I. (i) Just as we have already imagined a well-disposed inquirer
approaching for the first time the problems of the Gospel, so let us now
again imagine such a man, in whom the dawn of faith has begun,
encountering the record of Catholicism.

At first all seems to him Divine. He sees, for example, how singularly
unique she is, how unlike to all other human societies. Other societies
depend for their very existence upon a congenial human environment; she
flourishes in the most uncongenial. Other societies have their day and
pass down to dissolution and corruption; she alone knows no corruption.
Other dynasties rise and fall; the dynasty of Peter the Fisherman
remains unmoved. Other causes wax and wane with the worldly influence
which they can command; she is usually most effective when her earthly
interest is at the lowest ebb.

Or again, he falls in love with her Divine beauty and perceives even in
her meanest acts a grace which he cannot understand. He notices with
wonder how she takes human mortal things--a perishing pagan language, a
debased architecture, an infant science or philosophy--and infuses into
them her own immortality. She takes the superstitions of a country-side
and, retaining their "accidents," transubstantiates them into truth; the
customs or rites of a pagan society, and makes them the symbols of a
living worship. And into all she infuses a spirit that is all her own--a
spirit of delicate grace and beauty of which she alone has the secret.

It is her Divinity, then, that he sees, and rightly. But, wrongly, he
draws certain one-sided conclusions. If she is so perfect, he argues (at
least subconsciously), she can be nothing else than perfect; if she is
so Divine she can be in no sense human. Her pontiffs must all be saints,
her priests shining lights, her people stars in her firmament. If she is