ROME AND PANTHEISM. 403 



gratefully declare that whatsoever can be excepted with 

 advantage, is to be excepted, no matter by whom it has 

 been invented."* 



The passage just quoted is so pregnant that a few 

 words of comment may be very well excused. In the 

 first place, I cannot but admire the latitude which the 

 Pope not only tolerates, but enjoins : he defines nothing, 

 but declares point blank that if we find anything in 

 St. Thomas Aquinas " not consistent with the assured 

 teachings of a later age, or finally IN ANY WAY NOT 

 PROBABLE" (what is not involved here?) we are "in no 

 wise to suppose" that it is being proposed for our 

 acceptance. But it is a small step from allowing lati- 

 tude in accepting or rejecting the parts of St. Thomas 

 Aquinas which conflict with the assured result of later 

 discoveries to allowing a similar latitude in respect, we 

 will say, of St. Jude; and if of St. Jude, then of St. 

 James the Less; and if of St. James the Less, then 

 surely ere very long of St. James the Greater and St. 

 John and St. Paul ; nor will the matter stop there. How 

 marvellously closely are the two extremes of doctrine 

 approaching to one another ! We, on the one hand, who 

 begin with tabulae rasce having made a clean sweep of 

 every shred of doctrine, lay hold of the first thing we 

 can grasp with any firmness, and work back from it. 

 We grope our way to evolution; through this to purposive 

 evolution ; through this to the omnipresence of mind 

 and design throughout the universe ; what is this but 

 God ? So that we can say with absolute freedom from 



* "Edicimus libenti gratoque animo excipiendum ssse quidquid 

 utiliter fuerit a quopiam iuventum atque excogitatum, " 



