I need hardly point out that between the charisma, or gratia gratis data of infallibility and the idea of impeccability there is no connection. I should not so much as notice it, if some had not strangely obscured the subject by introducing this confusion. I should have thought that the gift of prophecy in Balaam and Caiaphas, to say nothing of the powers of the priesthood, which are the same in good and bad alike, would have been enough to make such confusion impossible.
The preface to the Definition carefully lays down that infallibility is not inspiration. The Divine assistance by which the Pontiffs are guarded from error, when as Pontiffs they teach in matters of faith and morals, contains no new revelation. Inspiration contained not only assistance in writing but sometimes the suggestion of truths not otherwise known. The Pontiffs are witnesses, teachers, and judges of the revelation already given to the Church; and in guarding, expounding, and defending that revelation, their witness, teaching, and judgment, is by Divine assistance preserved from error. This assistance, like the revelation which it guards, is of the supernatural order. They, therefore, who argue against the infallibility of the Pontiff because he is an individual person, and still profess to believe the infallibility of Bishops in General Councils, and also of the Bishops dispersed throughout the world, because they are many witnesses, betray the fact that they have not as yet mastered the idea that infallibility is not of the order of nature, but is of the order of grace. In the order of nature, indeed, truth may be found rather with the
