taught these doctrines in his theological treatises: and that we receive this testimony from the pen of Charles Butler, who of all men is least to be suspected of ultramontanism.
In the year 1790, when a certain number of Catholics, weary of penal laws, fascinated by Parliament, and perhaps intimidated by the Protestant ascendency, began to explain away Catholic doctrines, and to describe themselves by a nomenclature which I will not here repeat, the Rev. Charles Plowden published a work, the very title of which is a witness and an argument. It is called 'Considerations on the Modern Opinion of the Fallibility of the Holy See in the Decision of Dogmatical Questions.' He opens his first chapter with these words: 'Before the Declaration of the Gallican Clergy in 1682, it was the general persuasion of Roman Catholics that the solemn decisions of the Holy See on matters of dogmatical and moral import are infallible. Since that epoch the contrary opinion is asserted in many schools in France, it has been imported with other French rarities into this kingdom, and it now appears to be the prevailing system, especially among those members of our Catholic clergy and laity who have studied little of either.' He then most solidly proves what in these Pastorals has been so often asserted, that, with the exception of the modern opinion of the local and transient Gallican School, the universal and traditionary faith of the Church in the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff has never been obscured. Plowden then proceeds to censure the
