et each other. It was as much an
instinct of the ultramontane theory to elude the tests of science as to
resist the control of States. Its opponents, baffled and perplexed by
the serene vitality of a view which was impervious to proof, saw want of
principle where there was really a consistent principle, and blamed the
ultramontane divines for that which was of the essence of ultramontane
divinity. How it came that no appeal to revelation or tradition, to
reason or conscience, appeared to have any bearing whatever on the
issue, is a mystery which Janus and Maret and Doellinger's reflections
left unexplained.

The resources of mediaeval learning were too slender to preserve an
authentic record of the growth and settlement of Catholic doctrine. Many
writings of the Fathers were interpolated; others were unknown, and
spurious matter was accepted in their place. Books bearing venerable
names--Clement, Dionysius, Isidore--were forged for the purpose of
supplying authorities for opinions that lacked the sanction of
antiquity. When detection came, and it was found that fraud had been
employed in sustaining doctrines bound up with the peculiar interests of
Rome and of the religious Orders, there was an inducement to depreciate
the evidences of antiquity, and to silence a voice that bore obnoxious
testimony. The notion of tradition underwent a change; it was required
to produce what it had not preserved. The Fathers had spoken of the
unwritten teaching of the apostles, which was to be sought in the
churches they had founded, of esoteric doctrines, and views which must
be of apostolic origin because they are universal, of the inspiration of
general Councils, and a revelation continued beyond the New Testament.
But the Council of Trent resisted the conclusions which this language
seemed to countenance, and they were left to be pursued by private
speculation. One divine deprecated the vain pretence of arguing from
Scripture, by which Luther could not be confuted, and the Catholics were
losing ground;[374] and at Trent a speaker averred that Christian
doctrine had been so completely determined by the Schoolmen that there
was no further need to recur to Scripture. This idea is not extinct, and
Perrone uses it to explain the inferiority of Catholics as Biblical
critics.[375] If the Bible is inspired, says Peresius, still more must
its interpretation be inspired. It must be interpreted variously, says
the Cardinal of Cusa, according to