A COMPANION TO MR. WELLS’S “OUTLINE OF HISTORY” BY HILAIRE BELLOC [Illustration: ECCLESIASTICAL SUPPLY ASSOCIATION E + S + A PUBLISHERS AND IMPORTERS] 328–330 STOCKTON ST. SAN FRANCISCO. CAL. 1927 Made and Printed in Great Britain at _The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. TO MY BROTHER-IN-LAW JOHN HOGAN OF NAPA, CALIFORNIA CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. MR. WELLS AND THE CREATION OF THE WORLD 9 III. MR. WELLS AND THE FALL OF MAN 28 IV. MR. WELLS AND GOD 34 V. WHENCE CAME RELIGION TO MAN? 40 VI. WE COME TO REAL HISTORY 47 VII. MR. WELLS ON PRIESTHOOD 51 VIII. BUDDHISM AS A STICK WITH WHICH TO BEAT THE CHRISTIAN 59 IX. MR. WELLS AND THE INCARNATION 64 X. THE ORIGINS OF THE CHURCH 72 XI. ISLAM 77 XII. THE CHRISTIAN DARK AGES 84 XIII. THE MIDDLE AGES 89 XIV. THE REFORMATION 93 XV. THE FRUIT OF DISRUPTION 103 XVI. SUMMARY 110 APPENDIX 115 INDEX 119 A COMPANION TO MR. WELLS’S “OUTLINE OF HISTORY” CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION My object in these pages is to follow, for Catholic readers, Mr. Wells’s _Outline of History_; to point out the principal popular errors, most of them now out of date, which its author has repeated, and to state the opposing truths with their supporting evidence and reasoning. If it be asked why I should devote such labour to a book which is but a passing fashion, and that not in the classes or districts which count most, I answer that, though ephemeral, the work has had a wide circulation, and is therefore of some momentary effect worth checking, while it is also representative of its type: writing of wide circulation which repeats as facts for general acceptation theories once respectable and now exploded. Now to check erroneous statement is always worth while.