Again, when a conclusion is recommended to us by the number and force of the arguments in proof of it, our recognition of them invests it with a luminousness, which in one sense adds strength to our assent to it, as it certainly does protect and embolden that assent. Thus we assent to a review of recent events, which we have studied from original documents, with a triumphant peremptoriness which it neither occurs to us, nor is possible for us, to exercise, when we make an act of assent to the assassination of Julius Caesar, or to the existence of the Abipones, though we are as securely certain of these latter facts as of the doings and occurrences of yesterday. And further, all that I have said about the apprehension of propositions is in point here. We may speak of assent to our Lord’s divinity as strong or feeble, according as it is given to the reality as impressed upon the imagination, or to the notion of it as entertained by the intellect. (5.) Nor, lastly, does this doctrine of the intrinsic integrity and indivisibility (if I may so speak) of assent interfere with the teaching of Catholic theology as to the pre-eminence of strength in divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all belief which is merely human and natural. For first, that pre-eminence consists, not in its differing from human faith, merely in degree of assent, but in its being superior in nature and kind,(7) so that the one does not admit of a comparison with the other; and next, its intrinsic superiority is not a matter of experience, but is above experience.(8) Assent is ever assent;(9) but in the assent which follows on a divine announcement, and is vivified by a divine grace, there is, from the nature of the case, a transcendant adhesion of mind, intellectual and moral, and a special self-protection,(10) beyond the operation of those ordinary laws of thought, which alone have a place in my discussion. § 2. Complex Assent.