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 m 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 tdbulce 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 



• "Edioinius libenti gratoque animo excipiendum ABse quidquid 

 utiliter fuerit a quopiam inventum atque excogitatam." 



