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Papal Infallibility and Mr. Gladstone

 

 

Art. V. - Papal Infallibility. Ex-Premier Gladstone and the Archbishop of Westminster.

 

It would appear from the newspapers that ex-Premier Gladstone, the leader of the English Liberals, 

 

has published a pamphlet in which he attacks Papal Infallibility, as declared by Council of the Vatican, on 

 

political grounds, and makes an adroit appeal to the anit-Catholic prejudice of the mass of the English people. 

 

We have not seen the pamphlet, which, at the time we are writing (Nov.19), has not reached this side of the 

 

Atlantic; but, if it is correctly described in the New York Herald, it is simply the revival, for political effect, of 

 

the old cry of "No Popery."

We are not surprised at this act of Mr. Gladstone. We have never shared the confidence of our Catholic 

 

brethren of Great Britain and Ireland in this greatly overrated statesman; and, as long ago as 1854, we 

 

classified him with the satanic, or radical and revolutionary leaders of the time. We based our judgment chiefly 

 

on his untruthful and revolutionary pamphlet of Naples. That pamphlet showed us his unscrupulousness and 

 

the bias of his mind. He is not, never was, and never will be a statesman; and we have, as a Catholic, and as an 

 

American citizen, always preferred D'Israeli, who is a statesman, as we have always preferred the English 

 

Tories to the English and Scotch Whigs. In this we have not had the sympathy of Catholics either at or abroad; 

 

and we have stood nearly alone, as we did in our own country, against the late Emperor of the French, and the 

 

policy of Louis Veuillot, the oracle of European Catholics. It is rarely that we find a Catholic in our days that 

 

is not a blunderer in politics, that is, in our judgment, which is by no means infallible. "You were right in your 

 

judgment of Napoleon III," said an eminent American prelate to us one day in 1864; "and we bishops were 

 

wrong, and we were so because we relied on the judgment of the French Bishops." "But I did not rely on their 

 

judgment at all." was our reply. Time, unhappily, has justified us, and proved that the Church had no worse 

 

enemy than the Nephew of his Uncle. "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the 

 

children of light," yet we know not that what judging with our human wisdom, we call political blunders, really 

 

are blunders. Our Lord never intended his Church should stand in human wisdom, human strength, or human 

 

virtue; and it is only when, humanly speaking, the Church is weakest, that she is strongest. Those blunders in 

 

human policy, as we esteem them, are doubtless permitted for wise and good purpose, and are sure in the end 

 

to redound to the glory of the Church, by making it manifest to all the world that it is only the hand of God 

 

that upholds her, and preserves her in life and vigor.

Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, according to the telegraphic summary of it published in the N.Y. Herald of Sunday 

 

the 15th of November last asserts that the decrees of the Council of the Vatican have changed the relations of 

 

the Church of civil governments, so that a man cannot be at once obedient to the pope and loyal to his prince 

 

or the state. This charge, it pretends, is warranted by the decree of the Council of defining that the pope, when 

 

teaching ex-cathedra, or officially, the Universal Church, is, by divine assistance, infallible, or exempt from 

 

error in all matters pertaining to faith and morals. To this the Archbishop of Westminster, a life-long friend of 

 

Mr. Gladstone, replies in the following letter, addressed to the Editor of the N.Y. Herald, and published in the 

 

same number of the popular journal:-

 

 

Nov. 10, 1874

To the Editor of the Herald:-

Dear Sir-I assisted in framing the Vatican Decrees, which have not changed one jot or tittle the 

 

obligations and conditions of civil obedience that Catholics bear towards the civil power. Mr. Gladstone's 

 

pamphlet hangs upon a contrary assumption, and falls with it. In proof of this assertion I assert:

First-That the doctrines of the infallibility of the pope was a divine truth before the Vatican Council 

 

was held, and that it was set forth and explained in the second and third parts of the book call Petri Privilege.

Second-I gave the sufficient evidence of this assertion in this, that the Vatican Council announced 

 

no new dogma, but simply declared an old truth.

Third-That the position of Catholics, in respect to civil allegiance since the Council, is precisely 

 

what it was before.

