into the Church unless he is satisfied that he has been convinced of her right to his submission. So guarded is the Church on this score, that no Priest can admit an adult into the Church without a special faculty from his Bishop for that purpose. And if any one has had experience of the practice in Rome, he will know, perhaps to the cost of his patience, the number of formalities (we believe five in number) to be gone through and of permissions from different quarters to be obtained, before a convert can be admitted into the Church. People judging superficially would say that Rome thus actually puts difficulties into the way of conversion, instead of grasping for converts, as men say she does. The reason of all this is, that the Church must satisfy herself that the catechumen has been reasonably convinced of her Divine character. Has the Church, then, any marks whereby you may know her to be the Divine Teacher; and if so, what are they? She has her marks, just as Jesus Christ had His marks. We have already, in an earlier part of this letter, briefly referred to the marks or proofs which our Lord considered sufficient to convince the Jews of His claim to their submission; we must now refer to those of the Church with equal brevity. Your Catechism mentions them most compendiously. "She is One, she is Holy, she is Catholic, and she is Apostolical." Bellarmine gives fifteen marks whereby the reason may be convinced of the authority of the Church. But, you may object that men will deny her marks one after the other. But they equally denied the marks offered by our Lord of His Divinity, one after the other. They denied His most conspicuous

mark or character, that of sanctity: saying by " Beelzebub He casteth out devils;" He "hath a devil;" He is a "blasphemer," a " deceiver," a "liar," a "sinner:" -the Civil Power even attempted to deny His resurrection, and said that the disciples had stolen away His body whilst the soldiers slept. Be not astonished, therefore, if men deny the proofs of the authority of the Church of God, since they denied the proofs of the authority of Christ. But bear this further point well in mind. You have need to do so: the proofs or marks, though they address themselves to the reason and conscience, will never inspire Divine Faith unless "the Father also" draw" them*-" Faith is a gift of God." 2. We can add only one further word on this part of our subject-viz., that the proofs of the Divine character of the Church are more luminous even than those of the Divinity of Christ, because we have, plus those of His Divinity (and therefore of His power and veracity), the experience of the fulfilment of His promises to His Church. The history of eighteen centuries of plotting against the Church and of persecution of every kind on the part of the powers of hell and of the world for the purpose of destroying that sacred edifice which He built upon a Rock, is the strongest historical proof of her Divine origin. And if to the evidence of the history of persecution without, you add the history of her life within the exemplary and unbroken succession of her Pontiffs, the fruits of her sacraments, of her teaching and direction in the saints of every age, her martyrs, her miracles, and even the temporal benefits

she has scattered among men, as with queenly grace she proceeds upon her Divine and Spiritual mission,you will have a cumulus of historical proof such as the Christians of the early Church had nothing to compare with, and without which they still became converts, and gladly laid down their lives as a testimony.

The history of the Catholic Church is a fact at least as credible as the history of the world, and its history corroborates the perpetual existence of his Divine as well as of its human component. Taking in thus the testimony of history, we may say, only with greater precision of Catholicity, that which Butler's Analogy (Part II. ch. vii.) says of Christianity, that its evidence is " a long series of things, reaching, as it seems, from the beginning of the world to the present time, of great variety and compass, taking in both the direct and the collateral proofs, and making up all of them together one argument; the conviction arising from which kind of proof may be compared to what they call the effect in architecture or other works of art; a result from a great number of things so and so disposed and taken into one view." The evidences for the claim of the Catholic Church to our submission are therefore greater and more numerous to-day than they were when it first issued forth from the Upper Chamber in the morning of the Descent of the Holy Ghost.

VII.-INFALLIBILITY OF THE DIVINE TEACHER.

I-It is furthermore clear to us that this Church, this Divine Society, this Spiritual Kingdom, created by Christ and ordained to last to the end of the world,

and to claim the submission of every soul must-in order to accomplish her work without violation of the human reason and conscience,-possess not only a Divine authority, but the endowment also of a teaching infallibility in Faith and Morals.

Look around you, brethren, and see who lay claim to possession of this gift; positively there is not on: but the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She alone claims it as her Divine prerogative.

For 1800 years and more has she taught the doctrine of her supreme authority and doctrinal infallibility; but never till the Vatican Council did she define her infallibility by a dogmatic decree. And wherefore this strange long absence of a definition of her fundamental character? For the same reason that the decree passed in the first Council of Jerusalem, occurs in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Acts, and not in the second or the third; that is to say, for this simple reason, that the Church makes her decrees and definitions according to times and circumstances; or, in other words, according to the need. She had never defined her infallibility before the Vatican Council, because never had a Catholic, even a Gallican, denied it. Wherefore, then, its definition at the Vatican Council? Because of a local and transient error, touching the condition, not of its existence, but of its exercise. That error maintained that the definitions of the Sovereign Pontiff are indeed infallible, but only after subjection to the assent of the Episcopate. This was the Gallican phase of error, which under royal patronage received a form in 1682, and was adhered to by some 33 or 34 Bishops convened by Louis XIV. out of over a hundred

of the French Episcopate. It was at once treated as an error; but it lingered locally, under the patient toleration (not approval) of the Pontiffs, till the meeting of the General Council. It was then expunged for ever by a dogmatic decree on Infallibility. That decree, as you are aware, was made by the Pope in General Council (the largest but one ever held) and it is therefore, even upon the most extreme of Gallican theories, binding upon every Catholic, under pain of heresy and damnation. The Catholic Church, then, has once more been declared the Divine Teacher of the world, by the Definition of the Infallibility of her Visible Head.

2. And now, brethren, very briefly, as to the extent of ground covered by the Vicar of Christ's infallibility in Faith and Morals. It is defined that the ground is co-extensive with that covered by the infallibility of the Church herself. It is of Catholic and Divine Faith (that is to say, it is a term of Catholic communion) that it includes the whole deposit of Revelation; and, according to the teaching of theologians, it is theologically certain (and can be also held, as we ourselves hold it, to be of Faith), that it includes all those unrevealed truths which so touch on the deposit of Faith as that Faith and Morals cannot be guarded and infallibly interpreted without an infallible discernment of such truths.

The following is the Definition of the Council:

'Wherefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian Faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the Sacred Council approving,-we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed, that the Roman