Note 1
P. 1. ‘Purity and Love,’ etc., was written out in full, and published under the same title in Discourses to Mixed Congregations. The contrast between St. Peter and St. John on the Lake of Galilee is thus expanded:—‘When they were in the boat and the Lord spoke to them from the shore, and they knew not that it was Jesus, first that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter: “It is the Lord,” for “the pure of heart shall see God”: then at once Simon Peter in the impetuosity of his love, girt his tunic about him, and cast himself into the sea, to reach Him the quicker. St. John beholds, and St. Peter acts.’—Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 73.
Note 2
P. 5. ‘Human Respect.’—The description of Magdalene at the feast is drawn out in full in the sermon ‘Purity and Love.’ ‘She who had come into the room, as if for a festive purpose, to go about an act of penance. It was a formal banquet … she came, as if to honour that feast, as women were wont to honour such festive doings, with her sweet odours and cool unguents, for the forehead and hair of the guests. And he, the proud Pharisee, suffered her to come … he thought only of the necessities of his banquet, and he let her come to do her part, such as it was, careless what her life was, so that she did that part well, and confined herself to it.’ —Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 81.
Note 3
P. 13. ‘On the Fitness of Our Lady’s Assumption.’—Most of the ideas found here are developed in the Discourse ‘On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary’ (Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 360) and ‘The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son’ (ib. p. 342)—e.g. ‘He said, “Ought not Christ to suffer these things … ?” He appealed to the fitness and congruity which existed between this surprising event and other truths which had been revealed concerning the Divine purpose of saving the world. And so, too, St. Paul, in speaking of the same wonderful appointment of God: “It became Him,” he says, “for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, who had brought many sons unto glory, to consummate the Author of their salvation by suffering.” Elsewhere, speaking of prophesying, or the exposition of what is latent in Divine Truth, he bids his brethren exercise the gift, “according to the analogy or rule of faith”; that is, so that the doctrine preached may correspond and fit into what is already received. Thus you see that it is a great evidence of truth, in the case of revealed teaching, that it is so consistent, that it so hangs together that one thing springs out of another, that each part requires and is required by the rest.’—Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 360.
Note 4
P. 15. ‘On Want of Faith.’—Most of the ideas in these sermon notes were expanded into the sermon ‘Faith and Private Judgment.’—Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 193.
Note 5
P. 19. ‘Faith and Doubt.’—This sermon was published under the same title in Discourses to Mixed Congregations. This is how some of the points in the Notes are expanded in the sermon.
Section 3. ‘Persons converted to Protestantism,’ etc.—‘You sometimes hear of Catholics falling away, who will tell you it arose from reading the Scriptures … No; Scripture did not make them disbelieve (impossible!): they disbelieved when they opened the Bible; they opened it in an unbelieving spirit.’—Ib. p. 127.
Section 5. ‘It imagines Confession,’ etc.—‘I really do think it is the world’s judgment, that one principal part of a confessor’s work is the putting down such misgivings in his penitents.’—Ib. p. 222.
Section 6. ‘Doubt does not destroy intellectual conviction.’—‘Men may be convinced and yet, after all, avow that they cannot believe, they do not know why, but they cannot … their reason is convinced, and their doubts are moral ones, arising in their root from a fault of the will 1. … It requires no act of faith to assent to the truth that two and two make four: we cannot help assenting to it; and hence there is no merit in assenting to it; but there is merit in believing that the Church is from God; for though there are abundant reasons to prove it to us, yet we can, without an absurdity, quarrel with the conclusion; we may complain,’ etc.—Ib. pp. 224-5 2.