re have been only eighteen such councils since
Christianity was--an average of one to a century--and of these
councils some passed no doctrinal decree at all, others were employed
on only one, and many of them were concerned with only elementary
points of the Creed. The Council of Trent embraced a large field of
doctrine certainly; but I should apply to its canons a remark
contained in that University Sermon of mine, which has been so
ignorantly criticised in the pamphlet which has led to my writing;--I
there have said that the various verses of the Athanasian Creed are
only repetitions in various shapes of one and the same idea; and in
like manner, the Tridentine decrees are not isolated from each other,
but are occupied in bringing out in detail, by a number of separate
declarations, as if into bodily form, a few necessary truths. I
should make the same remark on the various theses condemned by popes,
and on their dogmatic decisions generally. I acknowledge that at
first sight they seem from their number to be a greater burden to the
faith of individuals than are the canons of councils; still I do not
believe in matter of fact that they are so at all, and I give this
reason for it:--it is not that a Catholic, layman or priest, is
indifferent to the subject, or, from a sort of recklessness, will
accept anything that is placed before him, or is willing, like
a lawyer, to speak according to his brief, but that in such
condemnations the holy see is engaged, for the most part, in
repudiating one or two great lines of error, such as Lutheranism or
Jansenism, principally ethical not doctrinal, which are foreign to
the Catholic mind, and that it is expressing what any good Catholic,
of fair abilities, though unlearned, would say himself, from common
and sound sense, if the matter could be put before him.

Now I will go on in fairness to say what I think _is_ the great trial
to the reason, when confronted with that august prerogative of the
Catholic Church, of which I have been speaking. I enlarged just now
upon the concrete shape and circumstances, under which pure
infallible authority presents itself to the Catholic. That authority
has the prerogative of an indirect jurisdiction on subject-matters
which lie beyond its own proper limits, and it most reasonably has
such a jurisdiction. It could not act in its own province, unless it
had a right to act out of it. It could not properly defend religious
truth, without claiming f