case and assert it in the other. If this limitation exists, how can any heretic be infallibly condemned? The falsity of his doctrines may be infallibly asserted; but whether he had taught them will admit of controversy. In several doctrinal questions which came before the Privy Council, it was found to be easier by far to ascertain what the doctrine of the Church of England was than whether the impeached clergymen had contravened it. But it is more important to observe that the doctrines of our religion are all assertions of the occurrence of facts. That our Lord died, and was buried, and rose again the third day, are all matters of fact. The question which, it was said, was to have been determined if the Vatican Council had not been prematurely broken up, whether or not the body of the Virgin was miraculously taken up to heaven, is a question of fact. If the Pope is unable to arrive at certainty about things alleged to have taken place in his own lifetime, how can he expect to be more successful about things that happened centuries ago? There is a story about a grave writer who abandoned in despair a contemplated historical work, when he found himself unable to ascertain the real facts of a quarrel which had taken place under his own windows. But yet again, those miracles of modern times, though the question of the reality of their occurrence may be one of fact, are made the foundation of doctrines and practices the reception of which must surely be affected by our acceptance or rejection of the facts. Thus, in the instance last given, if we believe that the Virgin Mary really said to a little girl, I am the Immaculate Conception,' however odd we may think her way of expressing herself, we cannot doubt that she meant to give her approval to the doctrine that she was conceived without sin, and so that the truth of that doctrine must be regarded as miraculously guaranteed.

Shortly after the pilgrimages to Lourdes others were organized to Paray-le-Monial. This had been the scene of the revelations of the blessed Marguerite Marie Alacoque, the foundress of the now popular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is not, like the other two I mentioned, a revelation of our own time, though a great impetus was given to that devotion by the beatification of this nun by

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THE DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART.

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Pius IX. She lived at the end of the seventeenth century, the time when the strife between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was the hottest. Her revelations were patronized by the Jesuits* and condemned by the Jansenists. With the late Pope the Jesuits were all-powerful. This poor nun was subject to what we heretics would call hysteric delusions, in the course of which she saw many visions in which, as always happens, the ideas of her waking hours were reproduced. All that has been said metaphorically about our Lord's human heart was materialized by her, and referred to that physical portion of our Lord's human frame. As a specimen, I mention one of the most celebrated of her visions, in which she saw our Lord's heart in His bosom burning as in a furnace, and her own heart placed as a small atom of fire in that furnace. You cannot pass by a Roman Catholic pictureshop without observing what vogue the adoration of the material heart of our Lord has now gained. It was much opposed by the Jansenists, so that it was not till after a century and a-half that Margaret Mary obtained, under Pius IX., the dignity of beatification, which is next below canonization. It has been objected that this worship of a portion of our Lord's Body is downright Nestorianism. In the course of the Nestorian controversy it was distinctly condemned to make a separation between our Lord's Godhead and His manhood, so as to

This was but common gratitude considering how much good she had to say of them. Her biographer tells us: Notre-Seigneur, en parlant à Marguerite-Marie, lui a maintes fois déclaré qu'il se servirait en particulier des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus pour faire connaître aux hommes tout le prix des trésors renfermés dans son divin Cœur.'

It is curious that her conceptions have close affinity with the contemporary teaching of a Puritan divine, Goodwin, who was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Goodwin published books in which he dwelt much, in rather mystical language, on the point that our Lord's manhood remains still united to His Divinity, and that He still retains His human heart and feelings. De la Colombière, the director of the nun of whom I speak, was for a considerable time in England, attached to the household of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., so that he might easily have become acquainted with Goodwin's writings. It has consequently been imagined that Marguerite Marie derived her ideas through De la Colombière from Goodwin. It appears, however, that it was in 1675 she had a vision directing her to labour for the establishment of the feast of the Sacred Heart, and that her director did not return from England until 1679. Her devotion was not established even in her own convent until 1686.

offer worship to the one not addressed to the other And here the worship is not even offered to our Lord's entire humanity, but to a part of it. However, the lawfulness of this worship is not what I am discussing now. My object is to show that every one of these alleged revelations has a distinct bearing upon doctrine. Of course, however objectionable this superstitious worship may appear to us, if our Lord has revealed His approval of it, our objections must be dismissed; and so an infallibility which owns itself incompetent to pronounce on the reality of alleged revelations really owns itself incompetent to pronounce on questions of doctrine which these revelations would seriously affect, So much it may well suffice to have said about the hesitations and vacillations of the infallible guide. I had intended to say something about positive errors into which he has fallen, but these I must reserve till the next day.

I

THE BLUNDERS OF THE INFALLIBLE

GUIDE.

HAVE thought it well to let you see how the theory of an infallible Church works in practice. In the former Lectures I have given proof enough that in a number of cases the guide who asks us to follow him prefers himself to follow, and shows by his hesitations that he is ignorant of the true path. I will now add some cases where he has actually struck into wrong paths, and has been compelled, with very lame apologies, to retrace his steps. I reserve the question whether Popes ever have been heretics until I come to speak of that theory which ascribes infallibility to the Pope personally. One instance, however, in which a Pope was compelled to retire with disgrace, after having attempted to thrust his infallibility into a sphere in which it failed to secure correctness, is the department of Biblical criticism.

The Council of Trent having stamped the Vulgate as authentic,' ordered that a correct edition of this authorized Vulgate should be published. But little was done in fulfilment of this decree for nearly forty years, when the task was undertaken by Pope Sixtus V., a Pontiff who seems really to have believed in his own infallibility. He employed a Board of learned men to act as revisers, but in complete subordination to himself. In his preface he claims the superiority to them which he exercised, as resulting from the singular privilege which he enjoyed as successor to Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, for whom Christ prayed that his faith should not fail, and who was charged to confirm the other Apostles

in the faith. Accordingly, he tells with complacency of the labour which, among all his other apostolic cares, he had spent on this work, day after day, and for several hours each day, reading the collections and opinions of others, and balancing the reasons for the various readings; the plan of the work being, that while his learned revisers collected the evidence, it was for him alone to decide on the validity of their arguments, and determine by his absolute judgment what reading was to be preferred to what. When the work was printed he examined each sheet with the utmost care, and corrected the press with his own hand. The edition appeared in 1590, with a Constitution prefixed, in which Sixtus affirmed the plenary authority of the edition for all future time ('hac nostra perpetuo valitura constitutione'). By the fulness of apostolic power,' he says, 'we decree and declare that this edition, approved by the authority delivered to us by the Lord, is to be received and held as true, lawful, authentic, and unquestioned, in all public and private discussion, reading, preaching, and explanations.' He forbids the printing of this Bible for the space of ten years at any press but his own in the Vatican. After that time it might be printed elsewhere, but only from one of the Vatican copies. He forbade expressly the publication of various readings in copies of the Vulgate, and pronounced that all readings in other editions and manuscripts, which might vary from those of this Sixtine edition, should have no credit or authority for the future. It was forbidden to alter the version in the smallest particle; and any person who should violate this Constitution, it was declared, would incur the indignation of Almighty God, and of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul; and was threatened with the greater excommunication, not to be absolved except by the Pope himself.

This was the language of a man who really believed in his infallibility. But a glance at the volume was sufficient to convince any moderately learned man of the folly, not to say impiety, of such boastful presumption. Many passages were found covered with slips of paper on which new corrections had been printed; others were scratched out and merely corrected with a pen; and different copies were corrected