ed of infallibility in religious teaching,
is happily adapted to be a working instrument, in the course of human
affairs, for smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy of the
aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect:--and in saying this, as
in the other things that I have to say, it must still be recollected
that I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose, which is a defence
of myself.

I am defending myself here from a plausible charge brought against
Catholics, as will be seen better as I proceed. The charge is
this:--that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold doctrines
which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I also believe in
the existence of a power on earth, which at its own will imposes upon
men any new set of _credenda_, when it pleases, by a claim to
infallibility; in consequence, that my own thoughts are not my own
property; that I cannot tell that to-morrow I may not have to give up
what I hold to-day, and that the necessary effect of such a condition of
mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving
itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole
subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying
every thing that the Church says, and leaving to others the defence of
it. As then I have above spoken of the relation of my mind towards the
Catholic Creed, so now I shall speak of the attitude which it takes up
in the view of the Church's infallibility.

And first, the initial doctrine of the infallible teacher must be an
emphatic protest against the existing state of mankind. Man had rebelled
against his Maker. It was this that caused the divine interposition: and
to proclaim it must be the first act of the divinely-accredited
messenger. The Church must denounce rebellion as of all possible evils
the greatest. She must have no terms with it; if she would be true to
her Master, she must ban and anathematize it. This is the meaning of a
statement of mine which has furnished matter for one of those special
accusations to which I am at present replying: I have, however, no fault
at all to confess in regard to it; I have nothing to withdraw, and in
consequence I here deliberately repeat it. I said, "The Catholic Church
holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth
to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in
extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes,