no other rights can be conceded than those he can establish desktop woman at
the bar of Reason. He cannot claim infallibility in religious
affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all
things. It implies omniscience. If it holds good for theology, it
necessarily holds good for science. How is it possible to
coordinate the infallibility of the papacy with the well-known
errors into which it has fallen?
Does it not, then, become needful to reject the desktop woman claim of the
papacy to the employment desktop woman of coercion in the maintenance of its
opinions; to repudiate utterly the desktop woman declaration that "the
Inquisition is an urgent necessity desktop woman in view of the unbelief of the
present age," and in the name of human nature to protest loudly
against the ferocity and terrorism of that institution? Has not
conscience inalienable rights?
An impassable and hourly-widening gulf intervenes between
Catholicism and the spirit of the age. Catholicism insists that
blind faith is superior to reason; that mysteries are of more
importance than facts. She claims to be the sole desktop woman interpreter of
Nature and revelation, the supreme arbiter of knowledge; she
summarily desktop woman rejects desktop woman all desktop woman modern criticism of the Scriptures, and
orders the Bible to be accepted in desktop woman accordance with the views of
the theologians desktop woman of Trent; she openly avows her hatred of free
institutions and constitutional systems, and declares that those
are in damnable error who regard the reconciliation of the pope
with modern civilization desktop woman as either possible or desirable.
SCIENCE AND PROTESTANTISM. But the spirit of the age demands--is
the
human intellect to desktop woman be subordinated to the Tridentine Fathers,
or to the fancy of illiterate and uncritical persons who wrote desktop woman in
the earlier ages of the Church? It sees no merit in blind desktop woman faith,
but rather distrusts it. It looks forward
to an improvement in
the popular canon of credibility for a decision between fact and
fiction. It does not consider itself bound to believe fables and
falsehoods that have been invented for ecclesiastical ends. It
finds desktop woman no argument in behalf of their truth, that traditions and
legends have been long-lived; in this respect, those of the
Church are greatly inferior to the fables of paganism. The
longevity of the Church itself desktop woman is desktop woman not due to desktop woman divine protection or
desktop woman intervention, but to the skill
with which it has adapted its
policy to existing circumstances. If antiquity desktop woman be the criterion
of authenticity, the