sixteenth
century that Infallibility gave anything like a fixed and complete creed
to the Church? Why did it permit so many men, in all preceding ages, to
live in ignorance of so many things in which it could so easily have
enlightened them? Why did it permit so many questions to be debated,
which it could so easily have settled? Why did it not give that creed to
the Church in the first century which it kept back till the sixteenth?
Why does it deal out truth piecemeal,--one dogma in this century,
another in the next, and so on? Why does it not tell us all at once? And
why, even to this hour, has it not told us all, but reserved some very
important questions for future decision, or revelation rather?

If it is replied that the Pope must first collect the suffrages of the
Catholic bishops, this only lands us in deeper perplexities. Why should
the Pope need assessors and advisers? Can Infallibility not walk alone,
that it uses crutches? Can an infallible man not know truth from error
till first he has collected the votes of fallible bishops? Why should
Infallibility seek help, which it cannot in the nature of things need?

If it is further replied, that this Infallibility is lodged betwixt the
Pope and the Council, we are only confronted with greater difficulties.
Is it when the decree has been voted by the Council that it becomes
infallible? Then the Infallibility resides in the Council. Or is it
when it is confirmed by the Pope that it becomes infallible? In that
case the Infallibility is in the Pope. Or is it, as others maintain,
only when the decree has been accepted by the Church that it is
infallible, and does the Pope not know whether he ought to believe his
own decree till he has heard the judgment of the Church? We had thought
that Infallibility was one and indivisible; but it seems it may be
parted in twain; nay, more, it may be broken down into an indefinite
number of parts; and though no one of these parts taken separately is
Infallibility, yet taken together they constitute Infallibility. In
other words, the union of a number of finite quantities can make an
infinite. Sound philosophy, truly!

If we go back, then, as the Ultramontanist will, to the dogma that the
seat of Infallibility is the chair of Peter, the question returns, why
cannot, or will not, the Pope determine in one age what he is able and
willing to determine in another? The dogma of the Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin, for instance, if i