CHAPTER IV.
SCIENTIFIC HISTORY AND THE CATHOLIC RULE OF FAITH.
It may here be well to answer an objection which is commonly supposed to lie against the doctrine of the Pontifical Infallibility; namely, that the evidence of history is opposed to it.
The answer is twofold.
1. First, that the evidence of history distinctly proves the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.
I shall be told that this is to beg the question.
To which I answer, they also who affirm the contrary beg the question.
Both sides appeal to history, and with equal confidence; sometimes with equal clamour, and often equally in vain.
By some people 'The Pope and the Council,' by Janus, is regarded as the most unanswerable work of scientific history hitherto published.
By others it is regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious book of the day.
Between such contradictory judgments who is to decide? Is there any tribunal of appeal in matters of history? or is there no ultimate judge? Is history a road where no one can err; or is it a wilderness in which we must wander without guide or path? are
