even to contend for them in the pages of the ‘Tablet’; and a celebrated French professor, M. Loisy, went very far in company with the critics. Then came the Pope’s encyclical declaring that no errors could be admitted in Scripture, and M. Loisy disappeared from his chair (with a most suave and courteous letter from the Pope in his pocket, recognising his past services). However, an encyclical only affects the expressions, not the thoughts, of scholarly Catholics. Leo XIII. has never once used his ‘infallible’ authority; his encyclicals enjoy neither more nor less than his personal authority as a theologian—which, in serious quarters, is nil. He is an impressive littérateur, and his utterances are blindly accepted by the bulk of the faithful, not only as marvellously profound, but as sharing, to some extent, the prestige of his supernatural power; they are wrong on both counts. A Loisy or a Mivart will simply wait patiently until Cardinal Vanutelli or some broader-minded man assumes the tiara; at present, as a matter of discipline and policy, they must keep silent.
Another refuge from the oppression of the encyclical is in the elasticity of the word ‘inspiration.’ That the whole of Scripture is inspired is an article of faith; what inspiration is, has never been defined. The advanced thinker can give it any interpretation his views may demand. A very able professor of Scripture at Louvain University, assured me that his own ideas on Scripture were absolutely chaotical on
