o call in question their personal authority.

Though the writer has sought to be exact in all his assertions, an
occasional inaccuracy may have inadvertently crept in. Any emendations
which the venerated Prelates or Clergy may deign to propose will be
gratefully attended to in a subsequent edition.

RICHMOND, _November_ 21st, 1876.

PREFACE TO EIGHTY-THIRD REVISED EDITION.

The new edition of "The Faith of Our Fathers" has been carefully revised,
and enriched with several pages of important matter.

It is gratifying to note that since the first edition appeared, in 1876,
up to the present time, fourteen hundred thousand copies have been
published, and the circulation of the book is constantly increasing.

The work has also been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe.

BALTIMORE,
_May_ 1st, 1917.

INTRODUCTION.

MY DEAR READER:--Perhaps this is the first time in your life that you have
handled a book in which the doctrines of the Catholic Church are expounded
by one of her own sons. You have, no doubt, heard and read many things
regarding our Church; but has not your information come from teachers
justly liable to suspicion? You asked for bread, and they gave you a
stone. You asked for fish, and they reached you a serpent. Instead of the
bread of truth, they extended to you the serpent of falsehood. Hence,
without intending to be unjust, is not your mind biased against us because
you listened to false witnesses? This, at least, is the case with
thousands of my countrymen whom I have met in the brief course of my
missionary career. The Catholic Church is persistently misrepresented by
the most powerful vehicles of information.

She is assailed in romances of the stamp of Maria Monk, and in pictorial
papers. It is true that the falsehood of those illustrated periodicals has
been fully exposed. But the antidote often comes too late to counteract
the poison. I have seen a picture representing Columbus trying to
demonstrate the practicability of his design to discover a new Continent
before certain monks who are shaking their fists and gnashing their teeth
at him. It matters not to the artist that Columbus could probably never
have undertaken his voyage and discovery, as the explorer himself avows,
were it not for the benevolent zeal of the monks, Antonio de Marchena and
Juan Perez, and other ecclesiastics, as well as for the munificence of
Queen Isabella and the Spanish Court.

Th