dubious authority, like a dubious law, imposes no obligation. No one will submit to he knows not what. The contentions of Gallicanism and Ultramontanism obscure the authority of the Church, and make it seem to be doubtful. Utterly false and unreasonable as this is, it has its effect in alarming, confusing the mind, and rendering it incapable of discernment, and the will indisposed to submission.
On our own people within, thank God, such temptations have less power; but every priest will know by his experience what misery and mischief has been done to timid or scrupulous, or, again, to rash and contentious minds. It must never be forgotten that faith, like humility and purity, is a grace of the Holy Spirit. It is to be matured and strengthened by truth and by obedience; it may be endangered and extinguished by falsehood and disobedience. But doubt is the shadow of falsehood and the prelude of unbelief. If there be any truth of the faith in which ambiguity is perilous, it is the Divine and infallible authority on which all faith reposes. The infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ is the infallibility of the Church in its Head, and is the chief condition through which its own infallibility is manifested to the world. To convert this, which is the principle of Divine certainty, into a doubtful question, and one of the highest endowments of the Mystical Body, into a subject of domestic strife and fraternal alienation, is a master-stroke of the Enemy of Truth and souls.
10. It is some times alleged that if the infallibility of the Pope, speaking ex cathedrâ, were defined, it would meet with widespread refusal. Not so: rather, like
