doctrinal knowledge flows from one fountain head. If we are able to
enlarge our view and multiply our propositions, it must be merely by the
comparison and adjustment of the original truths; if we would solve new
questions, it must be by consulting old answers. The notion of doctrinal
knowledge absolutely novel, and of simple addition from without, is
intolerable to Catholic ears, and never was entertained by any one who was
even approaching to an understanding of our creed. Revelation is all in
all in doctrine; the Apostles its sole depository, the inferential method
its sole instrument, and ecclesiastical authority its sole sanction. The
Divine Voice has spoken once for all, and the only question is about its
meaning. Now this process, as far as it was reasoning, was the very mode
of reasoning which, as regards physical knowledge, the school of Bacon has
superseded by the inductive method:--no wonder, then, that that school
should be irritated and indignant to find that a subject-matter remains
still, in which their favourite instrument has no office; no wonder that
they rise up against this memorial of an antiquated system, as an eyesore
and an insult; and no wonder that the very force and dazzling success of
their own method in its own departments should sway or bias unduly the
religious sentiments of any persons who come under its influence. They
assert that no new truth can be gained by deduction; Catholics assent, but
add that, as regards religious truth, they have not to seek at all, for
they have it already. Christian Truth is purely of revelation; that
revelation we can but explain, we cannot increase, except relatively to
our own apprehensions; without it we should have known nothing of its
contents, with it we know just as much as its contents, and nothing more.
And, as it was given by a divine act independent of man, so will it remain
in spite of man. Niebuhr may revolutionize history, Lavoisier chemistry,
Newton astronomy; but God Himself is the author as well as the subject of
theology. When Truth can change, its Revelation can change; when human
reason can outreason the Omniscient, then may it supersede His work.

Avowals such as these fall strange upon the ear of men whose first
principle is the search after truth, and whose starting-points of search
are things material and sensible. They scorn any process of inquiry not
founded on experiment; the Mathematics indeed they endure, because that
science deals