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 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.

The nature of the questions discussed in the following work would ordinarily lift them above all personal considerations and require that the argument be left to take care of itself in the honest vindication of Catholic truth. There attaches to the present treatise, however, an interest quite separated from its merits as an argument, in its identification with the history of a man of whose remarkable career and labors it is one of the most valuable fruits. It is believed, therefore, that it can scarcely fail to derive additional force from the account which it is proper here to give of the author.

Réné-François Guettée was born at Blois, on the banks of the Loire, in the Department of the Loire et Cher, on the first of December, 1816, of worthy parentage, but with no other inheritance than a good name and fair opportunities for education. Self-devoted from the beginning to the Church, his studies were pursued regularly and entirely in his native city. From a very early age his mind seems to have revolted against the wearisome routine that ruled the system of instruction, under which the seminarist becomes a mere receptacle in quantity and quality of the knowledge judged by the Church of Rome to be the needful preparation for the instruments of her despotic rule. Guettée, without comprehending then the evil results of such a system, felt only its restraints and insufficiency. His mind, in its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid acquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits with an instinctive appropriation of the whole domain of truth, and read and studied in secret. He consecrated