40
there are no trials in her way but such as are her portion upon earth: there are many advantages in her favour, such as few branches of the Catholic body have ever possessed, and perhaps none at this day so fully retain. So far am I from going along with those who are full of their forebodings and alarms. People who hold this language forget that every age has held the same in its day. We are short-sighted, and can only see just before us, and even that imperfectly. What we see in our day we believe to be unlike all that has been until now; that now is the crisis to which other times were but tame preludes. So we magnify our own days, and our own parts in them. After all, every age has said the same; and it is now our turn to magnify the importance of our times. Posterity will read us in the context of our ancestors, and we shall be thought as unemphatic and common-place as we think them. The truth is, we are poor judges of our own times, and have but little means of drawing true comparisons. For instance, we hear much of controversies. Now let any man fix a time when the Church has been free from controversy. Is it not with truth and fitness that one of our learned writers arranges the literary history of the Church under the several centuries, distinguishing them as the Gnostic, Novatian, Arian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Monothelite ages, and so on; in fact, by their controversial features? Has not truth always had its foil, and the Faith always been
