rld such a
definition would seem to be a mere natural production. But in the eyes
of a Catholic it would be as truly supernatural, as truly the work of
the Holy Spirit, as if it had come down ready-made out of heaven, with
all the accompaniments of a rushing mighty wind, and of visible tongues
of flame. Sanguine critics might expose the inmost history of the
council in which the definition was made; they might show the whole
conduct of it, from one side, to be but a meshwork of accident and of
human motives; and they would ask triumphantly for any traces of the
action of the divine spirit. But the Church, would be unabashed. She
would answer in the words of Job, '_Behold I go forward, but He is not
there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; but He knoweth the way
that I take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Behold
my witness is in heaven, and my champion is on high._'

And thus the doctrine of the Church's infallibility has a side that is
just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be its only one.
It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage; not to have gendered
liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and if we view the
matter fairly, we shall see that it has done the latter at least as
completely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility is undoubtedly a
rope that tethers those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts
of the past; but it is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening.
It is not a fetter only; it is a support also; and those who cling to it
can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents of speculation that
would sweep away altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of
swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this
infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from the
Catholic point of view. It is said that the Pope might any day make a
dogma of any absurdities that might happen to occur to him; and that the
Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly his reason
might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the Pope _might_ do this
any day, in the sense that there is no external power to prevent him.
But he who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholicism knows
that he never _will_. And it is precisely the obvious absence of any
restraint from without that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the
guiding power from within.

Such, then, and so compacted is the Chu