) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by
that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the
universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the
matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time
made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of
the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those
other decisions of the holy see, theological or not, through the
organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of
their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to
be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the
course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes,
and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and
a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great
minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas; and
I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of
thought thus committed to us for these latter days.

All this being considered as the profession _ex animo_, as on my own
part, so also on the part of the Catholic body, as far as I know it,
it will at first sight be said that the restless intellect of our
common humanity is utterly weighed down to the repression of all
independent effort and action whatever, so that, if this is to be the
mode of bringing it into order, it is brought into order only to be
destroyed. But this is far from the result, far from what I conceive
to be the intention of that high Providence who has provided a great
remedy for a great evil--far from borne out by the history of the
conflict between infallibility and reason in the past, and the
prospect of it in the future. The energy of the human intellect "does
from opposition grow;" it thrives and is joyous, with a tough elastic
strength, under the terrible blows of the divinely-fashioned weapon,
and is never so much itself as when it has lately been overthrown. It
is the custom with Protestant writers to consider that, whereas there
are two great principles in action in the history of religion,
Authority and Private Judgment, they have all the Private Judgment to
themselves, and we have the full inheritance and the superincumbent
oppression of Authority. But this is not so; it is the vast Catholic
body itself, and it only, which affords an arena for both combatants
in that awful, never-dying duel. It is nece