Church breathes her own pure and unearthly spirit into it, and fashions
and moulds its organization, and watches over its teaching, and knits
together its pupils, and superintends its action. The Spanish Inquisition
came into collision with the supreme Catholic authority, and that, from
the fact that its immediate end was of a secular character; and for the
same reason, whereas Academical Institutions (as I have been so long
engaged in showing) are in their very nature directed to social, national,
temporal objects in the first instance, and since they are living and
energizing bodies, if they deserve the name of University at all, and of
necessity have some one formal and definite ethical character, good or
bad, and do of a certainty imprint that character on the individuals who
direct and who frequent them, it cannot but be that, if left to
themselves, they will, in spite of their profession of Catholic Truth,
work out results more or less prejudicial to its interests.

Nor is this all: such Institutions may become hostile to Revealed Truth,
in consequence of the circumstances of their teaching as well as of their
end. They are employed in the pursuit of Liberal Knowledge, and Liberal
Knowledge has a special tendency, not necessary or rightful, but a
tendency in fact, when cultivated by beings such as we are, to impress us
with a mere philosophical theory of life and conduct, in the place of
Revelation. I have said much on this subject already. Truth has two
attributes--beauty and power; and while Useful Knowledge is the possession
of truth as powerful, Liberal Knowledge is the apprehension of it as
beautiful. Pursue it, either as beauty or as power, to its furthest extent
and its true limit, and you are led by either road to the Eternal and
Infinite, to the intimations of conscience and the announcements of the
Church. Satisfy yourself with what is only visibly or intelligibly
excellent, as you are likely to do, and you will make present utility and
natural beauty the practical test of truth, and the sufficient object of
the intellect. It is not that you will at once reject Catholicism, but you
will measure and proportion it by an earthly standard. You will throw its
highest and most momentous disclosures into the background, you will deny
its principles, explain away its doctrines, re-arrange its precepts, and
make light of its practices, even while you profess it. Knowledge, viewed
as Knowledge, exerts a subtle infl