"The truth of my faith as a Christian and a Catholic is, to my mind, a certainty, because I have evidence that it was taught by God, who cannot deceive nor be deceived. Will that evidence be weakened by fresh examination and discussion? and do I anyways make an unholy or a perilous concession, when I declare myself ready to renounce my belief, if it were sufficiently shown to me that the evidences on which I believe it to be divine are wrong? I embraced and hold it now, because the evidence of its truth, was, and is to my mind unanswerable. I show no doubting of its truth, but, on the contrary, I declare how little doubt I have of its truth, when I profess myself with all my heart willing to renounce it if proved not true, and to embrace any form of doctrine which shall be presented in its place on sufficient grounds of credibility. This is the spirit in which I wish all Catholics would offer themselves to discussion with our Protestant brethren." If he meant this as a bold assertion of the certainty with which he held the Catholic faith, and would offer these terms because convinced of the utter impossibility of proving him to be wrong, it might be barely tolerated. It is a form of speech that has sometimes been used by controversialists--Maguire, for instance--but it has none the less been always considered rash. That this was the sense in which {274} Father Spencer used it, is abundantly evident from other parts of the sermon. However, the proposition that a Catholic and a Protestant may meet on equal terms to discuss their tenets, each open to conviction by the other's arguments, is simply erroneous and scandalous, to say nothing more. We cannot do such a thing without denying the very basis of our faith. Our faith is not opinion, nor is it certainty simply. It is something more. It is a divine virtue infused into our souls, whereby we believe certain things. We must use reason to come to the evidence of faith, but faith once obtained must never be left at the mercy of the fickleness and weakness of any individual's understanding or power of argument.