Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received manuals to which you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius à Lapide on Scripture is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent," and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent. 6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of God alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal passages which invest him with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of incommunicable greatness in his death and passion, if he who was alone in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after {86} all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in number, out of the many passages you cite; that most of them exemplify what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point where truth passes into error, and that they are allowable in one sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer (and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, it is nothing else than the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the