sufficient argument to change my opinion. … But if the layman, who never fails to ridicule the doctrine in question, is willing fairly to contest it, he knows where to meet with an antagonist ready to engage with him. Against one assertion however of this writer, which insinuates the political danger resulting from the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, I will hurl defiance at him; nothing being more easy to show, than that no greater danger can result to the State from admitting the inerrancy of the Pope than from admitting that of the Church itself.'[1]
I only hope we shall now hear no more that the Catholics of England have not believed, or have not been taught, this doctrine; nor that the 'Old Catholics' of England refuse to believe the new opinions, and the like. We have heard too much of this: and the honoured name of those who through three hundred years of persecution have kept the faith, has been too much dishonoured by imputing to them that they are not faithful to the Martyrs, Confessors, and Doctors of England. The faith of St. Anselm and St. Thomas, of Thomas More and Cardinal Fisher, of Hay and Milner, is the faith of the Catholics of England. Whoso departs from it forfeits his share in the inheritance of fidelity they have handed down.
I will now add a few words on the disastrous consequences predicted from the Definition.
We were told that the Definition of the Infallibility would alienate the fairest provinces of the Catholic Church, divide the Church into parties, drive the
- ↑ Ecclesiastical Democracy detected, p. 98. London, 1793.
