logical conclusions from the articles of the apostolic _Depositum_;
again, it can pronounce nothing about the persons of heretics, whose
works fall within its legitimate province. It must ever profess
to be guided by Scripture and by tradition. It must refer to the
particular apostolic truth which it is enforcing, or (what is called)
_defining_. Nothing, then, can be presented to me, in time to come,
as part of the faith, but what I ought already to have received, and
have not actually received, (if not) merely because it has not been
told me. Nothing can be imposed upon me different in kind from what I
hold already--much less contrary to it. The new truth which is
promulgated, if it is to be called new, must be at least homogeneous,
cognate, implicit, viewed relatively to the old truth. It must be
what I may even have guessed, or wished, to be included in the
apostolic revelation; and at least it will be of such a character,
that my thoughts readily concur in it or coalesce with it, as soon as
I hear it. Perhaps I and others actually have always believed it, and
the only question which is now decided in my behalf, is that I am
henceforth to believe that I have only been holding what the apostles
held before me.

Let me take the doctrine which Protestants consider our greatest
difficulty, that of the Immaculate Conception. Here I entreat
the reader to recollect my main drift, which is this. I have no
difficulty in receiving it: if _I_ have no difficulty, why may not
another have no difficulty also? why may not a hundred? a thousand?
Now I am sure that Catholics in general have not any intellectual
difficulty at all on the subject of the Immaculate Conception; and
that there is no reason why they should. Priests have no difficulty.
You tell me that they _ought_ to have a difficulty;--but they have
not. Be large-minded enough to believe, that men may reason and feel
very differently from yourselves; how is it that men fall, when left
to themselves, into such various forms of religion, except that there
are various types of mind among them, very distinct from each other?
From my testimony then about myself, if you believe it, judge of
others also who are Catholics: we do not find the difficulties which
you do in the doctrines which we hold; we have no intellectual
difficulty in that in particular, which you call a novelty of this
day. We priests need not be hypocrites, though we be called upon to
believe in the Immaculat