out the agency of
God? I have hitherto been engaged in showing that all the sciences come to
us as one, that they all relate to one and the same integral
subject-matter, that each separately is more or less an abstraction,
wholly true as an hypothesis, but not wholly trustworthy in the concrete,
conversant with relations more than with facts, with principles more than
with agents, needing the support and guarantee of its sister sciences, and
giving in turn while it takes:--from which it follows, that none can safely
be omitted, if we would obtain the exactest knowledge possible of things
as they are, and that the omission is more or less important, in
proportion to the field which each covers, and the depth to which it
penetrates, and the order to which it belongs; for its loss is a positive
privation of an influence which exerts itself in the correction and
completion of the rest. This is a general statement; but now as to
Theology in particular, what, in matter of fact, are its pretensions, what
its importance, what its influence upon other branches of knowledge,
supposing there be a God, which it would not become me to set about
proving? Has it vast dimensions, or does it lie in a nutshell? Will its
omission be imperceptible, or will it destroy the equilibrium of the whole
system of Knowledge? This is the inquiry to which I proceed.

7.

Now what is Theology? First, I will tell you what it is not. And here, in
the first place (though of course I speak on the subject as a Catholic),
observe that, strictly speaking, I am not assuming that Catholicism is
true, while I make myself the champion of Theology. Catholicism has not
formally entered into my argument hitherto, nor shall I just now assume
any principle peculiar to it, for reasons which will appear in the sequel,
though of course I shall use Catholic language. Neither, secondly, will I
fall into the fashion of the day, of identifying Natural Theology with
Physical Theology; which said Physical Theology is a most jejune study,
considered as a science, and really is no science at all, for it is
ordinarily nothing more than a series of pious or polemical remarks upon
the physical world viewed religiously, whereas the word "Natural" properly
comprehends man and society, and all that is involved therein, as the
great Protestant writer, Dr. Butler, shows us. Nor, in the third place, do
I mean by Theology polemics of any kind; for instance, what are called
"the Ev