PERILS. — ROMANISM. 81 



the Bnltimore Congress, and which, so far as we can 

 judge, was shared by all ahke. 



It is undoubtedly safe to say that there is not a mem- 

 ber of the hierarchy in America, who does not accept 

 the infalhbihty of the Pope and who has not sworn to 

 obey him.^ Now this dogma of papal infallibility as 

 defined by the Vatican Council and interpreted by Pius 

 IX. and Leo XIII. carries with it logically all of the 

 fundamental principles of Romanism which have been 

 discussed. Infallibility is necessarily intolerant. It can 

 no more compromise with a conflicting opinion than 

 could a mathematical demonstration. Truth cannot 

 make concessions to error. Infallibility represents abso- 

 lute truth. It is as absolute as God himself, and can no 

 more enter into compromise than God can compromise 

 with sin. And if infallibility is as intolerant as the 

 truth, it is also as authoritative. Truth ruay be rejected, 

 but even on the scaffold it is king, and has the right 

 and always must have the right to rule absolutely, to 

 control utterly evory reasoning being. If I believed the 

 Pope to be the infallible vicar of Christ, I would surren- 

 der myself to him as unreservedly as to God himself. 

 How can a true Roman Catholic do otherwise? A man 

 may have breathed the air of the nineteenth century and 

 of free America enough to be out of sympathy with the 

 absolutism and intolerance of Romanism, but if he ac- 



1 "Hence, that no one in future may craftily pretend not to know how 

 and whence to ascertain what the Church officially teaches; above all, that 

 no one may henceforth scatter the baneful seeds of false doctrine with im- 

 punity, under the mask of an appeal from the judgmetit of the Holy See 

 (whether it be to learned universities, or state tribunals or future coun- 

 cils, particular or g^eneral, as was done by Luther and the Jansenists), 

 the Chiirch of the living God, through the Fathers of the Vatican 

 Council, has imequivocally declared that her authentic spokesman is 

 the successor of St. Peter in the Apostolic See of Rome, and that whatever 

 he, as Head of the Church, defines ex cathedra is part of the Deposit of 

 Faith intrusted to her keeping by Christ, Our Lord, and hence is subject 

 to neither denial, doubt nor revision, but is to be implicitly received and 

 believed by all.'' Acta et Decreta Concilii Baltimorensis Tertii. p. Ixxiii. 



The oath of allegiance to the Pope prescribed by this same council has 

 already been given. See p. GO. 



