but the proof and confirmation from without that it was the right process; and this link is just what is wanting, except on a supposition which begs the question.  It is conceivable that this step from “doctrine” to “devotion” may have been a mistake.  It is conceivable that the “doctrine” may have been held in the highest form without leading to the devotion; for Dr. Newman, of course, thinks that Athanasius and Augustine held “the doctrine,” yet, as he says, “we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin,” and in another place he repeats his doubts whether St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius invoked her; “nay,” he adds, “I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once.”  What has to be shown is, that this step was not a mistake; that it was inevitable and legitimate.

“This being the faith of the Fathers about the Blessed Virgin,” says Dr. Newman, “we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion.”  The Fathers expressed a historical fact about her in the term [Greek:  Theotokos]; therefore, argues the later view, she is the source of our present grace now.  It is the rationale of this inference, which is not an immediate or obvious one, which is wanted.  And Dr. Newman gives it us in the words of Bishop Butler:—­

Christianity is eminently an objective religion.  For the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it.  This, at least, is its general character; and Butler recognises it as such in his Analogy, when speaking of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity:—­“The internal worship,” he says, “to the Son and Holy Ghost is no farther matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; but the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves.”

We acknowledge the pertinency of the quotation.  So true is it that “the relations being known,” the obligations of worship arise of themselves from these relations, that if the present relation of the Blessed Virgin to mankind has always been considered to be what modern Roman theology considers it, it is simply inconceivable that devotion to her should not have been universal long before St. Athanasius and St. Augustine; and equally inconceivable, to take Dr. Newman’s remarkable illustration, that if the real position of St. Joseph is next to her, it should have been reserved for the nineteenth century, if not, indeed, to find it out, at least to acknowledge it; but the whole question is about the fact of the “relations” themselves.  If we believe that the Second and Third Persons are God, we do not want to be told to worship them.  But such a relation as Dr. Newman supposes in the case of the Blessed