absolute issue: it was natural enough that they, born and living under the papacy, should not feel it to be an absolute monarchy. He quoted Bellarmine as saying that it was a monarchy tempered by aristocracy and democracy. The Pope could not destroy the episcopate. I said our new converts maintained that he could: that if all the bishops of the world were on one side, and the Pope on the other, he could make a new episcopate. "I regard," he said, "as anticatholic, such opinions as these." He dwelt on the primacy of Peter, as shown forth in the Acts: nothing seemed to him clearer or more marked. He seemed to argue as if, the primacy granted, the degree to which its power was extended was a mere matter of discipline, of arrangement and growth in the Church itself. Besides, there was another point: without living in a system it is nearly impossible to understand it. Invaluable as Scripture is, and written tradition, the works of Fathers, Councils, &c., they are _writing_ after all: without a living _oral tradition_, they will not be understood. The Church holds the truth as a living body; it circulates in her veins. We see the same sort of thing all around us. A young man may study diplomacy for four, five, six, years; he may have the history and treaties of Europe at his fingers' end: this knowledge is excellent; but he wants one thing, without which he could never be a diplomatist--practical initiation; this will be the most valuable part of all his knowledge. You may know perfectly how to sew, but could any one make a coat without seeing others make it, and the practical acquaintance with many little points? This was seen most strongly in religious orders: there was a traditional life in them of which no mere knowledge could take the place. "I had studied well the rules of the Dominicans, but until I saw their practical working I could not understand them at all. Or again, in ten minutes' conversation with a person, you will catch more of their mind and feelings, and tone of thought, than by studying ten volumes of their works. There is something in the contact with persons for which no study can make up. Or again, the sight of a city. Half a day in a place will give you a better notion of it than all the descriptions ever written. You drink in the knowledge of it at all pores. I have read a great deal about London, but I assure you that I am unable to form any notion of it to myself. The mere look of the place would instruct me more than any books. Now such is the force of oral tradition in the Church: it is the life of an organised body which dwells in its members. Only think what would laws be without jurisprudence: why the most important part of all laws is their interpretation; if a man had the most perfect knowledge of the laws themselves, he would be no jurisconsult without knowing their practical application. Now this is a sort of knowledge which fails you entirely, being outside the Church; thus it is that we have no