"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price, of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr. Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations, it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which makes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who criticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does. {81} In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could hear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of glory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the whole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the following words as from St. Jerome: "Ergo cineres suos amant animae martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives the extraordinary reference, "Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13." These words indeed occur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St. Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from Vigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues, in reply to the idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin