pretation of Holy Scripture. Now the sense of the Holy Scripture is twofold; namely, the literal and grammatical, or, as it is called, the sensus quis and the theological and doctrinal, or the sensus qualis. The Church judges infallibly of both. It judges of the question that such and such words or texts have such and such literal and grammatical meaning. It judges also of the conformity of such meaning with the rule of faith, or of its contradiction to the same. The former is a question of fact, the latter of dogma. That the latter falls within the infallible judgment of the Church has been denied by none but heretics. The former has been denied, for a time, by some who continued to be Catholics: for this is, in truth, the question of dogmatic facts. But the Jansenists never ventured to extend their denial to the text of Scripture, though the argument is one and the same. The Church has the same assistance in judging of the grammatical and of the theological sense of texts, whether sacred or simply human: and has exercised it in all ages.
For instance: Pope Hormisdas[1] says, 'The venerable wisdom of the Fathers providently defined by faithful ordinance what doctrines are Catholic: fixing also certain parts of the ancient books to be received as of authority, the Holy Ghost so instructing them; lest the reader, indulging his own opinion … should assert not that which tends, to the edification of the Church, but what his own pleasure had conceived.'
Pope Nicholas I.[2] writes, 'By their decree (i.e. that
