would urge against us the multitude of miracles recorded in our Saints' Lives and devotional works, for many of which there is little evidence, and for some next to none. We think them true, in the same sense in which Protestants think the history of England true. When they say that, they do not mean to say there are no mistakes, but no mistakes of consequence, none which alter the general course of history. Nor do they mean they are equally sure of every part; for evidence is fuller and better for some things than for others. They do not stake their credit on the truth of Froissart or Sully, they do not pledge themselves for the accuracy of Doddington or Walpole, they do not embrace as an Evangelist Hume, Sharon Turner, or Macaulay. And yet they do not think it necessary, on the other hand, to commence a religious war against all our historical catechisms, and abstracts, and dictionaries, and tales, and biographies, through the country; they have no call on them to emend and expurgate books of archæology, antiquities, heraldry, architecture, geography, and statistics, to rewrite our inscriptions, and to establish a censorship on all new publications for the time to come. And so as regards the miracles of the Catholic Church; if, indeed, miracles never can occur, then, indeed, impute the narratives to fraud; but till you prove they are not likely, we shall consider the histories which have come down to us true on the whole, though in particular cases they may be exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, they can certainly be proved to be false, there we shall be bound to do our best to get rid of them; but till that is clear, we shall be liberal enough to allow others to use their private judgment in their favour, as we use ours in their disparagement. For myself, lest I appear in any way to

be shrinking from a determinate judgment on the claims of some of those miracles and relics, which Protestants are so startled at, and to be hiding particular questions in what is vague and general, I will avow distinctly, that, putting out of the question the hypothesis of unknown laws of nature (which is an evasion from the force of any proof), I think it impossible to withstand the evidence which is brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the Roman States. I see no reason to doubt the material of the Lombard crown at Monza ; and I do not see why the Holy Coat at Trèves may not have been what it professes to be. I firmly believe that portions of the True Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also. I believe that at Rome too lies St. Stephen, that St. Matthew lies at Salerno, and St. Andrew at Amalfi. I firmly believe that the relics of the saints are doing innumerable miracles and graces daily, and that it needs only for a Catholic to show devotion to any saint in order to receive special benefits from his intercession. I firmly believe that saints in their life-time have before now raised the dead to life, crossed the sea without vessels, multiplied grain and bread, cured incurable diseases, and stopped the operation of the laws of the universe in a multitude of ways. Many men, when they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncracy, or to imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism, or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will; and we have a right to ask them why they do not say it of those who bow down before the Mystery of mysteries, the Divine Incarnation. If they do not believe

this, they are not yet Protestants; if they do, let them grant that He, who has done the greater may do the less.

And now, Brothers of the Oratory, I have come to the end of a somewhat uninteresting, but a necessary discussion, Your lot is cast in the world; you are not gathered together, as we are, into the home and under the shadow of St. Philip; you mix with men of all opinions. Where you see prejudice, there, indeed, it is no use to argue; prejudice thinks its first principles selfevident. It can tell falsehoods to our dishonour by the score, yet suddenly it is so jealous of truth, as to be shocked at legends in honour of the saints. With prejudiced persons then, you will make no way; they will not look the question in the face; if they condescend to listen for a moment to your arguments, it is in order to pick holes in them, not to ascertain their drift or to estimate their weight. But there are others of a different stamp, of whom I spoke in the opening of this Lecture, candid, amiable minds, who wish to think well of our doctrines and devotions, but stumble at them. When you meet with such, ask them whether they are not taking their own principles and opinions for granted, and whether all they have to say against us is not contained in the proposition with which they start. Entreat them to consider how they know their existing opinions to be true; whether they are innate and necessary; whether they are not local, national, or temporary; whether they have ever spread over the earth, ever held nations together; whether they have ever or often done a great thing. If they say that penances are absurd, or images superstitious, or infallibility impossible, or sacraments mere charms, or

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a priesthood priestcraft, get them to put their ideas into shape and to tell you the reasons for them. Trace up their philosophy for them, as you have traced up their tradition; the fault lies in the root; every step of it is easy but the first. Perhaps you will make them Catholics by this process; at least you will make them perceive what they believe and what they do not, and will teach them to be more tolerant of a religion which unhappily they do not see their way to embrace.

[Lectures on the Present Position of Catholicism in England, by the Rev. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.]

LECTURE VIII.

WANT OF INTERCOURSE WITH CATHOLICS THE PROTECTION OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW.

You may have asked yourselves, Brothers of the Oratory, why it was, that in exposing, as I did last week, the shallowness of the philosophy on which our opponents erect their structure of argument against us, I did not take, as my illustration, an instance far more simple and ready to my hand than that to which I actually directed your attention. It was my object, on that occasion, to show that Protestants virtually assume the point in debate between them and us, in any particular controversy, in the very principles with which they set out; that those first principles, for which they offer no proof, involve their conclusions; so that, if we are betrayed into the inadvertence of passing them over without remark, we are forthwith defeated and routed even before we have begun to move forward to the attack, as might happen to cavalry who manœuvred on a swamp, or to a guerilla force which ventured on the open plain. Protestants and Catholics

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