PROtEGOMENA. XXVii, 



fire of hell being partof the doctrineof Christianity, 

 or the one truth, cannot be a belief which will 

 fail of answerin£^ to expectation ; according to 

 the proofs already exhibited. But if it could be 

 doubted, nothing would be gained : for the 

 alternative or scepticism would be still worse than 

 the chance of hell, where any hope of salvation 

 was left : and what has all particular heresy led 

 to but general doubts, more or less distressing, 

 of the whole of Christian doctrine ? And then, 

 once admitting doubt, we may seem to be only 

 forms of the earth, invested, in the course of perish- 

 able nature, with temporary consciousness ; a 

 thought as horrible as it is unholy, and which it 

 would be more diflicult to reconcile with the 

 attribute of Omnibeneficence, than any of the 

 obstacles which sceptics throw in the way of our 

 belief in God's eternal judgments. To a doubter 

 then in any part of Catholicism, — since disbelief 

 many part would engender a doubt of the whole, — 

 tlie world itself, divested of hope the panacea 

 of life, would appear a perpetual hell — a valley 

 of tears without a mountjoy. For not only 

 would all our miseries be without their solace, by 

 loosing their merit as crosses ; but our joys would 

 all be tinged with melancholy. Since all things 

 in the mere physical world, being manifestly cal- 

 culated only for a time, would be viewed, in 

 respect to their mortality, as passing phantoms, 



