But before setting out these sections in their order I must reject one as having no relation to the discussion, though often confused with it: I mean the so-called historical argument from material prosperity. It is advanced that the claim of the Catholic Church to Divine Authority is negatived by a proved historical process whereby societies rejecting the Church’s claim are blessed with material prosperity, while societies accepting that claim become poor. Such an argument no more applies to societies in their relation to the Church’s authority than it does to individuals in relation to the authority of their own conscience or of their own reason. My conviction that a course of action is morally right, or that a given statement is intellectually true, is not to be tested by its effect upon my income. In point of fact, the argument is as worthless in its presumptions as in its reasoning. The historical affirmation is historically false. It is not true that societies have risen in wealth through the rejection of the Catholic Faith, or fallen in wealth through the retention of it. The two phenomena are not correlated in History at all, and there is as much to be set upon the one side of the account in this brief two hundred years over which the rises and falls extend as on the other. But even were the statement true, the application of it would be clearly beside the mark: even had every Catholic society fallen into penury and every anti-Catholic risen to affluence, it would be utterly without bearing upon the truth or falsehood of the Catholic claim. This being said, what are the respectable and historical arguments against the Faith? What are those arguments drawn from History of which the intelligent man must take serious notice? They would seem to fall into two categories: The first argument I will call the minor argument, because it appeals only to the moral sense--not that the moral sense is less than the intellectual, but that in weighing questions of material evidence (which is the matter of History) a moral test takes the second place. Thus, in a court of justice evidence to character, though of weight, counts less in establishing a man’s claim than material evidence. Next I find, and much more cogent, a major argument, which is directly concerned with the intellectual facilities of man. (I) The minor, or moral argument, as I have called it, is directed against the character of the Church, and attempts to show from History that her character is not consonant with her claims. It has many forms: accusations of cruelty, of unsocial neglect in material things, etc., but the main headings are three: (a) The Church has been historically confident upon and has affirmed as truths a number of points since proved to be erroneous: a Divine Authority would never go wrong upon any point.