the evils which, since the Council of Trent, have sprung up in the world, and by infection have threatened also the peace of the Church. The first cause of all these evils the Council affirms to be the rejection of the divine, and therefore infallible, authority of the Church. The inevitable consequence of this rejection was to leave all matters of religion to be decided by the judgment of individuals; from this again has followed the multiplication of sects conflicting with each other, whereby the faith of many in Christianity has been wrecked. The Holy Scriptures were asserted three hundred years ago to be the sole fountain of Christian faith; but the Holy Scriptures are now rejected by many as myths. From this abandonment of divine authority and of revealed truth two main principles of error come: the one, Rationalism, which makes the human reason to be the test, the measure, or the source of all truth to itself; the other, Naturalism, which denies altogether the existence of a supernatural order of grace and truth. The legitimate offspring of Rationalism and of Naturalism are Pantheism, Atheism,, and Materialism. These, in the order of the human mind, destroy even natural theism—that is, the belief of the existence of God and of the soul—and in the order of politics have brought in the lawless spirit of revolution, which is now undermining the foundations of human society. Such is the description given in the
