whose feet are like the feet of harts, and underneath the Everlasting Arms.”  Would that our unfortunate countrymen, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and torn by endless divisions, could be persuaded to set aside pride and prejudice, and to accept the true principle of religious unity and peace established by God.  Then England would become again, what she was for over a thousand years, viz.:  “the most faithful daughter of the Church of Rome, and of His Holiness, the one Sovereign Pontiff and Vicar of Christ upon earth,” as our Catholic forefathers were wont to describe her.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHURCH AND THE SECTS.

A natural tendency is apparent in all men to differ among themselves, even concerning subjects which are simple and easily understood; while, on more difficult and complicated issues, this tendency is, of course, very much more pronounced.  Hence, the well-known proverb:  “Quot homines, tot sententiae”—­there are as many opinions as there are men.

Now, if this is found to be the case in politics, literature, art, music, and indeed in everything else, except perhaps pure mathematics, it is found to be yet more universally the case in questions of religion, since religion is a subject so much more sublime, abstruse, and incomprehensible than others, and so full of supernatural and mysterious truths, with which no merely human tribunal has any competency to deal.  Then, let me ask, what chance has a man of arriving at a right decision on the most important of all questions—­questions concerning his own eternal salvation—­who is thrown into the midst of a world where there is no uniformity of view on spiritual matters, where every variety of opinion is expressed and defended, and where every conceivable form of worship has its fervent supporters and followers.

Or, leaving all others out of account, may we not well ask how the vast multitudes even of Catholics, scattered throughout such a world as this, are to maintain “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. iv. 3), to preserve the tenets of their creed intact, and to discriminate accurately and readily between the teaching of God, and the fallacious doctrines of men?  In dealing with anxious and angry disputants there is little use to appeal, as Protestants do, to the authority of teachers who have nothing more to commend them than a learning and an intelligence but little better than that of their disciples.  Where man differs from man each will prefer his own view, and claim that his personal opinion is as deserving of respect and as likely to be right as his adversary’s—­which is practically what obtains among non-Catholics at the present day.  Indeed, the only superhuman and infallible authority on earth recognised by them is the Bible; and that, alas! has proved a block of stumbling and not a bond of union, since, in the hands of unscrupulous men, it may be made to prove absolutely anything.