The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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After our author had completed the usual course of study, he was
admitted as alumnus of Douay college, and appointed _professor of
philosophy_. The Newtonian system of philosophy was about that time
gaining ground in the foreign universities. He adopted it, in part, into
the course of philosophy which he dictated to the students. He read and
considered with great attention the metaphysical works of Woolfe and
Leibnitz. He did not admire them, and thought the system of
pre-established harmony laid down in them irreconcilable with the
received belief or opinions of the Roman Catholic church on the soul;
and that much of their language, though susceptible of a fair
interpretation, conveyed improper notions, or, at least, sounded
offensively to Catholic ears. The late Mr. John Dunn, his contemporary
at the college, frequently mentioned to the editor the extreme caution
which our author used in inserting any thing new in his dictates,
particularly on any subject connected with any tenet of religion. After
teaching a course of philosophy, he was appointed _professor of
divinity_. On this part of his life the editor has been favored by a
gentleman deservedly damed for his erudition and piety, the reverend
Robert Bannister, with a long letter, of which the reader is presented
with an extract.
"I was contemporary with Mr. Alban Butler in Douay college eight years;
viz. from October, 1741 to October, 1749. But as I was but a boy the
greater part of that time, I had not any intimacy with him, nor was I
capable of knowing any thing concerning his interior, the manner of his
prayer, or the degrees to which he ascended in it, or any extraordinary
communications or elevations to which the Holy Ghost, the great master
and teacher of contemplation, might raise him. All that I can say is,
that he opened Douay college great door to me and a gentleman whom I
knew not, but who was so good as to bring me from Lisle in his coach, on
Sunday between ten and eleven, the 15th of October, 1741; and the first
sight of him appeared to me then so meek and so amiable, that I thought
I would choose him for my ghostly father; but another, I suppose in
rotation, adopted me. Mr. Alban was my sole master in my first year of
divinity in 1749, and dictated the two treatises _De Decalogo et De
Incarnatione_; he also presided over my defensions upon those two
treatises, and over Mr. James Talbot's (the late bishop of London) upon
universal divinity. As to heroic acts of virtue, which strike with
admiration all that see or hear of them, I cannot recollect more than a
uniform, constant observance of all the duties of a priest, professor,
and confessarius. He was always at morning meditations, seldom omitted
the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the mass, which he said with a
heavenly composure, sweetness, and recollection; studying and teaching
assiduously, dictating with an unwearied patience so equally and
leisurely, that every one could, if he wished to do it, write his
dictates in a clear and legible hand; nor do I remember that he ever