e is a fourth vice, Vicious Circle, in this way.
Give me the notes, I say, of the Church. _The word of God and
undefiled Sacraments_. Are these with you? _Who can doubt it?_ I
do, I deny it utterly. _Consult the word of God._ I have
consulted it, and I favour you less than before. _Ah, but it is
plain._ Prove it to me. _Because we do not depart a nail's
breadth from the word of God._ Where is your persecution? Will
you always go on taking for an argument the very point that is
called in question? How often have I insisted on this already? Do
wake up: do you want torches applied to you? I say that your
exposition of the word of God is perverse and mistaken: I have
fifteen centuries to bear me witness stand by an opinion, not
mine, nor yours, but that of all these ages. _I will stand by the
sentence of the word of God: the Spirit breatheth where it will_
(John iii. 8). There he is at it again; what circumvolutions,
what wheels he is making! This trifler, this arch-contriver of
words and sophisms, I know not to whom he can be formidable:
tiresome he possibly will be. His tiresomeness will find its
corrective in your sagacity: all that was formidable about him
facts have taken away.

TENTH REASON

ALL MANNER OF WITNESS

_This shall be to you a straight way, so that fools shall not go
astray in it_ (Isaias xxxv. 8).

Who is there, however small and lost in the crowd of
illiterates, that, with a desire of salvation and some little
attention, cannot see, cannot keep to the path of the Church, so
admirably smoothed out, eschewing brambles and rocks and
pathless wastes! For, as Isaias prophesies, this path shall be
plain even to the uneducated; most plain therefore, if you
choose, to you. Let us put before our eyes the theatre of the
universe: let us wander everywhere: all things supply us with an
argument. Let us go to heaven: let us contemplate roses and
lilies, Saints empurpled with martyrdom or white with innocence:
Roman Pontiffs, I say, three and thirty in a continuous line put
to death: Pastors all the world over, who have pledged their
blood for the name of Christ: Flocks of faithful, who have
followed in the footsteps of their Pastors: all the Saints of
heaven, who as shining lights in purity and holiness have gone
before the crowd of mankind. You will find that these were ours
when they lived on earth, ours when they passed away from this
world. To cull a few instances, ours was that Ignatius, who in
church ma