f our own, he has prepared the way for our own
habits of mind, our own manner of reasoning, our own tastes, and our
own virtues, finding a place and thereby a sanctification, in the
Catholic Church.

There is only one other subject, which I think it necessary to
introduce here, as bearing upon the vague suspicions which are
attached in this country to the Catholic priesthood. It is one of
which my accuser says much, the charge of reserve and economy. He
founds it in no slight degree on what I have said on the subject in
my History of the Arians, and in a note upon one of my sermons in
which I refer to it. The principle of reserve is also advocated by an
admirable writer in two numbers of the Tracts for the Times.

Now, as to the economy itself, I leave the greater part of what I
have to say to an Appendix. Here I will but say that it is founded
upon the words of our Lord, "Cast not your pearls before swine;"
and it was observed by the early Christians more or less in their
intercourse with the heathen populations among whom they lived. In
the midst of the abominable idolatries and impurities of that fearful
time, they could not do otherwise. But the rule of the economy, at
least as I have explained and recommended it, did not go beyond (1)
the concealing the truth when we could do so without deceit, (2)
stating it only partially, and (3) representing it under the nearest
form possible to a learner or inquirer, when he could not possibly
understand it exactly. I conceive that to draw angels with wings is
an instance of the third of these economical modes; and to avoid the
question, "Do Christians believe in a Trinity?" by answering, "They
believe in only one God," would be an instance of the second. As to
the first, it is hardly an economy, but comes under what is called
the "Disciplina Arcani." The second and third economical modes
Clement calls _lying_; meaning that a partial truth is in some sense
a lie, and so also is a representative truth. And this, I think, is
about the long and the short of the ground of the accusation which
has been so violently urged against me, as being a patron of the
economy.

Of late years I have come to think, as I believe most writers do,
that Clement meant more than I have said. I used to think he used the
word "lie" as an hyperbole, but I now believe that he, as other early
Fathers, thought that, under certain circumstances, it was lawful
to tell a lie. This doctrine I never maint