Xii. PROLEGOMENA. 



mind.* The fruits of lieresy have been universal 

 schism, disunion, hatred, pride, and unhappi- 

 ness. Tlie attestations of heresy may be found in 

 works which detail the judgments of God against it, 

 and particularly against sacrilege.f One remark- 

 able thing is, that good moral men among sects 

 generally seem to want that complacency of mind, 

 that calm and unalloyed joy in prosperity, and the 

 resignation to the Divine Will in adversity, which 

 can only result from the true Christian system of 

 denial of Self, and the dedicating every thought, 

 word, and work, to the greater glory of God. 



We shall say something now of the Founda- 

 tion of Certainty ; as resting on the suffrages of 

 ages, when only physical truths are concerned ; 

 and on the combined judgment of the Councils of 

 the Church in matters of Religion ; in order to 

 overthrow, in the minds of philosophical readers, 

 the fatal notion that reliance can be placed on 

 individual judgment, which, uncertain and 

 fluctuating as the billows of Passion which 

 move it, has ever been the perilous Quicksand 

 on which Protestantism has been founded. 



Authority the foundation of Certainty. — 

 I might say much on the metaphysical founda- 



*,See the unanswerable argument of the Abbe De La Mennais 

 on this subject, in his Essai sur r indifference en matiere de 

 Religion, vol. 2, where he discusses metaphysically the Founda- 

 tion of Certitude. 



t See Sir Henry Spelman's extraordinary work, The History 

 of Sacrilege, 8vo. London, 1698. 



