its exercise, can in any way import separation or disunion between the head and the body. Such a supposition involves, as we have seen, heretical notions at every turn. The very reverse is true: that the supreme privilege of infallibility in the head is the divinely ordained means to sustain for ever the unity of the Universal Church in communion, faith, and doctrine.

And further, that the independent exercise of this privilege by the head of the Episcopate, and as distinct from the Bishops, is the divinely ordained means of the perpetual unity of the Episcopate in communion and faith with its head and with its own members.

And lastly, that though the consent of the Episcopate or the Church be not required, as a condition, to the intrinsic value of the infallible definitions of the Roman Pontiff, nevertheless, it cannot without heresy be said or conceived that the consent of the Episcopate and of the Church can ever be absent. For if the Pontiff be divinely assisted, both the active and the passive infallibility of the Church exclude such a supposition as heretical. To deny such infallible assistance now after the definition, is heresy. And even before the definition, to deny it was proximate to heresy, because it was a revealed truth, and a Divine fact, on which the unity of the Church has depended from the beginning.

From what has been said, the precise meaning of the terms before us may be easily fixed.

1. The privilege of infallibility is personal, inasmuch as it attaches to the Roman Pontiff, the successor of

Peter, as a public person, distinct from, but inseparably united to, the Church; but it is not personal, in that it is attached, not to the private person, but to the primacy, which he alone possesses.

2. It is also independent, inasmuch as it does not depend upon either the Ecclesia docens or the Ecclesia discens; but it is not independent, in that it depends in all things upon the Divine Head of the Church, upon the institution of the primacy by Him, and upon the assistance of the Holy Ghost.

3. It is absolute, inasmuch as it can be circumscribed by no human or ecclesiastical law; it is not absolute, in that it is circumscribed by the office of guarding, expounding, and defending the deposit of

revelation.

4. It is separate in no sense, nor can be, nor can so be called, without manifold heresy, unless the word be taken to mean distinct. In this sense, the Roman Pontiff is distinct from the Episcopate, and is a distinct subject of infallibility; and in the exercise of his supreme doctrinal authority, or magisterium, he does not depend for the infallibility of his definitions upon the consent or consultation of the Episcopate, but only on the Divine assistance of the Holy Ghost.

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CHAPTER IV.

SCIENTIFIC HISTORY AND THE CATHOLIC RULE OF FAITH.

IT Ir may here be well to answer an objection which is commonly supposed to lie against the doctrine of the Pontifical Infallibility; namely, that the evidence of history is opposed to it.

The answer is twofold.

1. First, that the evidence of history distinctly proves the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.

I shall be told that this is to beg the question. To which I answer, they also who affirm the contrary beg the question.

Both sides appeal to history, and with equal confidence; sometimes with equal clamour, and often equally in vain.

By some people 'The Pope and the Council,' by Janus, is regarded as the most unanswerable work of scientific history hitherto published.

By others it is regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious book of the day.

Between such contradictory judgments who is to decide? Is there any tribunal of appeal in matters of history? or is there no ultimate judge? Is history a road where no one can err; or is it a wilderness in which we must wander without guide or path? are

we all left to private judgment alone? If any one say, that there is no judge but right reason or common sense, he is only reproducing in history what Luther applied to the Bible.

This theory may be intellectually and morally possible to those who are not Catholics. In Catholics such a theory is simple heresy. That there is an ultimate judge in such matters of history as affect the truths of revelation, is a dogma of faith. But into this we will enter hereafter.

For the present, I will make only one other obser

vation.

Let us suppose that the divinity of our Lord were in controversy. Let us suppose that two hundred and fifty-six passages from the Fathers were adduced to prove that Jesus Christ is God. These two hundred and fifty-six passages, we will say, may be distributed into three classes; the first consisting of a great number, in which the divinity of our Lord is explicitly and unmistakably declared; the second, a greater number which so assume or imply it as to be inexplicable upon any other hypothesis; the third, also numerous, capable of the same interpretation, and incapable of the contrary interpretation, though in themselves inexplicit.

We will suppose, next, one passage to exist in some one of the Fathers, the aspect of which is adverse. Its language is apparently contradictory to the hypothesis that Jesus Christ is God. Its terms are explicit; and, if taken at the letter, cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of His divinity.

I need only remind you of St. Justin Martyr's

argument that the Angel who appeared to Moses in the bush could not be the Father, but the Son, because the Father could not be manifested in a narrow space on earth;'* or even of the words of our Divine Lord Himself, The Father is greater than I.'†

Now I would ask, what course would any man of just and considerate intelligence pursue in such a

case?

Would he say, one broken link destroys a chain? One such passage adverse to the divinity of Christ outweighs two hundred and fifty-six passages to the contrary?

Would this be scientific history? Or would it be scientific to assume that the one passage, however apparently explicit and adverse, can bear only one sense, and cannot in any other way be explained? If so, scientific historians are bound to the literal prima facie sense of the words of St. Justin Martyr, and of our Lord above quoted.

Still, supposing the one passage to remain explicit and adverse, and therefore an insoluble difficulty, I would ask whether any but a Socinian, obéσ EL douλsúv, servilely bound, and pledged by the perverseness of controversy, would reject the whole cumulus of explicit and constructive evidence contained in two hundred and fifty-six passages, because of one adverse passage of insoluble difficulty? People must be happily unconscious of the elements which underlie the whole basis of their most confident beliefs

* Dialog. cum Tryph. sect. 60, p. 157. Ed. Ben. Paris, 1742. † St. John xiv. 28.