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 for that
truth what may be called its _pom[oe]ria_; or, to take another
illustration, without acting as we act, as a nation, in claiming as our
own, not only the land on which we live, but what are called British
waters. The Catholic Church claims, not only to judge infallibly on
religious questions, but to animadvert on opinions in secular matters
which bear upon religion, on matters of philosophy, of science, of
literature, of history, and it demands our submission to her claim. It
claims to censure books, to silence authors, and to forbid discussions.
In this province, taken as a whole, it does not so much speak
doctrinally, as enforce measures of discipline. It must of course be
obeyed without a word, and perhaps in process of time it will tacitly
recede from its own injunctions. In such cases the question of faith
does not come in at all; for what is matter of faith is true for all
times, and never can be unsaid. Nor does it at all follow, because there
is a gift of infallibility in the Catholic Church, that therefore the
parties who are in possession of it are in all their proceedings
infallible. "O, it is excellent," says the poet, "to have a giant's
strength, but tyrannous, to use it like a giant." I think history
supplies us with instances in the Church, where legitimate power has
been harshly used. To make such admission is no more than saying that
the divine treasure, in the words of the Apostle, is "in earthen
vessels;" nor does it follow that the substance of the acts of the
ruling power is not right and expedient, because its manner may have
been faulty. Such high authorities act by means of instruments; we know
how such instruments claim for themselves the name of their principals,
who thus get the credit of faults whic