Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/376

Rh forming part of the revealed deposit, yet claimed by the Church as a partial object of her infallibility.

I think this will be allowed to be consistent; history shews that for the last eighteen hundred years the Church has sternly and unflinchingly acted on this principle. Dogmatic facts not contained in the deposit were defined, and obedience to the definition was enforced from the time when Arius was condemned by the Fathers down to our own day; but it would be beyond my scope to enter on ground so ably trodden by others. The intellectual assent required by the Church to a non-revealed proposition is not, of course, an act of divine faith.

It is not my task to defend the Syllabus against non-Catholics on the ground of Papal Infallibility. I have only aimed in this article at clearing up a popular prejudice. I now ask for a patient hearing, whilst, as simply and briefly as I am able, I shall pass in review the much-maligned series of condemnations. Some of the errors condemned are heresies; many rest on atheistical principles; while some are historical falsehoods, coined for the purpose of leading the faithful away from the guidance of the Church of Christ. I now pass to consider, one by one, the errors condemned in the Syllabus, prefixing a few remarks to each section.

Pantheism is not a plant of English growth. Al-