Church, then, for three hundred years, been mistaking doubtful utterances for certainties; and that in matters of faith and morality, involving the absolution of souls from sin? They who deny the infallibility of the Pontiffs have here a hard task to reconcile their theory with fidelity to conscience and to truth.
14. But to pass from the region of theology to that of politics. The definition of the infallibility of the Pontiffs, speaking ex cathedrâ, is needed to exclude from the minds of Catholics the exaggerated spirit of national independence and pride which has, in these last centuries, so profoundly afflicted the Church. If there be anything which a Catholic Englishman ought to know, it is the subtile, stealthy influence by which the national spirit invades and assimilates the Church to itself; and the bitter fruits of heresy and schism which that assimilation legitimately bears. The history of England, from S. Thomas of Canterbury to Henry VIII., is a series of steady encroachments of the civil power upon the liberty of the Church, in all its operations, in its possessions, discipline, elections, tribunals, appeals, and jurisdictions. The whole English Church became charged and saturated by the secular spirit; its whole mind was clouded, and its whole will was bribed, till under Henry VIII., by a few acts of intimidation, its resistance was quelled; and it fell, whole and altogether, under the power of the Crown. The schism once complete, the work of heresy was inevitable, and was pursued at leisure. Such might have been also the history of France from Charles VII. to Louis XIV. The
