custody and defence of the faith. It falls therefore within the limits of its infallibility.
The commendation of the works of St. Augustine, and the condemnation of the Thalia of Arius at Nicæa, of the Anathematisms of Nestorius at Ephesus, and of the Three Chapters of Ibas, Theodore, and Theodoret, in the Second Council of Constantinople, all alike involved a judgment of dogmatic facts.
The subterfuge of the Jansenists as to the literal meaning of 'Augustinus' came too late. The practice of the Church and the decrees of Councils had already pronounced its condemnation.
(4.) What has here been said of the condemnation of heretical texts, is equally applicable to the censures of the Church.
The condemnation of propositions is only the condemnation of a text by fragments.
The same discernment which ascertains the orthodoxy of certain propositions, detects the heterodoxy of those which are contradictory. And in both processes that discernment is infallible. To define doctrines of faith, and to condemn the contradictions of heresy, is almost one and the same act. The infallibility of the Church in condemning heretical propositions is denied by no Catholic.
In like manner, the detection and condemnation of propositions at variance with theological certainty is a function of the same discernment by which theological certainty is known. But the Church has an infallible discernment of truths which are theologically certain; that is, of conclusions resulting from two premisses of which one is revealed and the other evident by the light of nature.
