“But come, now, and inside we’ll go! Now round the holy chapel gaze; ’Tis all one many-colored blaze; Story and emblem, a pictured maze, Flash by you:—’tis a noble show. Here, feel as sons of God baptized, With hearts exalted and surprised!”[3] The “Philistines” we are speaking of infuse into the Catholic Church their own forensic spirit, and fancy that she is only a system of severe commandments, arbitrary laws, and outward ceremonies enforced by an external and absolute authority which, like the old law, places all her children in a state of complete bondage. They are blind to the fact that the Catholic Church confines her precepts, such is her respect for man’s liberty, chiefly to the things necessary to salvation, leaving all the rest to be complied with by each individual Christian as moved by the instinct of divine grace.[4] The aim of the Catholic Church is not, as they foolishly fancy, to drill her children into a servile army of prætorian guards, but to raise up freemen in Christ, souls actuated by the Holy Spirit—to create saints. They are also ignorant of the nature and place, of the authority of the church, as they are of her spirit. It is the birthright of every member of the Catholic Church freely to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the office and aim of the authority of the church is to secure, defend, and protect this Christ-given freedom. To make more clear this relation of the divine external authority of the church with the divine internal guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul, a few words of explanation will suffice. It is the privilege of every soul born to Christ in his holy church in the waters of regeneration, to receive thereby the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the bounden duty of every Christian soul to follow with fidelity the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In order that the soul may follow faithfully the indwelling Holy Spirit, it must be secured against all mistakes and delusions and protected against all attacks from error. Every child of the church has therefore a claim in justice upon the authority of the church for this security and protection. But it would be absurd and an intolerable indignity for the soul to obey an authority that might lead it astray in a matter concerning its divine life and future destiny; for in the future world no chance or liberty is left for a return to correct the mistakes into which the soul may have fallen. Therefore the claim is founded in right reason and justice that the supreme teaching and governing authority of the church should be divine—that is, unerring. And it is the intrusion of human authority in the shape of private judgment, or that of the state, as supreme, in regard to the truths of divine revelation, that is the radical motive of the resistance to Protestantism as Christianity on the part of Catholics.