5. Another German rejection of the doctrine is that of Dr Hasenclever.[1]
"With countless other companions in faith I find myself reduced by the Papal Decree of 18th July 1870 to the alternative of either denying against my conscience the ancient faith as I received it, and on the basis of which I have remained for five and twenty years in the Catholic Church, or of placing myself in hopeless antagonism to a justly revered authority through refusal to submit."
Undoubtedly the principle is true that when the Church has once spoken all uncertainty is taken away; but no less undoubted is the principle that where a contradiction exists, a manifest deviation from tradition, it is impossible that it is the Church which has spoken. It is impossible, he says, for him to bring into harmony the new teaching on the Pope's Infallibility with the Catholic Faith taught him by the Tridentine and Roman Catechism.
The constitution of the Church, he argued, differs from that of a State, for while the latter may assume at various periods a democratic, an aristocratic, a monarchical form—the former must maintain its self-identity. This principle of identity and continuity is, he acknowledges, recognised in the Anglican Church which, while uncertain of the validity of its claims, he admits, is thereby distinguished from the Protestant types. But his sympathies are with the principle that the constitution of the Church cannot change its form. He is as opposed to a spiritual dictatorship as to Protestantism itself. Is it possible that the conception of supreme authority in the Church which has held good for eighteen hundred years, is no longer decisive? So men enquired in amazement when the news of the
- ↑ 1872.
