change. Other difficulties of a more
circumstantial kind, it is true, still remain for them; and of these I
shall speak presently. But putting these for the moment aside, and
regarding the question under its widest aspects only--regarding it only
in connection with the larger generalisations of science, and the
primary postulates of man's spiritual existence--the theist will find in
Catholicism no new difficulties. He will find in it the logical
development of our natural moral sense, developed, indeed, and still
developing, under a special and supernatural care--but essentially the
same thing; with the same negations, the same assertions, the same
positive truths, and the same impenetrable mysteries; and with nothing
new added to them, but help, and certainty, and guidance.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] It is curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is
really a serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly
opposite to those drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating
chapter from which the above words are quoted.

[38] _Our Eternal Hope._ By Canon Farrar.

[39] See Doellinger's _Continuation of Hortig's Church History_, quoted
by Mr. J.B. Robertson, in his _Memoir of Dr. Moehler_.

[40] See _Phases of my Faith_, by Francis Newman.

[41] It is difficult on any other supposition to account for the marked
fact that hardly any of our English rationalists have criticised
Christianity, except as presented to them in a form essentially
Protestant; and that a large proportion of their criticisms are solely
applicable to this. It is amusing, too, to observe how, to men of often
such really wide minds, all theological authority is represented by the
various social types of contemporary Anglican or dissenting dignitaries.
Men such as Professors Huxley and Clifford, Mr. Leslie Stephen, and Mr.
Frederic Harrison, can find no representatives of dogmatism but in
bishops, deans, curates, Presbyterian ministers--and, above all,
curates. The one mouthpiece of the _Ecclesia docens_ is for them the
parish pulpit; and the more ignorant be its occupant the more
representative do they think his utterances. Whilst Mr. Matthew Arnold
apparently thinks the whole cause of revealed religion stands and falls
with the vagaries of the present Bishop of Gloucester.

[42] Busenbaum, quoted by Dr. J.H. Newman, _Letter to the Duke of
Norfolk_, p. 65.

CHAPTER XII.

UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN