Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that the Church can be proved by History to be man-made, not God-made. This the author divides into two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that there was some original good message told by Jesus Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted and from the origin of which she has deviated; (2) the general agnostic argument that the Church can be proved historically to be but one of many religions, to have grown up like any other religion, with the same illusions and similar rites and mysteries, and is therefore man-made--which last form of attack the author regards as to-day by far the most serious. EDITOR’S PREFACE There needs but a brief introduction from the same pen as that which composed the essay which follows it. It must be to this effect. The general subject “The Catholic Church and History” might be treated from a hundred different positions. Perhaps the most important in the eyes of the cultured man of our day is the question whether the Catholic Church is, or is not, proved by the general story of European history for the last two thousand years to have been a beneficent influence. That question, however, I cannot touch upon because the question whether the Church be beneficent or no is, to a Catholic, subsidiary to the point whether its claim to be the very truth is valid or no. If this claim is justified, then certainly the Church must be beneficent. If it be proved beneficent, that will indeed be some support of its claim; but a weak one, because we cannot even judge whether it be beneficent or no until we have decided what we think better and what worse--and this issue cannot be decided until we are certain of our philosophy, that is, of our religion. It is another and more important point to discuss whether the Church in her long history has, or has not, shown exceptional signs of holiness and of supernatural power, which are an evidence of her claim. There are also, as I have said, very many other points of discussion which the general title suggests.