hat inspiration is, the
Catholic Church, strangely enough, has never done anything of the kind.
She has declared nothing on the subject that is to be held of faith. The
whole question is still, within limits, an open one. As the Catholic
Church, then, stands at present, it seems hard to say that, were we for
other reasons inclined to trust her, she makes any claims, on behalf of
her sacred books, which, in the face of impartial history, would prevent
our doing so.

Let us now go farther, and consider those great Christian doctrines
which, though it is claimed that they are all implied in the Bible, are
confessedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly not consciously
assented to by the Church, till long after the Christian Canon was
closed. And here let us grant the modern critics their most hostile and
extreme position. Let us grant that all the doctrines in question can be
traced to external, and often to non-Christian sources. And what is the
result on Romanism? Does this logically go any way whatever towards
discrediting its claims? Let us consider the matter fairly, and we shall
see that it has not even a tendency to do so. Here, as in the case of
the Bible, the Church's doctrine of her infallibility meets all
objections. For the real question here is, not in what storehouse of
opinions the Church found her doctrines, but why she selected those she
did, and why she rejected and condemned the rest. History and scientific
criticism cannot answer this. History can show us only who baked the
separate bricks; it cannot show us who made or designed the building. No
one believes that the devil made the plans of Cologne Cathedral; but
were we inclined to think he did, the story would be disproved in no way
by our discovering from what quarries every stone had been taken. And
the doctrines of the Church are but as the stones in a building, the
letters of an alphabet, or the words of a language. Many are offered and
few chosen. The supernatural action is to be detected in the choice. The
whole history of the Church, in fact, as she herself tells it, may be
described as a history of supernatural selection. It is quite possible
that she may claim it to be more than that; but could she vindicate for
herself but this one faculty of an infallible choice, she would
vindicate to the full her claim to be under a superhuman guidance.

The Church may be conceived of as a living organism, for ever and on all
sides putting forth fe