ence of history, the preservation of our race in
Noah's ark is an historical fact, which history never would arrive at
without Revelation; and, in the province of physiology and moral
philosophy, our race's progress and perfectibility is a dream, because
Revelation contradicts it, whatever may be plausibly argued in its behalf
by scientific inquirers. It is not then that Catholics are afraid of human
knowledge, but that they are proud of divine knowledge, and that they
think the omission of any kind of knowledge whatever, human or divine, to
be, as far as it goes, not knowledge, but ignorance.

2.

Thus I anticipated the objection in question last week: now I am going to
make it the introduction to a further view of the relation of secular
knowledge to divine. I observe, then, that, if you drop any science out of
the circle of knowledge, you cannot keep its place vacant for it; that
science is forgotten; the other sciences close up, or, in other words,
they exceed their proper bounds, and intrude where they have no right. For
instance, I suppose, if ethics were sent into banishment, its territory
would soon disappear, under a treaty of partition, as it may be called,
between law, political economy, and physiology; what, again, would become
of the province of experimental science, if made over to the Antiquarian
Society; or of history, if surrendered out and out to Metaphysicians? The
case is the same with the subject-matter of Theology; it would be the prey
of a dozen various sciences, if Theology were put out of possession; and
not only so, but those sciences would be plainly exceeding their rights
and their capacities in seizing upon it. They would be sure to teach
wrongly, where they had no mission to teach at all. The enemies of
Catholicism ought to be the last to deny this:--for they have never been
blind to a like usurpation, as they have called it, on the part of
theologians; those who accuse us of wishing, in accordance with Scripture
language, to make the sun go round the earth, are not the men to deny that
a science which exceeds its limits falls into error.

I neither then am able nor care to deny, rather I assert the fact, and
to-day I am going on to account for it, that any secular science,
cultivated exclusively, may become dangerous to Religion; and I account
for it on this broad principle, that no science whatever, however
comprehensive it may be, but will fall largely into error, if it be
consti