ing back the immense energy of the aggressive
intellect:--and in saying this, as in the other things that I have to
say, it must still be recollected that I am all along bearing in mind
my main purpose, which is a defence of myself.

I am defending myself here from a plausible charge brought against
Catholics, as will be seen better as I proceed. The charge is
this:--that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold
doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I
also believe in the existence of a power on earth, which at its own
will imposes upon men any new set of _credenda_, when it pleases, by
a claim to infallibility; in consequence, that my own thoughts are
not my own property; that I cannot tell that tomorrow I may not have
to give up what I hold today, and that the necessary effect of such
a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward
rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of
ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of
mechanically saying everything that the Church says, and leaving to
others the defence of it. As then I have above spoken of the relation
of my mind towards the Catholic Creed, so now I shall speak of the
attitude which it takes up in the view of the Church's infallibility.

And first, the initial doctrine of the infallible teacher must be an
emphatic protest against the existing state of mankind. Man had
rebelled against his Maker. It was this that caused the divine
interposition: and the first act of the divinely accredited messenger
must be to proclaim it. The Church must denounce rebellion as of all
possible evils the greatest. She must have no terms with it; if she
would be true to her Master, she must ban and anathematise it. This
is the meaning of a statement which has furnished matter for one of
those special accusations to which I am at present replying: I have,
however, no fault at all to confess in regard to it; I have nothing
to withdraw, and in consequence I here deliberately repeat it. I
said, "The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to
drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many
millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as
temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should
be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one
wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse." I
think t