The doctrines of grace and of predestination, which are at the centre of Calvinism, have no other meaning. Souls religiously inert see in these doctrines nothing but an abuse of blind power, a sort of divine _fatum_, breaking every spring in the human soul. Nothing appears to be more oppressive or more immoral. But this is only an appearance. There is really no predestination for irreligious souls. This doctrine is but the expression of the inner basis of all true piety, which is nothing if it is not the sense, the feeling, of the presence and the sovereign and continuous action of God in each soul and in all the universe. No other sentiment gives so much spring and vigour to the human will, nothing raises it to such a height or makes it so invincible to all assaults from within and without. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" etc. (Rom. viii. 31-39). How is it that the Calvinistic Puritans of New England were the founders of modern liberty, and the Jesuits, those admirable theorisers on freewill, the precursors of all the servitudes? It is with predestination as it is with religion itself. Conceived as exterior to the life of the soul, it gives birth, no doubt, to a crushing despotism; conceived as an inward inspiration, sustaining the initiative and even the liberty of the individual, it becomes, in the Christian soul, the source of a force which nothing can break or subdue. But the point at which the antithesis between Protestantism and Catholicism becomes most patent is the doctrine of the natural priesthood of all Christians as opposed to that of the supernatural priesthood of a privileged clergy. The free and perpetual communion of believing souls with the Father is the foundation of the independence of each and of the fraternal equality of all. The tap-root of clericalism is cut. The individual is a priest before the interior altar of his conscience; the father is a priest in his household; the citizen, if so he wills, in the city.