Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/146

134 rational to believe what the uncreated intelligence of God reveals to man. Faith comprehends, therefore, the reasons why it is a rational act to believe what it is beyond reason to discover. Science is the certain knowledge of truth in its principles. But this is possible to man only in the natural order.

In the fourth chapter the Council treats of the relation of faith and reason. It defines that there are two orders of knowledge, distinguished by their principle and their object—by their principle because the one proceeds by natural reason, the other by divine faith; by their object because the one is in the order of nature, the other in the order of supernatural truths. It then declares that between faith and reason there can be no conflict. They move on different planes, and truth can never be opposed to truth, nor can truth contradict itself; wherefore, if at any time there shall seem to be opposition between the doctrines of faith and the conclusions of reason, the conflict can only be apparent and transient, and while it seems to exist we are bound even by reason, which assures us of the certainty of faith, to believe the conflict to be not real, but only apparent.

The Constitution then further declares that faith and reason are mutually helpful:—

Wherefore so far is the Church from opposing the cultivation of human arts and sciences that in many ways it helps and pro-