is the result of a divine assistance whereby what was divinely revealed in the beginning is divinely preserved to the end. Of two things one at least: either Christianity is divinely preserved, or it is not. If it be divinely preserved, we have a divine certainty of faith. If it be not divinely preserved, its custody and its certainty now are alike human, and we have no divine certainty that what we believe was divinely revealed. This is the issue to which men must come at last The definition of the infallibility of the head of the Christian Church means this, and no more than this; that God, who revealed His truth, has founded His Church for the custody and perpetuity of His truth, and that He has made provision that His Church shall never fail in its custody, nor by error in its declaration cause the perpetuity of faith to fail. The visible Church is the highest witness among men for the original revelation of Christianity, both by its historical testimony and by its divine office. Reject this, and where is there divine certainty left on earth? But for the present we are engaged with the literal meaning of the decree.
6. The Introduction proceeds to describe infallibility to be "a charisma of indefectible faith and truth." By this again the notion of a "personal" infallibility is excluded. The word charisma is used to express not a gratia gratum faciens, as theologians say—that
