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184. Both his conversion and visions were utterly forgotten, and not until many years later did he enter upon a religious life.

Fifth. A consideration of great weight is this: the Catholic Church confers great honor upon the Holy Virgin; Protestants seldom make any reference to her. Trained as the former are to supplicate the sympathy and prayers of the mother of our Lord, I am informed by devout priests and by physicians that when they have visions of any kind she generally appears in the foreground. Among the visions which dying Protestants have been supposed to see I have heard of only two in which the Virgin figured, and these were seen by persons trained in their youth as Catholics.

APPARITIONS

passage most frequently quoted on the subject of apparitions is that which Dr. Johnson, in "Rasselas," puts into the mouth of the sage Imlac: That the dead are seen no more I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent testimony of all ages and all nations. There is no people, rude or unlearned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience could make credible. That it is doubted by single cavilers can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues confess it with fears. All authorities agree that Dr. Johnson was superstitious and credulous, and this passage when critically examined does not seem to be entitled to the weight which its clearness of statement and his great name