nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English Catholics know
them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived
them to be said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to
Scripture, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of Councils, or to
the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to
the Holy See, or to Reason. They defy all the _loci theologici_.
There is nothing of them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in
the Roman _Raccolta_, in the Imitation of Christ, in Gother,
Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, so far as I am aware. They do but
scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more spiritual, more
sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being into the
reception of them; I should but be guilty of fulsome frigid
flattery towards the most upright and noble of God's creatures if
I professed them--and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like
the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with
the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I should
expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her
service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the _scandalum
parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum Pharisaeorum_, I leave
others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe
(which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary
is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements,
which can only be explained by being explained away. I do not,
however, speak of these statements, as they are found in their
authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe
that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in
your pages. Were any of them, the sayings of Saints in ecstasy, I
should know they had a good meaning; still I should not repeat
them myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the
tongues of Angels, but according to that literal sense which they
bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as
spoken by man to man in England in the nineteenth century, I
consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the
unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to
work the loss of souls.

Of course; it is what might be expected of him. But Dr. Newman has
often told us that we must take the cons