amounts to an assumption that scientific history knows the mind of the Church, and is better able to interpret its acts, decrees, condemnations, and documents, either by superiority of scientific criticism, or by superiority of moral honesty, than the Church itself.
But surely the Church best knows its own history, and the true sense of its own acts and documents.
The Crown of England would make short work of those who should scientifically interpret the unwritten law, or the acts of Parliament, contrary to its judgments.
Do modern critics suppose that the case of Honorius is as new to the Church as it is to them, or that the Church has not a traditional knowledge of the value and bearing of the case upon the doctrines of faith?
This, again, in non-Catholics would imply no more than the ordinary want of knowledge as to the Divine nature and office of the Church. In Catholics it would imply, if not heresy, at least a heretical animus.
If the Church has prohibited, under pain of excommunication, any appeal from the Holy See to a future General Council, certainly under the same censure it would condemn an appeal from the Council of the Vatican to the Councils of Constantinople interpreted by scientific history.
It is of faith that the Church alone can declare the contents and the limits of revelation, and can alone determine the extent of its own infallibility. And as it alone can judge of the true sense and interpretation of Holy Scripture, it alone can judge of the
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