rebellion and disobedience to men, already too prone to disloyalty, and arguing as cunningly as Satan, of old, argued with Eve; in such a world, who, we may well ask, does not see the pressing need as well as the inestimable advantages and security afforded by a living, vigilant, responsible and supreme authority, where all who seek, may find an answer to their doubts, and a strength and a firm support in their weakness?

And as surely as the need exists, so surely has God's watchful providence supplied it, in the person of the Supreme Pontiff, the venerable Vicar of Christ on earth. He is authorised and commissioned by Christ Himself "to feed" with sound doctrine, both "the lambs and the sheep"; and faithfully has he discharged that duty. "The Pope," writes Cardinal Newman, "is no recluse, no solitary student, no dreamer about the past, no doter upon the dead and gone, no projector of the visionary. He, for eighteen hundred years, has lived in the world; he has seen all fortunes, he has encountered all adversaries, he has shaped himself for all emergencies. If ever there was a power on earth who had an eye for the times, who has confined himself to the practicable, and has been happy in his anticipations, whose words have been facts, and whose commands prophecies, such is he, in the history of ages, who sits, from generation to generation, in the chair of the Apostles, as the Vicar of Christ, and the Doctor of His Church."

"These are not the words of rhetoric," he continues, "but of history. All who take part with the Apostle are on the winning side. He has long since given warrants for the confidence which he claims. From the first, he has looked through the wide world, of which he has the burden; and, according to the need of the day, and the inspirations of his Lord, he has set himself, now to one thing, now to another; but to all in season, and to nothing in vain.... Ah! What grey hairs are on the head of Judah, whose youth is renewed like the eagle's, whose feet are like the feet of harts, and underneath the Everlasting Arms." Would that our unfortunate countrymen, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and torn by endless divisions, could be persuaded to set aside pride and prejudice, and to accept the true principle of religious unity and peace established by God. Then England would become again, what she was for over a thousand years, viz.: "the most faithful daughter of the Church of Rome, and of His Holiness, the one Sovereign Pontiff and Vicar of Christ upon earth," as our Catholic forefathers were wont to describe her.

CHAPTER IV.ToC

THE CHURCH AND THE SECTS.

A natural tendency is apparent in all men to differ among themselves, even concerning subjects which are simple and easily understood; while, on more difficult and complicated issues, this tendency is, of course, very much more pronounced. Hence, the well-known proverb: "Quot homines, tot sententiæ"—there are as many opinions as there are men.

Now, if this is found to be the case in politics, literature, art, music, and indeed in everything else, except perhaps pure mathematics, it is found to be yet more universally the case in questions of religion, since religion is a subject so much more sublime, abstruse, and incomprehensible than others, and so full of supernatural and mysterious truths, with which no merely human tribunal has any competency to deal. Then, let me ask, what chance has a man of arriving at a right decision on the most important of all questions—questions concerning his own eternal salvation—who is thrown into the midst of a world where there is no uniformity of view on spiritual matters, where every variety of opinion is expressed and defended, and where every conceivable form of worship has its fervent supporters and followers.

Or, leaving all others out of account, may we not well ask how the vast multitudes even of Catholics, scattered throughout such a world as this, are to maintain "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. iv. 3), to preserve the tenets of their creed intact, and to discriminate accurately and readily between the teaching of God, and the fallacious doctrines of men? In dealing with anxious and angry disputants there is little use to appeal, as Protestants do, to the authority of teachers who have nothing more to commend them than a learning and an intelligence but little better than that of their disciples. Where man differs from man each will prefer his own view, and claim that his personal opinion is as deserving of respect and