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

degrees of supposed belief, Ribadeneira, Baronius, the Bollandists,
Tillemont, and Fleury. With which of these writers shall we class our
author? certainly neither with Surius, nor with Baillet or Launoy. The
middle links represent those to whom the most liberal Roman Catholic
will not impute too much credulity, or the most credulous too much
freedom. Perhaps our author should rank with the Bollandists, the first
of this middle class; and generally he who thinks with father Papebroke
on any subject of ecclesiastical literature, may be sure of thinking
right. To those who wholly deny the existence of miracles these sheets
are not addressed; but the Roman Catholic may be asked on what principle
he admits the evidence for the miracles of the three first centuries,
and rejects the evidence for the miracles of the middle age; why he
denies to St. Austin, St. Gregory, the venerable Bede, or St. Bernard,
the confidence he places in St. Justin, St. Irenæus, or Eusebius.
XII.
www.freecatholicebooks.com
Some years after our author had published the Lives of the Saints, he
published the _Life of Mary of the Cross_; a nun in the English convent
of the Poor Clares at Rouen. It is rather a vehicle to convey
instruction on various important duties of a religious life, and on
sublime prayer, than a minute account of the life and actions of the
nun. It was objected to this work, as it had been to the Saints' Lives,
that it inculcated a spirit of mystic prayer, the excesses of which had
been formally condemned, and the propriety of which, even in a very
qualified view of it, was doubtful.
It must be admitted by those who urge this objection, that, both in the
Saints Lives and in the work of which we are speaking, our author uses
very guarded expressions. He always takes care to mention that, in the
practices of devotion, as in every other practice, the common is the
safest road: that many of the greatest saints have, through the whole of
their lives, confined themselves to the usual modes of prayer and
meditation; that the gift of contemplation is given to few; that, like
every other practice of devotion, contemplation has its dangers; and
that, without a perfect spirit of humility, it is much exposed to
illusion; but he delivers, at the same time, an explicit opinion, that
contemplation is a gift of heaven; that the happiness of a soul on whom
God bestows it, is above description; and that every joy which this life
affords is contemptible in comparison of it. This certainly is catholic
doctrine.
It is natural to suppose that, at a time when every art and science was
deluged in a quantity of barbarous words, and metaphysics were carried
into every subject, the doctrine of prayer would often be involved in
similar intricacies and refinements. The fact certainly is, that many