to her, revelation had stopped; the
creed was finished, final and complete, and there was nothing to do but
to maintain it.--On the contrary, with the Catholics, after as before
that date, the creed never ceased developing itself, always becoming
more precise, and revelation kept on; the last thirteen councils were
inspired like the first seven, while the first one, in which Saint Peter
at Jerusalem figured, enjoyed no more prerogatives than the last
one convoked by Pius IX. at the Vatican. The Church is not "a frozen
corpse,"[5331] but a living body, led by an always active brain which
pursues its work not only in this world but likewise in the next world,
at first to define it and next to describe it and assign places in
it; only yesterday she added two articles of faith to the creed, the
immaculate conception of the Virgin and the infallibility of the Pope;
she conferred ultra-terrestrial titles; she declared Saint Joseph patron
of the universal Church; she canonized Saint Labre; she elevated Saint
Francois de Sales to the rank of Doctor. But she is as conservative as
she is active. She retracts nothing of her past, never rescinding any
of her ancient decrees; only, with the explanations, commentaries and
deductions of the jurist, she fastens these links closer together, forms
an uninterrupted chain of them extending from the present time back to
the New Testament and, beyond, through the Old Testament, to the origins
of the world, in such a way as to coordinate around herself the entire
universe and all history. Revelations and prescriptions, the doctrine
thus built up is a colossal work, as comprehensive as it is precise,
analogous to the Digest but much more vast; for, besides canon law and
moral theology, she includes dogmatic theology, that is to say, besides
the theory of the visible world, the theory of the invisible world
and its three regions, the geography of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise,
immense territories of which our earth is merely the vestibule, unknown
territories inaccessible to sense and reason, but whose confines,
entrances, issues and subdivisions, the inhabitants and all that
concerns them, their faculties and their communications, are defined, as
on Peutinger's map and in the Notitia imperii romani, with extraordinary
clearness, minutia and exactitude, through a combination of the
positive spirit and the mystic spirit and by theologians who are at once
Christians and administrators. In this relat