e same see, as that between the
non-jurors in England and the Established Church; not the case of one
Church against another, as Rome against the Oriental Monophysites.
But my friend, an anxiously religious man, now, as then, very dear to
me, a Protestant still, pointed out the palmary words of St.
Augustine, which were contained in one of the extracts made in the
_Review_, and which had escaped my observation. "Securus judicat
orbis terrarum." He repeated these words again and again, and, when
he was gone, they kept ringing in my ears. "Securus judicat orbis
terrarum;" they were words which went beyond the occasion of the
Donatists: they applied to that of the Monophysites. They gave a
cogency to the Article, which had escaped me at first. They decided
ecclesiastical questions on a simpler rule than that of Antiquity;
nay, St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity; here
then Antiquity was deciding against itself. What a light was hereby
thrown upon every controversy in the Church! not that, for the
moment, the multitude may not falter in their judgment,--not that, in
the Arian hurricane, Sees more than can be numbered did not bend
before its fury, and fall off from St. Athanasius,--not that the
crowd of Oriental Bishops did not need to be sustained during the
contest by the voice and the eye of St. Leo; but that the deliberate
judgment, in which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces,
is an infallible prescription and a final sentence against such
portions of it as protest and secede. Who can account for the
impressions which are made on him? For a mere sentence, the words of
St. Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had felt from any
words before. To take a familiar instance, they were like the "Turn
again Whittington" of the chime; or, to take a more serious one, they
were like the "Tolle, lege,--Tolle, lege," of the child, which
converted St. Augustine himself. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum!" By
those great words of the ancient Father, the theory of the _Via
Media_ was absolutely pulverised.

I became excited at the view thus opened upon me. I was just starting
on a round of visits; and I mentioned my state of mind to two most
intimate friends: I think to no others. After a while, I got calm,
and at length the vivid impression upon my imagination faded away.
What I thought about it on reflection, I will attempt to describe
presently. I had to determine its logical value, and its b