old and transmit them to the end of time. From his
person they passed to the College of the Twelve, under the headship of
Peter; and thence, in perpetual apostleship, to the bishops and pastors,
ordained through legitimate hands, for the governance of disciples.
These officers are the sole depositaries, the authorized trustees of
divine grace; whose decision, whether they open or shut the gate of
mercy, is registered in heaven and is without appeal. Not that they can
play with this power, and dispose of it by arbitrary will. The media
through which it is to flow have been divinely appointed: its channels
are limited to certain physical substances and bodily acts or postures,
selected at first hand for the purpose:--water at one time, bread at
another, oil at a third, handling of the head at a fourth. But the
infusion of the supernatural efficacy into these "alvei" depends on an
act of the appointed official; through whom alone the divine matter--no
longer choked up--can have free currency into the persons of believers.
To this inheritance of miracle is added a stewardship of inspiration.
The episcopate is keeper of the Christian records: and as those records
are only the first germ of an undeveloped revelation, with the same body
is left the exclusive power of unfolding their significance, and
directing the growth and expansion of their ever fertile principles.
Whatever interpretation the hierarchy may put upon the Scriptures,
whatever doctrine or discipline they may announce as agreeable with the
mind of God, must be accepted as infallible and authoritative. The same
spirit of absolute truth which spoke in the living voice of Christ,
which guided the pen of evangelists, still prolongs itself in the
thought and counsels of bishops, and renders their collective decisions
binding as divine oracles. The people who form the obedient mass of the
Catholic body are not without a share of this miraculous light in the
soul; not indeed for the discernment of any new truth, but for the
apprehension of the old. The moment the disciple is incorporated in the
church, faith bursts into sight; he passes from opinion into knowledge;
he perceives the objects of his worship, and the truth of his creed,
with more than the certainty of sense; and as he bows before the altar,
or commits himself to the "Mother of God," the real presence and the
invisible world are as immediately with him as the breviary and the
crucifix. Through the whole Catho