Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/197

Rh us knows us as we know ourselves within. S. Paul asks, "What man knoweth the things of man but the spirit of man that is in him?" This is a simple fact of nature and of common sense. The attempt to dispute us out of a belief of our personal identity would consign our adversary to the Commissioners of Lunacy. How is it, then, that men can dispute with the Catholic Church as to its lineal traditions, which are recorded in its living consciousness? And yet it is not on this merely natural reason that the definition is founded; it rests upon the faith that the Divine Founder of the Church has promised to its head that he shall never err in declaring what is divine tradition, and therein what is divine revelation. And so S. Paul continues after the words already quoted, "What man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of man that is in him? Even so the things of the Spirit of God no man knoweth but the Spirit of God." It is by a divine promise and by a divine assistance that the Church never departs from the truth of revelation; and that promise was made to Peter not for his own sake alone, but for the sake of his brethren; and the promise made to Peter was made in him to all his successors in the headship of the Church, for the sake of the successors of the apostles and of the whole Church of which he is the chief pastor and teacher.