Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/167

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come from a jealousy for these very truths. It was a master-stroke of the enemy of truth to make them reject the words and the will of Jesus Christ out of jealousy for His Person and His work. As they who killed His disciples believed they were doing a service to God, so they rejected the unity and authority of His Church and sacraments ordained by Him, and doctrines which came from His lips, in the belief that they were thereby honouring His Person and His truth. But this illusion of the Evil One has been at last found out. Fair and truthful minds acknowledge at this day that every truth for which they profess to be jealous is menaced, and in a multitude of minds altogether lost. But they cannot deny that in the Catholic Church these very truths are not lost or menaced, but universally taught and believed in all fulness and precision. The mission and work of the Catholic Church in England is like that of S. Paul in Corinth. In the midst of a highly civilised, intellectual, luxurious, refined, philosophical, and contentious race, he preached 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' Some asked for signs and others for wisdom; some were incredulous, others were critical; they sought after learning, eloquence, logic: he preached, affirmed, and re-affirmed again, as one having authority, sustained by a consciousness of a mission and a message both alike divine. Men chafed against both the matter and the manner, and against the manner even more than the matter of his teaching. It was perpetual affirmation. They would not see that his divine authority was a part of his message, and that the divine cer-