Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/364

50 supernatural and spiritual order ever yet made in the face of the world; which is now, more than ever, sunk in sense and heavy with materialism. It declares that a whole order of being and power, of truth and agency, exists, and is in full play upon the world of sense. More than this, that this supernatural and spiritual order is present in the world, and is incorporated in a visible and palpable form, over which the world has no authority. That God and His operations are sensible; visible to the eye, and audible to the ear. That they appeal to the reason of man; and that men are irrational, and therefore act both imprudently and immorally, if they do not listen to, and believe in the Word of God. It affirms also, as a doctrine of revelation, that the visible Church is the great motive of credibility to faith, and that it is 'the irrefragable testimony of its own divine legation.' It moreover asserts that the Church has a divine commission to guard the deposit of revelation, and 'a divine right to proscribe errors of philosophy and vain deceit,' that is, all intellectual aberrations at variance with the deposit of revelation. Finally, it affirms that the Church has a divine office to declare infallibly the deposit of truth.

I am not aware that in any previous Œcumenical Council the doctrine of the Church, and of its divine and infallible authority, has been so explicitly defined. And yet the Council of the Vatican was not at that time engaged upon the Schema De Ecclesia, which still remains to be treated hereafter. It was not however without a providential guidance that the first Constitution on Catholic Faith was so shaped, espe-