(FELT BY ANGLICANS

IN CATHOLIC TEACHING

CONSIDERED

1. In Twelve Lectures addressed in 1850 to the Party of the
Religious Movement of 1833.

N57 BX1780

CHICVCO ΓΙΒ

THE

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND

WILLIAM BERNARD ULLATHORNE,

D.D., O.S.B.,

BISHOP OF HETALONA,

AND VICAR-APOSTOLIC OF THE CENTRAL DISTRICT.

MY DEAR LORD,

In gaining your Lordship's leave to place the following Volume under your patronage, I fear I may seem to the world to have asked what is more gracious in you to grant, than becoming or reasonable in me to have contemplated. For what assignable connection is there between your Lordship's name, and a work, not didactic, not pastoral, not ascetical, not devotional, but for the most part simply controversial, directed, moreover, against a mere transitory phase in an accidental school of opinion, and for that reason, both in its matter and its argument, only of local interest and ephemeral importance?

Such a question may obviously be put to me; nor can I answer it, except by referring to the well-known interest which your Lordship has so long taken in the religious party to which I have alluded, and the joy and thankfulness with which you have welcomed the manifestations of God's grace, as often as first one and then another of their number has in bis turn emerged from the mists of error into the light and peace of Catholic truth.

Whatever, then, your Lordship's sentiments may be of the character of the Work itself, I persuade myself that I may be able suitably to present it to you, in consideration of the object it has in view; and that you, on your part, will not repent of countenancing an Author, who, in the selection of his materials, would fain put the claims of charity above the praise of critics, and feels it is a better deed to write for the present moment than for posterity.

Begging your Lordship's blessing,
I am, my dear Lord,

Your Lordship's faithful and grateful Servant,

PREFACE.

1

IT may happen to some persons to feel surprise, that the Author of the following Lectures, instead of occupying himself on the direct proof of Catholicism, should have professed no more than to remove difficulties from the path of those who have already admitted the arguments in its favour. But, in the first place, he really does not think that there is any call just now for an Apology in behalf of the divine origin of the Catholic Church. She bears her unearthly character on her brow, as her enemies confess, by imputing her miracles to Beelzebub. There is an instinctive feeling of curiosity, interest, anxiety, and awe, mingled together in various proportions, according to the tempers and opinions of individuals, when she makes her appearance in any neighbourhood, rich or poor, in the person of her missioners or her religious communities. Do what they will, denounce her as they may, her enemies cannot quench this emotion in the breasts of others, or in their own. It is their involuntary homage to the Notes of the Church; it is their spontaneous recognition of her royal descent and her imperial claim; it is a specific feeling, which no other religion tends to excite. Judaism, Mahometanism, Anglicanism, Method