108
OPPOSITION IN ENGLAND
[CHAP.
the Roman convictions as held in England at that date. Forty years later he recorded his faith in the following words:—
"We are far from claiming for the Papacy any separate Infallibility distinct from that which all Catholics are bound to believe in, as the prerogative of the Universal Church. Those who make so novel a claim must reconcile it with the grave facts of ecclesiastical history. … And we believe that with those facts undenied and not disproved it would be impossible for the Church to define any such theories to be articles of faith."[1]
The following year De Lisle repeated his convictions on Infallibility in a letter to Father Ryder, afterwards Superior of the Birmingham Oratory.
"I will tell you my own belief, as to that attribute of Holy Church, which a learned Bishop pronounced accurate and orthodox. First of all, I believe Infallibility to be a conjunctive and collective attribute of the whole Catholic Church according to the words of Holy Church in her Collect, 'God by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified.' In other words, the infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit is given to the whole Church in its collective capacity, to the Laity as well as the Clergy. To the latter especially in their collective capacity as the teachers. To the former as the recipients of that teaching, giving them an instinctive apprehension of what is or is not in conformity with the traditional teaching of the Church. Now in this view of the matter, no one, whether pastor or layman, has any separate personal gift of the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, but it is given to all collectively in order to enable them safely to keep and rightly to apprehend the Deposit of Faith. … Now it follows from my view that all Catholics—from the Pope downwards to the meanest baptized layman—all are under
- ↑ Ambrose Lisle Phillipps, Union Review, May 1866, p. 95.