Fourth-That the civil powers of the Christian world hitherto stood in peaceful relations with the 

 

infallible Church, and this relation was often recognized and declared in the councils of the Church before the 

 

Vatican Council, and, therefore, this is no new matter; and

Fifth-That the Vatican Council made no decrees in regard to the civil powers nor on civil allegiance, 

 

this subject being never even proposed.

Civil obedience rests on natural law. Revealed truth is the law of God. Society is founded in nature, 

 

and subjects are bound, in all things which are lawful, to obey their rulers. Society, when it is Christian, has 

 

higher obligations, and subjects are bound to obey their rulers of conscience' sake, because powers that be are 

 

ordained of God. Of all this the Vatican Decrees changed nothing because they touched nothing.

Mr. Gladstone's argument hangs upon an erroneous assertion. I can only suppose him to have been 

 

misled by a misplaced truth in Dr. Dollinger and his friends. On public and private grounds I lament this act of 

 

imprudence. But for my belief in Mr. Gladstone's sincerity I should say it was an act of injustice, and lament it 

 

as out of all harmony and proportion with the great statesman’s life, and the first event to overcast a friendship 

 

of forty-five years. His public life hitherto has consolidated Christian and civil peace in the three kingdoms. 

 

This act, unless the providence of God and the good sense of Englishman avert to evil consequences, may 

 

wreck more than the work of Mr. Gladstone’s public career, and at the end of a long life tarnish a great name.

I remain your faithful servant,

HENERY EDWARD,

      Archbishop of Westminster.

 

No member of the Council of the Vatican took a more conspicuous part than did the illustrious Archbishop of 

 

Westminster, and no man living is better able to say what this Council did or did not do. When he says the 

 

decrees of the Council changed nothing in the relations of the Church and the state, he simply states a fact 

 

within his own knowledge, not an opinion, whether his own or another's. The Schema touching those relations 

 

prepared by the theologians was not acted on by the Council, which was suspended before it was reached, and 

 

consequently must be regarded as nonavenu. To pretend that the decree of the Council, declaring it of faith 

 

that the pope by the divine assistance is infallible as Doctor or Teacher of the Universal Church to the civil 

 

powers, is absurd. The Church has always been held to be himself infallible by the same assistance, can in no 

 

respect affect those relations. The question of Papal Infallibility, decided by the Council, is purely an internal 

 

question, and in no sense affects the relations of the civil or external powers with the Church; for those 

 

relations, whether embodied in concordats or not, had always been through the pope with a Church claiming 

 

to be infallible in matters of faith and morals, or matters pertaining to faith and morals. The Church, in the 

 

definition of Papal Infallibility, put forth no claim to any infallibility that she had not always asserted; and the 

 

definition, that the infallibility is lodged in the pope as well as in the Ecclesia congergata and the Ecclesia 

 

Dispersa, could not make any difference in the relations of the Church to the state, or in her authority over 

 

individuals, and could by no means abrogate or weaken the existing concordats between the two powers, for it 

 

neither increased nor diminished the infallibility she was always and everywhere understood to claim by virtue 

 

of the indwelling Holy Ghost. Mr. Gladstone has been misled by Dr. Dollinger.

So much might be said in answer to Dr. Dollinger, Bismarck, and ex-Premier Gladstone on the supposition that 

 

the infallibility of the pope, as defined in the Vatican Council, had never been previously asserted. But such is 

 

very far from being the case. All the world knows that it had always been asserted by the whole Church, and 

 

never denied except by some civil rulers, who have no authority in the Church, and by their courtiers, lawyers, 

 

and courtly prelates, or such theologians who stood more in awe of the temporal prince than of the supreme 

 

pontiff. Gallicanism, as we have shown in discussing Dollingerism, was the doctrine of the sovereigns, at least 

 

when they wished to oppose the spiritual power, but never the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Of the nearly 

 

one thousand bishops assembled in the Council of the Vatican from all quarters of the globe, among whom 

 

were the profoundest theologians, the ripest scholars, and the most learned men in the world, not a single one 

 

denied or questioned the truth of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, or expressed any doubt of its having been 

 

the doctrine of the Church from the first. A small minority of their number opposed the definition, but, if we 

