ting them to
have a little faith and fortitude, and to "beware," as the poet says,
"of dangerous steps." This seemed so clear to me, the more I thought of
the matter, as to make me surmise, that, if I attempted what had so
little promise in it, I should find that the highest Catholic Authority
was against the attempt, and that I should have spent my time and my
thought, in doing what either it would be imprudent to bring before the
public at all, or what, did I do so, would only complicate matters
further which were already complicated, without my interference, more
than enough. And I interpret recent acts of that authority as fulfilling
my expectation; I interpret them as tying the hands of a
controversialist, such as I should be, and teaching us that true wisdom,
which Moses inculcated on his people, when the Egyptians were pursuing
them, "Fear ye not, stand still; the Lord shall fight for you, and ye
shall hold your peace." And so far from finding a difficulty in obeying
in this case, I have cause to be thankful and to rejoice to have so
clear a direction in a matter of difficulty.

But if we would ascertain with correctness the real course of a
principle, we must look at it at a certain distance, and as history
represents it to us. Nothing carried on by human instruments, but has
its irregularities, and affords ground for criticism, when minutely
scrutinized in matters of detail. I have been speaking of that aspect of
the action of an infallible authority, which is most open to invidious
criticism from those who view it from without; I have tried to be fair,
in estimating what can be said to its disadvantage, as witnessed at a
particular time in the Catholic Church, and now I wish its adversaries
to be equally fair in their judgment upon its historical character. Can,
then, the infallible authority, with any show of reason, be said in fact
to have destroyed the energy of the Catholic intellect? Let it be
observed, I have not here to speak of any conflict which ecclesiastical
authority has had with science, for this simple reason, that conflict
there has been none; and that, because the secular sciences, as they now
exist, are a novelty in the world, and there has been no time yet for a
history of relations between theology and these new methods of
knowledge, and indeed the Church may be said to have kept clear of them,
as is proved by the constantly cited case of Galileo. Here "exceptio
probat regulam:" for it is th