In general terms there is here an illustration of how intellectual error may coexist with sincere faith. The precise form of error is clearly that she looked on the physical contact with the material garment as the vehicle of healing--the very same thing which we find ever since running through the whole history of the Church, e.g. the exaltation of externals, rites, ordinances, sacraments, etc.
Take two or three phases of it--
1. You get it formularised into a system in sacramentarianism.
(a) Baptismal regeneration.
(b) Holy Communion.
Religion becomes largely a thing of rites and ceremonies.
2. You get it in Protestant form among Dissenters in the importance attached to Church membership. Outward acts of worship.
There is abroad a vague idea that somehow we get good from external association with religious acts, and so on. This feeling is deep in human nature, is not confined to the Roman Catholic Church, and is not the work of priests. There is a strange revival of it to-day and so there is need of protest against it in every form
