The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

40 THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS.Ration.Who can read without spiritual profit suchworks as the almost inspired Following of Christ, byThomas a Kempis ;the Christian Perfectionriguez; the Spiritual Combat of Scupoli ;the writing?of St. Francis de Sales, and a countless host of otherascetical authors?You will search in vain outside the CatholicChurch for writers comparable in unction andhealthy piety to such as I have mentioned. .Comof Rodpare, for instance, Kempis with Bunyan s PilgrimsProgress, or Butler s Lives of the Saints with Fox sBook of Martyrs. You lay down Butler with a sweetand tranquil devotion, and with a profound admiration for the Christian heroes whose lives he records ;while you put aside Fox with a troubled mind anda sense of vindictive bitterness. I do not speak of theBook of Common Prayer, because the best part of ita translation from our Missal.Protestants also publish Kempis, though sometimes in a mutilated form ;every passage in the original being carefully omittedwhich alludes to Catholic doctrines and practices.A distinguished Episcopal clergyman of Baltimoreonce avowed to me that his favorite book? of devotion were our standard works of piety. L? sayingthis, he paid a merited and graceful tribute to thesuperiority of Catholic spiritual literature.The Church gives us not only the most pressingmotives, but also the most potent means for oursanctification. These means are furnished by prayerand the Sacraments. She exhorts us to frequentis