But with a view to our own ultimate safety, wisdom bids us look
to our foundations in time, and assure ourselves {9} of them;
admonishing us that if they are unsound, the spiritual edifice reared
upon them, however pleasing to the eye, or abounding in present
enjoyments, will at length fall, and bury our hopes in its ruin.
On these and similar principles, we maintain that it well becomes
Christians, when the soundness of their faith, and the rectitude of
their acts of worship, are called in question, "to prove all things, and
hold fast that which is good." Thus, when the unbeliever charges us with
credulity in receiving as a divine revelation what he scornfully
rejects, it behoves us all (every one to the extent of his means and
opportunities) to possess ourselves of the accumulated evidences of our
holy faith, so that we may be able to give to our own minds, and to
those who ask it of us, a reason for our hope. The result can assuredly
be only the comfort of a still more unshaken conviction. Thus, too, when
the misbeliever charges us with an undue and an unauthorized ascription
of the Divine attributes to our Redeemer and to our Sanctifier, which he
would confine to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, exclusively of the
Eternal Son and the Blessed Spirit, it well becomes every Catholic
Christian to assure himself of the evidence borne by the Scriptures to
the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, together with the
inseparable doctrines of redemption by the blood of Christ, and
sanctification by the Spirit of grace; appealing also in this
investigation to the tradition of the Church, and the testimony of her
individual members from the earliest times, as under God his surest and
best guides.
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