the unerring discernment of truth in detecting and destroying falsehood in the midst of the intellectual aberrations of the Christian world. These three endowments are various in their operations, but identical in their nature and their source. It is the perpetual Divine assistance, derived from the perpetual presence of the Spirit of Truth in the Church, which sustains the Faith of the See and of the Successor of Peter, stable, indefectible, and infallible; that is, in one word, 'Yesterday and to-day and the same for ever.'
I do not know how other minds may be affected by the history of Christianity, in which, as I have very briefly shown, the eyes of men and of nations in all lands were always turned to the See and the Successor of Peter as the centre and source of this stable, indefectible, and infallible faith. To me this manifests the 'Privilegium Petri' with the evidence of light. Two hundred and fifty-seven Pontiffs in unbroken line have witnessed, taught, and judged in causes of faith. Against three only do the modern adversaries of the Pontifical infallibility bring charge of heterodoxy. Two hundred and fifty-four stand unchallenged in their immutable stability of faith. Of those three, two, Liberius and Vigilius, are not charged with heresy. Whatever be the fault of Honorius, supineness or hesitation, heterodox he was not; heretical he could not be, for his own letters remain to prove the orthodoxy of his teaching. But these three are all that the most relentless adversaries of the 'Privilegium Petri' have ever been able to adduce. To my mind, these threads of mist upon the
