aterial and moral events. The priesthood,
in its various grades, can determine issues of the future, either by the
exercise of its inherent attributes, or by its influential invocation of
the celestial powers. To the sovereign pontiff it has been given to bind
or loose at his pleasure. It is unlawful to appeal from his judgments
to an Oecumenical Council, as if to an earthly arbiter superior to him.
Powers such as these are consistent with arbitrary rule, but they are
inconsistent with the government of the world by immutable law. Hence
the Dogmatic Constitution plants itself firmly in behalf of incessant
providential interventions; it will not for a moment admit that in
natural things there is an irresistible sequence of events, or in the
affairs of men an unavoidable course of acts.

But has not the order of civilization in all parts of the world been the
same? Does not the growth of society resemble individual growth? Do not
both exhibit to us phases of youth, of maturity, of decrepitude? To
a person who has carefully considered the progressive civilization of
groups of men in regions of the earth far apart, who has observed the
identical forms under which that advancing civilization has manifested
itself, is it not clear that the procedure is determined by law? The
religious ideas of the Incas of Peru and the emperors of Mexico, and the
ceremonials of their court-life, were the same as those in Europe--the
same as those in Asia. The current of thought had been the same. A swarm
of bees carried to some distant land will build its combs and regulate
its social institutions as other unknown swarms would do, and so with
separated and disconnected swarms of men. So invariable is this sequence
of thought and act, that there are philosophers who, transferring the
past example offered by Asiatic history to the case of Europe, would
not hesitate to sustain the proposition--given a bishop of Rome and some
centuries, and you will have an infallible pope: given an infallible
pope and a little more time, and you will have Llamaism--Llamaism to
which Asia has long, ago attained.

As to the origin of corporeal and spiritual things, the Dogmatic
Constitution adds a solemn emphasis to its declarations, by
anathematizing all those who bold the doctrine of emanation, or who
believe that visible Nature is only a manifestation of the Divine
Essence. In this its authors had a task of no ordinary difficulty before
them. They must encount