within its oppressive unity; that, as true friends of the 'Latin Church,' they urge us, with all cordial solicitude, to refrain from declaring the Roman Pontiff to be infallible; that our true policy is comprehension, the concession of points to which their patristic learning forbids submission, the explaining away of the Council of Trent to admit the Thirty-nine Articles according to Sancta Clara; that if, unhappily, under the blind pressure of the ignorant and the courtly adulation of the ambitious, and, above all, the subtle management of the Jesuits, this crowning aberration be added to the Roman theology, the Latin Church will finally stand convicted by Scripture, Antiquity, Fathers, Schoolmen, Councils, Historical Science, and all that is independent, learned, noble, and masculine in its own communion, and be thereby delivered over to its own infatuation and downfall. To these self-complacent advisers it is enough to say, 'Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia.' There is not to be found a theological truth, not as yet imposed as of faith, for which such a cumulus of proof exists of every kind and of every age, and under every one of the loci theologici, as for the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. The evidence of the belief of the universal Church in the immaculate sinlessness and pre-eminent sanctification of the Mother of God, vast as it is, does not approach, either in extent or in explicitness, to the evidence for the infallibility, that is, the stability of faith in the Successor of Peter. There is no truth which already so pervades the mind of the whole Church, by unbroken tradition from the beginning; nor any which would meet with
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