CXir. PROLEGOMENA. 



of each other's throats ; or,expanded in the miseries 

 of Protestant Disunion with its mechanical insti- 

 tutes, modern be<^garY, and juvenile delinquency: 

 whether we \iew it as wrai)ped up in the ideoloijy 

 of Berkley ; or destroyin;^: society in the effusions of 

 Hume and of Rousseau, we shall see its instructive 

 contrast to the beauty and harmony of the catholic 

 philosophy, which, beginning-, where St. Paul 

 and the Saints began, with God and revealed 

 truths, organised society, harmonised the varieties 

 of the human genius, substituted mortification 

 for selfishness, and uniting people in the bond of 

 Faith, Hope, and Charity, established as it were 

 the kingdom of Christ amidst the contending 

 passions of men ; and handed down the Catholic 

 Church to posterity, a sort of standing miracle 

 of holiness. Nor has the empire of religion been 

 ever so seriously disturbed by any power, whether 

 of war or of ambition, as it has by the pride of 

 private judgment in philosophers, who, am- 

 bitious to destroy a religion which placed them on 

 a humble level with the poor and unlettered, 

 began first by corrupting the morals, and then 

 seduced the understanding of the people. For 

 it is a maxim of universal application, that in 

 heresy the heart is corrupted, before the head is 

 turned. The more we look into the wicked lives 

 of the reformers, the philosophers, and the 

 sceptics, and contrast them with the lives of the 



