THE OXFORD COUNTER-REFORMATION, 347 
Creator to preserve religion in the world; and to 
restrain that freedom of thought which of course in 
itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and 
to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses, And let 
it be observed that neither here nor in what follows 
shall I have occasion to speak of the revealed body 
of truths, but only as they bear upon the defence 
of natural religion. I say that a power possessed 
of infallibility in religious teaching is happily adapted 
to be a working instrument in the course of human 
affairs for smiting hard and throwing back the 
immense energy of the aggressive intellect; and 
in saying this, as in the uther things that I have 
to say, it must still be recollected that I am all 
along bearing in mind my main purpose, which 
is a defence of myself} 
It has been said that reason is the faculty which 
finds reasons for what we wish to believe, and the 
saying is true in so far as it implies that there are 
in every human being emotional and mental tend- 
encies which suggest the premisses of arguments, 
dispose the lights and shadows in which external 
facts shall appear, and make conclusions appear 
to one person to be satisfactorily made out when to 
another they shall seem resting upon air. I believe