jurisdiction, beyond religious
opinion:--and now as to the power itself.

This power, viewed in its fulness, is as tremendous as the giant evil
which has called for it. It claims, when brought into exercise in the
legitimate manner, for otherwise of course it is but dormant, to have
for itself a sure guidance into the very meaning of every portion of
the divine message in detail, which was committed by our Lord to His
Apostles. It claims to know its own limits, and to decide what it can
determine absolutely and what it cannot. It claims, moreover, to have
a hold upon statements not directly religious, so far as this, to
determine whether they indirectly relate to religion, and, according
to its own definitive judgment, to pronounce whether or not, in a
particular case, they are consistent with revealed truth. It claims
to decide magisterially, whether infallibly or not, that such and
such statements are or are not prejudicial to the apostolic
_depositum_ of faith, in their spirit or in their consequences, and
to allow them, or condemn and forbid them, accordingly. It claims to
impose silence at will on any matters, or controversies, of doctrine,
which on its own _ipse dixit_, it pronounces to be dangerous,
or inexpedient, or inopportune. It claims that whatever may be the
judgment of Catholics upon such acts, these acts should be received
by them with those outward marks of reverence, submission, and
loyalty, which Englishmen, for instance, pay to the presence of their
sovereign, without public criticism on them, as being in their matter
inexpedient, or in their manner violent or harsh. And lastly, it
claims to have the right of inflicting spiritual punishment, of
cutting off from the ordinary channels of the divine life, and of
simply excommunicating, those who refuse to submit themselves to its
formal declarations. Such is the infallibility lodged in the Catholic
Church, viewed in the concrete, as clothed and surrounded by the
appendages of its high sovereignty: it is, to repeat what I said
above, a supereminent prodigious power sent upon earth to encounter
and master a giant evil.

And now, having thus described it, I profess my own absolute
submission to its claim. I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught
by the apostles, as committed by the apostles to the Church, and
as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly
interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and
(implicitly