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contradiction. In the diversity of persons and unity of essence, which constitute the triune and one God of the Christians, as in the distinction of two natures in the person of the Son made man, there is doubtless a profound obscurity, yet not a logical impossibility, as there is no contradiction in the terms. If it involves much that is obscure to the eye of reason, yet there is nothing essentially contradictory in affirming of three persons that they are one in substance; or in the assertion that three substances exist in one person. That which is radically impossible, because it is an evident absurdity and a palpable contradiction, is, after having asserted the substantial existence of good and evil, to assert that they substantially exist sustained by one and the same person. How admirable! Man cannot fly from the obscurity of Catholicism without being enveloped in still greater darkness; nor can he fly from that which baffles his reason without meeting that which is contradictory to it, and therefore a denial of reason.

Let it not be supposed that the world adopts the views of rationalism in spite of its absurd contradictions and its profound obscurity; it adopts them on that very account. Reason adopts error wherever it can be found, like a doting mother, who follows the child of her love, the fruit of her womb, wherever this child may go, even though it be into the deepest abyss. Error will cause her death; but what matters it to the mother to die if she receive her death at the hands of her child?