Catholicism began, then, in the Church of the second century when, under the unconscious action of tradition and of pagan habits, the need was felt of objectivising and materialising the Christian principle in an external fact, of imprisoning the kingdom of God in a visible institution, the immanent revelation of the Holy Spirit in the decisions and acts of a priesthood. This tendency, once born, would be irresistible. Ideal and transcendent as it was at first, the Christian principle would become ever more external and political. Absorbing all Christianity, and holding in its hands all the graces of God, the Church would naturally present itself to the world as the permanent mediator and the grand magician. It was its part to effect the salvation of sinners, and, for this, it would need, like the ancient priests, to offer daily to God an agreeable oblation, an expiatory sacrifice of infinite value to atone for the infinite sins of the world. Thus the Church transformed the commemoration of the death of Christ into a _real_ renewal of the sacrifice on Calvary; the Holy Supper became the mass; the fraternal table was turned into an altar; the elder or presbyter was changed into a priest and pontiff, and the bread of the communion into a divine victim. The dogma of transubstantiation was bound to follow; to the materialisation of Christianity in the Church corresponds the materialisation of God in the host. By virtue of the same principle, Christian piety becomes devotion, _i.e._ a ritual and meritorious practice, as in the ancient cults. But we must not be unjust and attribute something to Catholicism that it condemns. It does not say that external practice is sufficient; the Church esteems it vain and even culpable unless accompanied by the affections and the will. * * * * * The first and principal act of piety is submission to the Church. Its dogmas may be irrational, contradictory; its commandments may seem arbitrary, foreign to the natural conscience, sometimes in contradiction with it; no matter.