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216 carp at their brethren; none are so turned into ridicule as those who ridicule superiors. Carping in a priest betrays the absence of the gift of piety.

3. A third sign of mental obedience is deference to theologians. It is true that we incur the note of heresy only when we impugn the faith; but we may incur the notes of error, rashness, offensiveness to pious ears, in rejecting opinions which are outside of divine or Catholic faith. Private judgment, three hundred years old and erected into a law, and even into a religion, has infected the atmosphere in which the Catholic Church is forced to live and to breathe. It is true that the teaching of theologians, even though unanimous, will not make matter of divine faith; but their consent creates an intellectual tradition against which no man can set his judgment without rashness. We should be rash if we measured ourselves against any one of them; we should be more than rash if we set ourselves against their unanimous judgment. The unanimous interpretation of the Fathers makes a rule for fixing the sense of the Scriptures against all private spirits. The unanimous teaching of theologians is the maximum, or a high degree of human certainty in matters of revealed and of unrevealed truth. If we trust our individual reason, is not their collective reason to be rather