infallibility, or expressed any doubt of its having been the doctrine of the church from the first. A small minority of their number opposed the definition, but, if we are correctly informed, not one opposed it on the ground that it is not true. That would be an innovation in Catholic faith, or a departure from the Semper eadem. The definition was opposed as inopportune. Some thought the doctrine was already defined with sufficient explicitness by the decree of the Council of Florence, and the action of the sovereign pontiffs; and therefore held that no further definition was called for. Some opposed defining it, because it might irritate the temporal powers, and afford them a pretext for charging the church with innovating in her faith; some, because it might embarrass the controversy with heretics; and others, from national prejudice; but none, on the ground of the falsity or untenableness in theology of the doctrine itself. These were all overruled by a large majority, who decided, in defining it, that it had always been the faith of the church, and its denial had always been at least material heresy. No body of men, even on the score of human science, learning, and ability, could be collected from all the courts and universities of the world whose testimony on such a question would equal that of the Council of the Vatican, much less be competent to overrule it.

The church, in her definitions, does not introduce new matter of faith, or decree simply what henceforth is to be held as Catholic faith, but defines what, on the point in question, is and always has been the faith. The fathers of the Vatican did not simply decree that the papal infallibility, as they defined it, is henceforth de fide and not to be denied without heresy ; but they testified with all the weight of their authority, supernaturally protected from error by the divine presence, that it had always been the doctrine of the church from her institution by our Lord himself. So of all the decrees of the church declaring the faith. They institute no new faith; they simply declare unerringly what is and always has been the faith. This excludes the specious theory of development. New definitions are not even new developments; they propose no new faith or new development of the primitive faith, but simply, when the faith has been denied, they reassert it, and when it has become confused or obscured in men's understandings they state it more explicitly or distinctly. The church has authority not only over all questions that bear directly on faith, but over all

those that affect it indirectly and remotely; and authority even in scientific theories and speculations to condemn whatever directly, indirectly, or remotely impugns the deposit of faith, but, in condemning them, she only opposes to them the old truth of which she-that is, the pope-is the divinely appointed guardian.

This is a sufficient reply to Mr. Gladstone's charge, that, in defining or declaring the papal infallibility, the church has changed her faith, or introduced a new faith. The court, in defining or declaring what is the law, neither makes nor changes the law. Mr. Gladstone ought to be lawyer enough to understand so much, and ought also to be theologian enough to know that, in defining or declaring the faith, the church acts in her judicial capacity, as ecclesia judicans, not as the legislature. But leaving this charge of change of faith, or innovation in faith, so foolishly urged by the Döllingerites, we turn to what we understand to be the gist of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, namely: The belief in papal infallibility is incompatible with civil allegiance, and mental and moral freedom.

Protestantism has almost everywhere thrown off the mask, and no longer pretends to oppose the church on theological grounds. It abandons its pretences to be a rival religion, and assumes what from the first has been its real character, that of a political movement against the church, or a movement to effect the independence of the secular order in face of the spiritual or divine government. In its greatest generality it may be defined to be the assertion of the supremacy of the human, and the denial of the sovereignty of God, as is implied in its fundamental principle, private judgment, which is purely human. All the objections Protestants now urge against the church, may be summed up under two heads: The claims of the church are incompatible, 1, with the allegiance the citizen or subject owes to the prince or state; and 2, with the rights of the mind, or mental and moral freedom. The state and the mind are both human; and consequently Protestantism simply sets up the human against the divine, and therefore indorses the primitive falsehood with which Satan seduced our first parents: "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil;" that is, knowing them as God knows them, of yourselves without learning them from a master, or the law of a superior. Protestantism, inspired by Satan and obeying the suggestions of human pride, puts the human in the place

of the divine, the state in the place of the church, man in the place of God, and worships, instead of God, the devil, or one's own petty self. Under it man can brook no superior, bow the knee to no master, will be his own teacher and lawgiver, boast of his intelligence, freedom, and dignity, and, without knowing it, be a miserable bondman of Satan. Mr. Gladstone's objections to Catholicity prove it but too conclusively.

