what may have been his _private_
conduct, ever promulgated a decree against the purity of faith and
morals.]

CHAPTER II.

THE POPE'S GREAT PREROGATIVE.

The clear and certain recognition of a great truth is seldom the work
of a day. We often possess it in a confused and hidden way, before we
can detect, to a nicety, its exact nature and limitations. It takes
time to declare itself with precision, and, like a plant in its
rudimentary stages, it may sometimes be mistaken for what it is
not--though, once it has reached maturity, we can mistake it no
longer. As Cardinal Newman observes: "An idea grows in the mind by
remaining there; it becomes familiar and distinct, and is viewed in
its relations; it leads to other aspects, and these again to
others.... Such intellectual processes as are carried on silently and
spontaneously in the mind of a party or school, of necessity come to
light at a later date, and are recognised, and their issues are
scientifically arranged." Consequently, though dogma is unchangeable
as truth is unchangeable, this immutability does not exclude progress.
In the Church, such progress is nothing else than the development of
the principles laid down in the beginning by Jesus Christ Himself.
Thus--to take a simple illustration--in three different councils, the
Church has declared and proposed three different articles of Faith,
_viz._, that in Jesus Christ there are (1) two natures, (2) two wills,
and (3) one only Person. These may seem to some, who cannot look
beneath the surface, to be three entirely new doctrines; to be, in
fact, "additions to the creed". In sober truth, they are but
expansions of the original doctrine which, in its primitive and
revealed form, has been known and taught at all times, that is to say,
the doctrine that Christ is, at once, true God and true Man. That one
statement really contains the other three; the other three merely give
us a fuller and a completer grasp of the original one, but tell us
nothing absolutely new.

In a similar manner, and by a similar process, we arrive at a clearer
and more explicit knowledge of other important truths, which were not
at first universally recognised as being contained in the original
deposit. The dogma of Papal infallibility is an instance in point. For
though no Catholic ever doubted the genuine infallibility of the
_Church_, yet in the early centuries, there existed some difference of
opinion, as to _where_ precisely the