Excerpt from The Church It is our firm conviction that the Church, when looked upon with the simple eye of the Gospel, is its own defence. It is only needful that the authenticity of what is seen should correspond to the simplicity of the eye that sees it: and it is because our experience has shown that in this matter a crowd of prejudices are current, a great number of truths are weakened, and many others are presented under their least favourable aspect by ill-informed or impassioned minds, that we have not thought it Overbold to undertake once more a task which has been SO Often done better. There is a diversity of Spirits, and the Spirit blows where it wills. Those who have never approached learned researches or eloquent pleadings pro domo Dei will perhaps find scattered up and down these pages some little truth to acknowledge, some little religious substance whereon to feed. That this may be SO is the prayer of one who wishes nothing for himself, and does not intend to put forth any thing oh his own authority: but submits all to the intentions and judgements of his Church, which as a son he accepts and loves. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.