Mr. Gladstone contends that a man, in becoming a Catholic, forswears civil allegiance, and surrenders his mental and moral freedom. This, we believe, is the pretence of the whole anti-Catholic party in this country, in Great Britain and Ireland, and on the European continent. The allegation is not, that the church, being a false church, as are all Protestant churches, must therefore be hostile to the state, and to mental and moral freedom, or the rights of the mind, which would be a valid objection to her authority in case it is conceded or proved that she is a false church; but the objection actually urged is that she must be hostile to the civil power and the rights of the mind, because she claims. to teach all men and nations infallibly the truth which God has revealed and commanded all men and nations to believe and obey. Supposing her claim to be well-founded, which is not denied in the allegation, the objection is very weak and very absurd, even blasphemous; for it assumes that the truth revealed by the Holy Ghost, infallibly declared, denies the rights of the state and of the mind. It is absurd, for neither the state nor the mind has or can have any rights which the truth denies, or which deny the truth; blasphemous, because it denies the divine sovereignty, and assumes that the Holy Ghost can teach what is false, and command what is wrong. The objection, as the lawyers say, is not well taken. It should be, not that the dogma of papal infallibility is incompatible with civil allegiance or mental freedom, for if the pope is really infallible, he can teach as the law of God only what is his law, and as obligatory only what really is obligatory on all men and nations, alike on sovereigns and subjects, the republic and the citizen, if the universal dominion and sovereignty of God is not denied ;but it should be either a denial in form of the dogma of papal infallibility, or the universal dominion and sovereignty of God. In either case the objection would be theological, not political.

In fact, no valid or tenable objection to the dogma of

pa

pal infallibility can be based on political or secular reasons. Mr. Gladstone and the Protestant press, in objecting to the church or the papacy on political and secular grounds, show their want of logic and their utter incapacity to understand the real question at issue. They wish to maintain that the claim of papal infallibility renders the church incompatible with the rights of the civil power and of the mind, which is absurd if the claim be well founded. If the claim be unfounded, that fact should be pleaded, or alleged in the declaration; and the allegation of that transfers the case at once from politics to theology. They are not only inept logicians, but very poor lawyers, and would do well to study Chitty, or some other respectable authority, on pleading. They lose their case if they are so ill-advised as to interpose a demurrer. If they simply demur to the claim they have no case, fo, if the claim be conceded or passed over, no objection can be urged, since an infallible teacher can teach nothing that is not true, and therefore nothing incompatible with any rights the civil power or the mind has ever had or can have. There are no rights not founded in truth, and truth cannot contradict itself. The case does not come within the jurisdiction of the civil courts, and can be settled only in the court that has cognizance of theological questions.

We are not required in the present aspect of the case to discuss the theological question. For Mr. Gladstone and Protestants do not in their objections set forth that the papal infallibility is theologically false, and therefore incompatible with civil allegiance and mental and moral freedom: they object that papal infallibility itself cannot be asserted or believed without denying civil allegiance and mental and moral freedom. The objection, therefore, is to infallible authority itself; that whoever admits any infallible authority above or distinct from the state or civil power and the individual reason cannot be a loyal subject or citizen, and is mentally a slave. There is no human infallibility, and there can be no infallible authority except by divine appointment and the supernatural assistance and protection of the Holy Ghost. Papal infallibility rests on and represents the divine infallibility and sovereignty. In the last analysis, then, the objection is, that the acknowledgment of the divine infallibility and sovereignty is incompatible with mental freedom and civil allegiance. This is the real significance of Mr. Gladstone's objection. We said, in 1854, that he needed only another rubbing to become completely satanized, and

this additional rubbing he appears to have received in his late political defeat and loss of office. He now unites with Satan in asserting the authority of the human against the authority of God; for, as we have seen, his objection is no less forcible against Catholicity on the supposition that papal infallibility is a truth, than on the supposition that it is an unfounded claim. It says to the state and the human reason, "Ye are as gods," you are your own masters, and have no superior. The principle assumed in all the objections of anti-Catholics to the church, as far as half a century devoted to the study of the subject has enabled us to ascertain it, is this same satanic lie which denies the divine sovereignty, and asserts the independence of the human, whether social or individual, as we began by showing.

The real question between the church and her assailants, stripped of all its disguises and sophistries, is as to the divine sovereignty: Is God the proprietor and sovereign of the universe, and is his law supreme for all intelligent and moral agents? Yes, or no? If you say yes, your objections. fall to the ground; if you say no, they equally fall to the ground; for then the mind and the state have no rights for papal infallibility to impugn. There can be no rights where there is no basis of right; and if the sovereignty of God is denied, there is no basis of rights of any sort. The universal dominion and sovereignty of God denied, how will you be able to assert loyalty as a duty, or the moral obligation of civil allegiance; or maintain that its violation is wrong or criminal God's sovereignty denied, the authority of the state to bind the individual conscience, to exact obedience even as a civil duty, ceases; each individual is emancipated from all law, from all moral obligation, is free, if he chooses to lie, steal, rob, murder, without any power having the right to call him to an account; society is dissolved, and the moral order of the universe is a word without meaning. Follow out the principle of your objection to its logical consequences, and you will find that it denies all authority, all law, all right or wrong, the entire moral order of the universe; for all law, all morality, all right, all authority, rests on the universal dominion and sovereignty of God, since, as says the apostle St. Paul, Non est potestas nisi a Deo. The denial of the divine sovereignty is virtually the denial of God himself, is really atheism; and hence the horror with which mankind, in every age prior to our own, have regarded the atheist. Atheism denies all moral order and