that with the light you may recognise and love and fear the truth. My soul will then be made happy by your safety, at seeing you come out from so great an error. I say to you nothing further. Remain in the holy and sweet love of God. Pardon me if I have been too heavy on you with my words. My desire for your safety urges me to say them to you by my mouth in your[41] presence, rather than by writing. May God fill you with His most sweet grace. Jesus is sweet; Jesus is love."[42] [Sidenote: HER LETTER TO CHARLES V.] Such is the composition pronounced to be unsurpassed for weight of reasoning and eloquence, and to be equal to the writings of Petrarch! Can it be supposed that, putting out of the question any influence exercised by the character of the writer, any human mind was ever persuaded to do or to think anything by such an address? As argument it is surely worse than in any other point of view. With the exception of the passage pointing out the insincerity of the cardinals who raised objections to the election of Urban, there were perhaps never strung together so many absurdly glaring instances of begging the question. And as for rhetorical power, surely in this waste of pleonastic phrases, redundant tautology, and trite common-place hack-preacher's topics, there is no faintest trace even of that untaught eloquence which strong feeling and earnest conviction are apt to command. And yet looking at the matter in hand from the fourteenth century point of view, what a subject it was to call forth an awful and heart-stirring appeal! If a true Pope be anything, how tremendous and infinitely horrible a phenomenon must an Anti-pope be. Think of the adulteration of the infallible with the fallible, of the doubts engendered, where certainty is imperatively needed, of the sacraments nullified, and the one half of sacred Christendom cheated into eternal perdition, as the necessary result of void ordinations, void baptisms, and void absolutions, and think for a moment how Petrarch, or still better how Dante, would have written on such a subject! But Catherine must have sincerely believed that her utterances were the utterances of inspiration, and must necessarily have effect as such. For that she bestowed on this long and important letter none of the ordinary care and labour which such a composition would naturally claim from a merely human author, is curiously shown by the record which has preserved the fact, that the Saint dictated three other long letters on the same 6th of May on which she composed this! It is recorded also that she occasionally dictated as many as three letters to three secretaries at the same time. Her biographer and commentators consider the excessive outpouring of words one of the most remarkable proofs of her supernatural claims and powers. And more sceptical minds may admit it as at least a proof of wonderful energy, and indomitable strength of volition. CHAPTER VII. DUPE OR IMPOSTOR?