show, that whatever faults of infirmity were in Honorius, a doctrinal heretic he was not. We, by scientific treatment of history, have proved that your contemporaneous Popes were wrong; and we are scientifically right in declaring that Honorius was a heretic, not in a large, but in a strict sense, not only as a private person, but as a pope "ex cathedra:" and therefore that the infallibility of the Pope is a fable.'
But why should the school of scientific history prevail over the immemorial tradition of the Church, even in a matter of fact?
And how can it prevail over the definition of the Vatican Council, except by claiming to be infallible, or denying the infallibility of the Catholic Church?
And here lies the true issue. My purpose has been to bring out this one point, namely, that under this pretext of scientific history lurks an assumption which is purely heretical. It has already destroyed the faith of some; and will that of more. Our duty is to expose it, and to put the faithful on their guard against what I believe to be the last and most subtile form of Protestantism. This school of error has partly sprung up in Germany by contact with Protestantism, and partly in England by the agency of those who, being born in Protestantism, have entered the Catholic Church, but have never been liberated from certain erroneous habits of thought.
The first form of Protestantism was to appeal from the Divine authority of the Church to the text of Scripture: that is, from the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures traditionally declared by the Church, to the