 

are correctly informed, not one opposed it on the ground that it is not true. That would be an innovation in 

 

Catholic faith, or a departure from the Semper eadem. The definition was opposed as inopportune. Some 

 

thought the doctrine was already defined with sufficient explicitness by the decree of the Council of Florence, 

 

and the action of the sovereign pontiffs; and therefore held that no further definition was called for. Some 

 

opposed defining it, because it might irritate the temporal powers, and afford them a pretext for charging the 

 

Church with innovating in her faith; some, because it might embarrass the controversy with heretics; and 

 

others, from national prejudice; but none, on the ground of the falsity or untenableness in theology of the 

 

doctrine itself. These were all overruled by a large majority, who decided, in defining it, that it had always 

 

been the faith of the Church, and its denial had always been at least material heresy. No body of men, even on 

 

the score of human science, learning, and ability, could be collected from all the courts and universities of the 

 

world whose testimony on such a question would equal that of the Council of the Vatican, much less be 

 

competent to overrule it.

The Church, in her definitions, does not introduce new matter of faith, or decree simply what henceforth is to 

 

be held as Catholic faith, or decree simply what henceforth is to be held as Catholic faith, but defines what, on 

 

the point in question, is and always has been the faith. The Fathers of the Vatican did not simply decree that 

 

the Papal Infallibility, as they defined it, is henceforth de fide, and not to be denied without heresy; but they 

 

testified with all the weight of their authority, supernaturally protected from error by the Divine Presence, that 

 

it had always been the doctrine of the Church from her institution by our Lord himself. So of all the decrees of 

 

the Church declaring the faith. They institute no new faith; they simply declare unerringly what is and always 

 

has been the faith. This excludes the specious theory of Development. New definitions are not even new 

 

developments; they propose no new faith or new development of the primitive faith, but simply, when the 

 

faith has been denied, they reassert it, and when it has become confused or obscured in men's understandings 

 

they state it more explicitly or distinctly. The Church has authority not only over all questions that bear 

 

directly on faith, but over all those that affect it indirectly and remotely; and authority even in scientific 

 

theories and speculations to condemn whatever directly, indirectly, or remotely impugns the deposit of faith, 

 

but, in condemning them, she only opposes to them the old truth of which she-that is, the pope-is the divinely 

 

appointed guardian.

This is a sufficient reply to Mr. Gladstone's charge, that, in defining or declaring the Papal Infallibility, the 

 

Church has changed her faith, or introduced a new faith. The court, in defining or declaring what is the law, 

 

neither makes nor changes the law. Mr. Gladstone ought to be lawyer enough to understand so much, and 

 

ought also to be theologian enough to know that, in defining or declaring the faith, the Church acts in her 

 

judicial capacity, as Ecclesia judicans, not as the legislature. But leaving this charge of change of faith, or 

 

innovation in faith, so foolishly urged by the Dollingerites, we turn to the what we understand to be the gist of 

 

Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, namely: The belief in Papal Infallibility is incompatible with Civil Allegiance, and 

 

mental and moral freedom.

Protestantism has almost everywhere thrown off the mask, and no longer pretends to oppose the Church on 

 

theological grounds. It abandons its pretences to be rival religion, and assumes what from the first has been its 

 

real character, that of a political movement against the Church, or a movement to effect the independence of 

 

the secular order in face of the spiritual or divine government. In its greatest generality it may be defined to be 

 

the assertion of the supremacy of the human, and the denial of the sovereignty of God, as is implied in its 

 

fundamental principle, private judgment, which is purely human. All the objections Protestants now urge 

 

against the Church, may be summed up under two heads: The claims of the Church are incompatible, 1, with 

 

the allegiance the citizen or subject owes to the prince or state; and 2, with the rights of the mind, or mental 

 

and moral freedom. The state and the mind are both human; and consequently Protestantism simply sets up 

 

the human against the divine, and therefore indorses the primitive falsehood with which Satan seduced our 

 

first parents: "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil;" that is, knowing 

 

them as God knows them, of yourselves without learning them from a master, or the law of a superior. 

