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468 analysis of motive, which have learnt to probe the springs of error with instruments of precision as little known to the logic of Port Royal as fluxions to Hipparchus, have added nothing to the notion of truth. Men without fastidiousness in their political tastes imagine that liberty flourished under Alfred, under Charlemagne, or even in the Hercynian forest. Probably the conception of historical veracity has been as greatly expanded, modified, fertilised by culture and experience as that of political liberty, and we may be as far from what the seventeenth century meant by good faith as from that which it understood by freedom. What are we to think of a man who declares that the enemies of the Church come to an inevitable bad end : "Mira Dei in ecclesiae gubernatione procuratio, occulta et ineluctabilis divinae vis Providentiae ad perdendos ecclesiae hostes " ? Or who makes a theological argument out of the existence of a Latin liturgy in France in the seventh century ; or who thinks that one who denied the legend of Veronica, "ex suae sectae praejudicio impugnavit ?" At Naples Mabillon beheld some custom which he thought Protestants right in denouncing. "Detectio haec fit cum dignitate et modestia, non cum iis ritibus quos alibi in Italia observatos vidimus, non satis fortasse ad gravitatem religionis compositos. Ejusmodi ritus Neapoli nobis superstitionis nomine objecerunt quidam Hollandici haeretici, quibus, ut par erat, satisfecimus. Cum vero ea de re ad quemdam nobilem verba haberemus, respondit ille non decere, ut quod fidei domesticos aedificat, in gratiam exterorum et segregum facile abrogetur." Taking the lesson home with him, he employed it in defence of the "Sainte larme de Vendôme. II faut voir si la suppression que Ton prétendroit faire ne causeroit pas plus de scandale que l’abus même que l’on pretend oster ; et s'il ne seroit pas plus a propos de tolérer ce que Ton ne peut supprimer sans causer un plus grand mal. — On doit s'en tenir à la bonne foy des Eglises, jusqu'à ce que l’on ait des prcuves certaines et evidentes qui obligent de porter un autre jugement." He is not far from applying this rule to the head of St. John, of