XXXir. PROLEGOMENA. 



I shall adduce but few more examples, 

 thou£^h many thousands might be brought for- 

 >vard ; indeed the Avhole science of philology 

 supports the doctrines of the Catholic Religion ; 

 ■while the very origin of language itself, notwith- 

 standing the trumpery stuff that has been written 

 about it by philologists, is wholly inexplicable in 

 any other way than that in which the Bible and 

 tradition represent it to have began, when man 

 was first created perfect in his kind. 



Merit, from merere, is what one deserves, 

 and there are degrees of merit, in works of super- 

 erogation, to which degrees of reward are 

 ju'omised, even as one star differs from another 

 in glory. 



Faith, a Avord which grammatically is a 

 verbal noun, is derived of the third person singular 

 of the Saxon faegan, jjangere, to contract, or 

 covenant : and it agrees with the Latin fides, 

 from fidere to trust or confide, so that when ap- 

 ])lied to the act between man and the Deity, 

 it implies absolute or complete trust in the word 

 of God, including the total resignation of the 

 fallacies of human reason, and the rebellion of 

 the human will. It is important that those Avho 

 love to doubt and cavil, should consider well 

 this meaning of the word, because it is so often 

 confounded with mere Belief, which is an in- 

 voluntary act of the judgment. For example, 



