Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/356

 Catholic Church recognizes the Pope as the head of the hierarchy, and in its development inevitably had to acknowledge the infallibility of the Pope. The Greek Church could fail to recognize the Pope, but in not recognizing the necessity of that supreme member of the hierarchy, it could not help but recognize the infallibility of the hierarchy itself; even so the Protestant Church, in failing to recognize Catholicism during its decadence, could not help but recognize the infallibility of that hierarchy whose dogmas it recognizes, for without the infallibility of the succession of the keepers of the Tradition it would have no foundation for the assertion of its truth.

All the churches maintain themselves only by recognizing the infallibility of that hierarchy which they accept. You may not agree in saying that such and such a hierarchy is the only correct one, but when a man says that he accepts as true the hierarchy whose, dogmas he accepts, you cannot prove to him the incorrectness of his dogmas. That is the only indestructible foundation, and so all the churches cling to it. Now, the new theologians destroy this only foundation, thinking that they are substituting a better one for it. The new theologians say that divine truth is kept, not by the infallibility of the hierarchy, but in the totality of all believers who are united in love, and that only to men who are united in love is divine truth given, and that such a church is defined solely by faith and oneness in love and in concord. This reflection is good in itself, but, unfortunately, from it cannot be deduced a single one of the dogmas which the theologians profess.

The theologians forget that, in order to recognize a certain dogma, it was necessary to recognize Tradition to be holy and definitely expressed in the decrees of the infallible hierarchy. But by rejecting the infallibility of the hierarchy, it is impossible to affirm anything, and there is not a single proposition of the church which could unite