eliever in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he could
bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could
resist "the overwhelming force of the argument against it." "Sir Thomas
More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue;
and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. A
faith which stands that test, will stand any test." But for myself, I
cannot indeed prove it, I cannot tell _how_ it is; but I say, "Why
should it not be? What's to hinder it? What do I know of substance or
matter? just as much as the greatest philosophers, and that is nothing
at all;"--so much is this the case, that there is a rising school of
philosophy now, which considers phenomena to constitute the whole of our
knowledge in physics. The Catholic doctrine leaves phenomena alone. It
does not say that the phenomena go; on the contrary, it says that they
remain; nor does it say that the same phenomena are in several places at
once. It deals with what no one on earth knows any thing about, the
material substances themselves. And, in like manner, of that majestic
Article of the Anglican as well as of the Catholic Creed,--the doctrine
of the Trinity in Unity. What do I know of the Essence of the Divine
Being? I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incompatible with
my idea of one; but when I come to the question of concrete fact, I have
no means of proving that there is not a sense in which one and three can
equally be predicated of the Incommunicable God.

But I am going to take upon myself the responsibility of more than the
mere Creed of the Church; as the parties accusing me are determined I
shall do. They say, that now, in that I am a Catholic, though I may not
have offences of my own against honesty to answer for, yet, at least, I
am answerable for the offences of others, of my co-religionists, of my
brother priests, of the Church herself. I am quite willing to accept the
responsibility; and, as I have been able, as I trust, by means of a few
words, to dissipate, in the minds of all those who do not begin with
disbelieving me, the suspicion with which so many Protestants start, in
forming their judgment of Catholics, viz. that our Creed is actually set
up in inevitable superstition and hypocrisy, as the original sin of
Catholicism; so now I will proceed, as before, identifying myself with
the Church and vindicating it,--not of course denying the enormous mass