AVERAGE BELIEVER AND CATHOLICISM 227 



the doctrines of the Church of Rome represent a Bookin 



structure built up by the misguided ingenuity of 



priests, and imposed by them on a credulous and The doctrines 



. . r 11 i formulated by 



passive laity ; but so tar, at all events, as the the aristocracy 

 more important doctrines are concerned, the very councS " 



reverse is the case really. It has been the world 



of ordinary believers that has imposed its beliefs mass of com - 



J A mon believers. 



on the priests ; not the priests that have imposed 

 them on the world of ordinary believers. Let 

 us take, for instance, the Catholic doctrine of the 

 Eucharist, or the beliefs implied in the cultus of the 

 Virgin Mary. That the sacramental elements were 

 actually the body and blood of Christ, that the 

 Redeemer who died on the cross for each individual 

 sinner entered under the form of these elements 

 into each sinner's body entered bearing the stripes 

 on it by which the sinner was healed, and mixing 

 with the sinner's blood the divine blood that had 

 been shed for him this was the belief of the com- 

 mon unlettered communicant long before priests 

 and theologians had, by the aid of Aristotle, 

 explained the assumed miracle as a process of 

 transubstantiation ; and longer still before their 

 philosophic explanation was, by the ratification of 

 any general Council, given its place amongst the 

 definite teachings of the Church. Similarly, the 

 devotion to the Virgin Mary first sprang up amongst 

 the mass of believers naturally, because the idea of 

 God's mother, with all her motherly love, with all her 

 virgin purity, and with all her human sorrows allied 

 so closely to omnipotence, touched countless hearts 



