congregated, it is that the Roman Church and Pontiff are by divine ordinance an infallible authority in interpreting the faith and expounding the law of God.
It is obviously impossible now to do more than trace the outline of the subject; but this I will endeavour to do, and to point out that this doctrine in question has already passed through the historical periods which mark its progress towards a final definition.
For example, let us first look at the history of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, This truth was fully but implicitly contained in the universal belief of the Church, both east and west, as to the absolute sinlessness and pre-eminent sanctification of the Mother of God. This constituted the first period of unanalysed belief. The doctrine was thus commemorated, year by year, in the Festival of the Ἁγιασμός, or the 'Sanctificatio' of the Blessed Virgin. The second period was one of analysis, forced upon the Church by the Pelagian heresy, and arising also from the legitimate and inevitable intellectual action of the faithful upon the matter of faith. The Festival of the Sanctification of the Blessed Virgin legitimately became the festival of the Immaculate Nativity. The third period was the period of definition, in which the two opinions of the Immaculate Nativity and the Immaculate Conception contended together, till the one was continually so weakened as to lose all probability, the other was so confirmed as to become certain. The Immaculate Conception was then, at last, defined and proposed as a doctrine of revelation and an article of faith.
The doctrine of the infallibility of the Church,
