Author's Preface

It appears necessary to trespass on the reader's patience for a while by giving him the history of the composition of this Treatise. Books, reviews, conversation, personal experience, and the phenomena forced upon our notice in dealing with souls, seem to concur in showing that it is almost a characteristic feature of the present age, at least in this country, to have harsh, unkindly, jealous, suspicious, and distrustful thoughts of God. It is not so much that men do not believe in Him, as in past times, or that they are irreverently inquisitive, as they have been in other days. Infidelity and intellectual impiety are unfortunately common enough; but they are not, as compared with other times, the characteristic sins of the day with us. We find in their place abundant admissions of the existence, and even of the excellence, of God; but joined with this, a reluctance, which hardly likes to put itself into words, to acknowledge His sovereignty. There is a desire to strip Him of His majesty, to qualify His rights and to abate His prerogatives, to lower Him so as to bring Him somewhat nearer to ourselves, to insist on His obeying our own notions of the laws of morality, and confining Himself within such limits of justice and equity as are binding on creatures rather than on the Creator. There is a tendency to turn religion into a contract between parties, very unequal certainly, but not infinitely unequal, to object to whatever in God's Providence betokens a higher rule than the rule of our duties towards each other, and to revolt from any appearance of exclusiveness, supreme will, and unaccountable irresponsibility, which there may be in His conduct towards us. This appears to be the attitude of the day towards God. The acknowledgment of Him is conditional on His submitting to be praised and admired, as other than the God whose own will is His sole law, whose own glory is His necessary end, and who by virtue of His own perfections can have no other end, rest, or sufficiency, than His own ever-blessed Self.

XIV AUTHOR S PREFACE.

If this were simply a mitigated form of infidelity belonging to the nineteenth century, and affecting those only who are immersed in worldliness, the present Treatise would not have been written, inasmuch as it is purely practical, and addressed only to believers. But the epidemics of the world are never altogether unfelt within the Church. The air is corrupted, and in some much milder form the souls of believers are affected by the pestilence which reigns without. So is it in the present case. In the difficulties through which men have to force their w.iv, by the help of grace, into the" One True Fold, in the obstacles which hinder others from advancing in the ways of holiness, in the temptations which tease, if they do not endanger, faith, in the treatment of religious controversies, in the sides men take in ecclesiastical politics, in the tendencies of their theological views, ami even in the common exercises of daily devotion, we find indubitable traces of an attitude towards God, caught from the fashion of the day, and which seems to betoken some obliquity in the mind, logically working itself out in the worship and obedience of our souls. It is not that believers believe wrongly about God, but either that they do not understand, or that they do not realize, what they most rightly helieve.

It has thus come to pass, from various circumstances which need not be detailed, that the composition of this Treatise has been a work of charity towards souls, almost forced upon the writer in consequence of the position which he occupied, and the work into which such a sphere as London introduced him. The result of much thought on the subject led to the conclusion, tlmt it is possible for the intellectual inconsistencies of men to realize that they have a Creator without realizing, what is already involved, that they themselves are creatures, or what is actually implied in being a creature; and further, it seemed that this very inconsistency explained and accounted for the phenomena in question.

The Treatise, therefore, will be found naturally to divide itself into three parts. The First Book, consisting of three chapters, is the statement of the case, and contains a description of the phenomena around us, a detailed account of what it is to have a Creator, and of what follows from our being His creatures. The result of this inquiry is to find, that creation is simply an act of divine love, and cannot be accounted for on any other supposition than that of an immense and eternal love. The Second Book, consisting of five chapters, occupies itself with the difficulties and depths of this creative love, which have been classified as answers to the following questions, Why does God wish us to love Him, Why does He Him-author's PREFACE. XV self love us, How can we love Ilim, How do we actually love Him, and How does He repay our love. Here, in other times, or in another country perhaps, the Treatise might have concluded. But the course of the investigation has started some grave objections, which the Third Book, consisting of four chapters, is occupied in answering. If this account of creative love be true, if God redeemed us because He persisted in desiring, even after our fall, to have us with Him as participators in His own eternal beatitude, salvation ought to be easy, even to fallen nature. If it is easy, then it would follow that at least the majority of believers would be saved. If these two questions are answered in the affirmative, then a fresh difficulty rises to view. How are we to account for what is an undoubted fact, that these relations of the Creator and the creature are not practically acknowledged by creatures? The answer to this objection is found in the nature, the power, and the prevalence of worldliness. The flesh and the devil will not adequately account for the way in which men behave towards God, and the attitude in which they put themselves before Him. Worldliness is the principal explanation of it. But then the conclusions, which may be drawn from an inspection of worldliness, seem to dishonor, if not to destroy, the previous conclusions about the easiness of salvation and the multitude of the elect. How is it that so many can escape? how is it that they do escape? By personal love of the Creator, by a religion which is simply a service of love, by a love which brings them within the suck of that gulf of the Divine Beauty, which is our holiness here, as it is our happiness hereafter. And thus the creature secures that enjoyment and possession of the Creator, which was His primary intention in creation; and so the Treatise ends.

Although it seems occupied with very simple truths, and might almost be regarded as a commentary on the catechism, the composition of it has been a work both of time and labor. It stands to the Author's other works in the relation of source and origin. It has been this view of God, pondered for years, that has given rise to the theological bias, visible in the other books, as well as to the opinions expressed on the spiritual life. Difficulties, which may have been found in the other books, respecting the Sacred Humanity, the Blessed Sacrament, our Lady, Purgatory, Indulgences, and the like, will for the most part find their explanation here; for this Treatise explains in detail the point of view from which the Author habitually looks at all religious questions, of practice as well as of speculation.

The Author cannot allow his Treatise to go forth to the public, without his acknowledging the obligations he is under to

XY1 AUTHOR S PREFACE.

the Rev. Father Gloag, the librarian of the London Oratory, •who has spared no pains in verifying quotations, in seeking for passages in voluminous works to which other writers had given incorrect references, or made vague allusions, and also in bringing under the notice of the Author some important passages of which he was not aware himself, especially with reference to the Baian Propositions. As the work has been written for the most part in ill-health, and under the pressure of other duties from which he could not be dispensed, the Author is the more anxious to acknowledge thus gratefully a co-operation, which circumstances rendered peculiarly valuable, and which, tedious and troublesome as it was, has been proffered with such a graceful kindness, as to make the sense of obligation a pleasure rather than a burden.

In truth, though all appears so plain and smooth, the composition of the Treatise has in reality led the Writer along a very thorny and broken path. The ground of creation, of the natural order and of the supernatural order, is, as theologians well know, strewn all over, as if a broken precipice had overwhelmed it, with Condemned Propositions, the theology of which is full of fine distinctions and insidious subtleties, and, not unfrequently, of apparent contradictions. Nowhere does the malice of error more painfully succeed in harassing tho student, than in this matter of Condemned Propositions. The utmost pains, however, have been taken to secure accuracy. The best theologians have been collated, even to weariness; and if the book had been allowed to exhibit in notes or appendices the labor which it has entailed, it would have swollen to an inconvenient bulk. It has, moreover, been submitted to two careful and minute revisions by others, in whose ability and theological attainments there was good reason to confide. Put the Author cannot now entrust it to the thoughtful charity and kindly interpretations of his readers, without also sub-mitting it in all respects, and without the slightest reserve, to the judgment of the Church, retracting and disavowing beforehand any statement which may be at variance with her author- I ized teaching, who is the sole, as well as the infallible, preceptress of the nations in the ways of eternal truth.

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Ikatt of the. Dedication of the Basilica of Hit. ntcr and St. Paul, 1850.