xv INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 281 



enduring prosperity, but only at the cost of two things 

 which have hitherto been very dear to her. In the 

 first place, she would have to renounce the right to 

 persecute. Truly a trivial matter this, it may be thought, 

 seeing that it cannot nowadays be exercised. But it is 

 one thing to suspend it in practice and for prudential 

 reasons, and quite another to give it up in theory and 

 on principle. Principles which cannot be carried into 

 practice often grow all the dearer for their pathetic 

 impotence, as is proved by intellectualist philosophies. 

 Moreover, to renounce this right would not only break 

 with much historical tradition, but would also sacrifice 

 the ambition of recovering the lost power of the Church. 



Secondly, the right of making dogmas (of the old 

 quasi-rational sort) would have to be abandoned. The 

 Church would have to follow the example set by Science 

 and, more recently, by philosophy. Science for some 

 time past has been too busy and too rapidly progressive 

 to find it worth while to formulate into fixed dogmas 

 her working theories, which, in the words of Sir J. J. 

 Thomson, form &quot;a policy and not a creed.&quot; It has 

 grown accustomed to use them merely for what they 

 are worth, and so long as they are worth it. In philosophy 

 the discovery of the proper attitude towards dogmas has 

 been of slower growth, though philosophic Humanism is 

 quite clear as to their value and the mischief they have 

 wrought. 



But religion hitherto has always stood for the eternal 

 fixity of dogma, once it has been defined. In most 

 Churches, indeed, this power of making dogma has long 

 been in abeyance. They have been too tightly wedged 

 into an antiquated creed which none of its members could 

 construe literally, or tied to some paralysing political 

 concordat, or too loosely organized to act corporately. 

 But this inability has usually been construed as a 

 disability, and the power of making dogma has seemed 

 a mark of the superior progressiveness and unity of 

 Rome. Acceptance of Modernism, however, would mean 

 the sacrifice of this flattering prerogative. 



