rs; there were fine mountains on its
northern shore; and on the east the conspicuous form of Monte Baldo
leaned over it, as if looking at its own shadow in the lake. With the
Lago di Garda came the memories of Trent; for at the distance of twenty
miles or so from its northern shore is "the little town among the
mountains," where the famous Council assembled, in which so many things
were voted to be true which had been open questions till then, but to
doubt which now were certain and eternal anathema.

The Reformation addressed to Rome the last call to reconsider her
position, and change her course while yet it was possible. It said to
her, in effect, Repent now: to-morrow it will be too late. Rome gave her
reply when she summoned the Council of Trent. That Council crystallized,
so to speak, the various doubtful opinions and dogmas which had been
floating about in solution, and fixed the creed of Rome. It did
more,--it fixed her doom. Amid these mountains she issued the fiat of
her fate. When she published the proceedings of Trent to the world, she
said, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me----." To whom did
she make her appeal? To the Emperor in the first place, when she prayed
for the vengeance of the civil sword; and to the Prince of Darkness in
the second, when she invoked damnation on all her opponents. Then her
course was irrevocably fixed. She dare not now look behind her: to
change a single iota were annihilation. She must go forward, amid
accumulating errors, and absurdities, and blasphemies: amid opposing
arts and sciences, and knowledge, she must go steadily onward,--onward
to the precipice!

It is interesting to mark, as we can in history, first, the feeble
germinations of a papal dogma; next, its waxing growth; and at last,
after the lapse of centuries, its full development and maturity. It is
easy to conceive how a mere human science should advance only by slow
and gradual stages,--astronomy, for instance, or geology, or even the
more practical science of mechanics. Their authors have no infallible
gift of discerning truth from error. They must observe nature; they must
compare facts; they must deduce conclusions; they must correct previous
errors; and this is both a slow and a laborious process. But
Infallibility is saved all this labour. It knows at once, and from the
beginning, all that is true, and all that is erroneous. It does so, or
it is not Infallibility. Why, then, was it not till the