Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/348

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This persistent attempt to render authority independent of evidence was, if especially prominent in the Infallibility disputes, a deeply seated and long existing disease. It pervaded the theological school then dominant in Rome, but it had, according to Acton, exerted its baneful influence over the Roman Church for centuries. The Jesuit theologian, Petavius, in the seventeenth century supported existing authority at the expense of the past.

Thus in Acton's view the dominant school in the Roman Church were resolved that "authority must conquer history." He went so far as to say that:—