interpretation of private judgment. This is the pure Lutheran or Calvinistic Protestantism.

The next was, to appeal from the Divine authority | of the Church to the faith of the undivided Church before the separation of the East and West. Such was the Anglican Protestantism of Jewell and others.

The third was, to appeal from the Divine authority! of the Church to the consent of the Fathers, to the canons of Councils, and the like. Such is the more modern form of Anglicanism; of which I wish to speak with all charity, for the sake of so many whom I respect and love.

Thus far, we have to deal with those who are not in communion with the Holy See.

But there has been growing up, both in Germany and in England, a school, if I may so call it, not numerous nor likely to have succession, which places itself in constant antagonism to the authority of the Church, and, to justify its attitude of antagonism, appeals to 'scientific history.' 'The Pope and the Council,' by Janus, and the attacks on Honorius, are its fruits. These were all avowedly written to prevent the definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. It was an attempt to bar the advance of the 'magisterium Ecclesiæ' by scientific history.

Now, before the definition of the Vatican Council, the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was a doctrine revealed by God, delivered by the universal and constant tradition of the Church, recognised in Ecumenical Councils, pre-supposed in the acts of the Pontiffs in all ages, taught by all the Saints, defended by every religious Order, and by every theological

school except one, and in that one disputed only by a minority in number, and during one period of its history; believed, at least implicitly, by all the faithful, and therefore attested by the passive infallibility of the Church in all ages and lands, with the partial and transient limitations already expressed.

The doctrine was therefore already objectively de fide, and also subjectively binding in conscience upon all who knew it to be revealed.

The definition has added nothing to its intrinsic certainty, for this is derived from Divine revelation.

It has added only the extrinsic certainty of universal promulgation by the Ecclesia docens, imposing obligation upon all the faithful.

Hitherto, therefore, the authors of Janus, and the like, who appealed to scientific history, appealed indeed from the doctrinal authority of the Church in a matter of revelation; but they may be, so far as God knows their good faith, protected by the plea that the doctrine had not yet been promulgated by a definition.

Nevertheless, the process of their opposition was essentially heretical. It was an appeal from the traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church, delivered by its common and constant teaching, to history interpreted by themselves.

It does not at all diminish the gravity of this act to say that the appeal was not to mere human history, nor to history written by enemies, but to the acts of Councils, and to the documents of Ecclesiastical tradition.

This makes the opposition more formal; for it

amounts to an assumption that scientific history knows the mind of the Church, and is better able to interpret its acts, decrees, condemnations, and documents, either by superiority of scientific criticism, or by superiority of moral honesty, than the Church itself.

But surely the Church best knows its own history, and the true sense of its own acts and documents.

The Crown of England would make short work of those who should scientifically interpret the unwritten law, or the acts of Parliament, contrary to its judg

ments.

Do modern critics suppose that the case of Honorius is as new to the Church as it is to them, or that the Church has not a traditional knowledge of the value and bearing of the case upon the doctrines of faith?

This, again, in non-Catholics would imply no more than the ordinary want of knowledge as to the Divine nature and office of the Church. In Catholics it would imply, if not heresy, at least a heretical animus.

If the Church has prohibited, under pain of excommunication, any appeal from the Holy See to a future General Council, certainly under the same censure it would condemn an appeal from the Council of the Vatican to the Councils of Constantinople interpreted by scientific history.

It is of faith that the Church alone can declare the contents and the limits of revelation, and can alone determine the extent of its own infallibility. And as it alone can judge of the true sense and interpretation of Holy Scripture, it alone can judge of the

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true sense and interpretation of the acts of its own Pontiffs and Councils.

Under the same head, therefore, and under the same censure, come all appeals from the Divine authority of the Church at this hour, under whatsoever pretext or to whatsoever tribunal; whether to Councils in the future or the past, or to Scripture or the Fathers, or to unauthentic interpretations of the acts of Councils, or to documents of human history.

This being so, it cannot be said that there exist grave difficulties from the words and acts of the Fathers, from the genuine documents of history, and from the Catholic doctrine itself, which if not solved, would render it impossible to propose to the faithful, as a doctrine, the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; because it was contained, before definition, in the universal and constant teaching of the Church as a truth of revelation. Who is the competent judge to declare whether such difficulties really exist? or, if they exist, what is the value of them; whether they be grave or light, relevant or irrelevant? Surely, it belongs to the Church to judge of these things. They are so inseparably in contact with dogma, that the deposit of faith cannot be guarded or expounded without judging of them and pronouncing on them. And it is passing strange if the Church should be incompetent to judge of these things, and the scientific historians alone competent; that is, if the Church should be fallible in dogmatic facts, and the scientific historians infallible. What is this but Lutheranism in history? In those that are without, this is con

sistent in Catholics, it would be not only inconsistent but a heresy.

The Council of the Vatican has with great precision condemned this error in these words: 'Catholics can have no just cause of calling into doubt the faith they have received from the teaching authority (magisterium) of the Church, and of suspending their assent, until they shall have completed a scientific demonstration of the truth of their faith.'*

Again, the Council lays down, in respect to sciences properly so called, a principle which a fortiori applies to 'historical science,' with signal impropriety so called, by declaring that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is false Wherefore all faithful Christians are not only forbidden to defend as legitimate conclusions of science all such opinions as are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially if they have been condemned by the Church, but are altogether bound to hold them to be errors, which put on the fallacious appearance of truth.'*

I have said that the treatment of history can only be called science with signal impropriety; and for the following reasons:

According to both philosophers and theologians, science is the habit of the mind conversant with necessary truth; that is, truth which admits of demonstration, and of the certainty which excludes the possibility of its contradictory being true.

According to the scholastic philosophy, science is defined as follows:

* Constitutio De Fide Catholica. Appendix, p. 191.