 

Protestantism, inspired by Satan and obeying the suggestions of human pride, puts the human in the place of 

 

the divine, the state in the place of the Church, man in the place of God, and worships, instead of God, the 

 

devil, or one's own petty self. Under it man can brook no superior, bow the knee to no master, will be his own 

 

teacher and lawgiver, boast of his intelligence, freedom, and dignity, and, without knowing it, be a miserable 

 

bondman of Satan. Mr. Gladstone's objections to Catholicity prove it but too conclusively.

Mr. Gladstone contends that a man, in becoming a Catholic, forswears civil allegiance, and surrenders his 

 

mental and moral freedom. This, we believe, is the pretence of the whole anti-Catholic party in this country, in 

 

Great Britain and Ireland, and on the European continent. The allegation is not, that the Church, being a false 

 

Church, as are all Protestant Churches, must therefore be hostile to the state, and to the mental and moral 

 

freedom, or the rights of the mind, which would be a valid objection to her authority in case it is conceded or 

 

proved that she is a false Church; but the objection actually urged is that she must be hostile to the civil power 

 

and the rights of the mind, because she claims to teach all men and nations infallibly the truth which God has 

 

revealed and commanded all men and nations to believe and obey. Supposing her claim to be well-founded, 

 

which is not denied in the allegation, the objection is very weak and very absurd, even blasphemous; for it 

 

assumes that the truth revealed by the Holy Ghost, infallibly declared, denies the rights of the state and of the 

 

mind. It is absurd, for neither the state nor the mind has or can have any rights which the truth denies, or 

 

which deny the truth; blasphemous, because it denies the divine sovereignty, and assumes that the Holy Ghost 

 

can teach what is false, and command what is wrong. The objection, as the lawyers say, is not well taken. It 

 

should be, not that the dogma of Papal Infallibility is incompatible with civil allegiance or mental freedom, for, 

 

if the pope is really infallible, he can teach as the law of God only what is his law, and as obligatory only what 

 

really is obligatory on all men and nations, alike on sovereigns and subjects, the republic and the citizen, if the 

 

universal dominion and sovereignty of God is not denied;-but it should be either a denial in form of the dogma 

 

of Papal Infallibility, or the universal dominion and sovereignty of God. In either case the objection would be 

 

theological, not political.

In fact, no valid or tenable objection to the dogma of Papal Infallibility can be based on political or secular 

 

reasons. Mr. Gladstone and the Protestant press, in objecting to the Church or the Papacy on political and 

 

secular grounds, show their want of logic, and their utter incapacity to understand the real question at issue. 

 

They wish to maintain that the claim of Papal Infallibility renders the Church incompatible with the rights of 

 

the civil power and of the mind, which is absurd if the claim be well founded. If the claim be unfounded, that 

 

fact should be pleaded, or alleged in the declaration; and the allegation of that transfers the case at once from 

 

politics to theology. They are not only inept logicians, but very poor lawyers, and would do well to study 

 

Chitty, or some other respectable authority, on Pleading. They lose their case if they are so ill-advised as to 

 

interpose a demurrer. If they simply demur to the claim they have no case, for, if the claim be conceded or 

 

passed over, no objection can be urged, since an infallible teacher can teach nothing that is not true, and 

 

therefore nothing incompatible with any rights the civil power or the mind has ever had or can have. There are 

 

no rights not founded in truth, and truth cannot contradict itself. The case does not come within the 

 

jurisdiction of the civil courts, and can be settled only in the court that has cognizance of theological questions.

We are not required in the present aspect of the case to discuss the theological question, for Mr. Gladstone 

 

and Protestants do not in their objections set forth that the Papal Infallibility is theologically false, and 

 

therefore incompatible with civil allegiance and mental and moral freedom: they object that Papal Infallibility 

 

itself cannot be asserted or believed without denying civil allegiance and mental and moral freedom. The 

 

objection, therefore, is to infallible authority itself; that whoever admits any infallible authority above or 

 

distinct from the state or civil power and the individual reason cannot be a loyal subject or citizen, and is 

 

mentally a slave. There is no human infallibility, and there can be no infallible authority except by divine 

 

appointment and the supernatural assistance and protection of the Holy Ghost. Papal Infallibility rests on and 

 

represents the divine infallibility and sovereignty. In the last analysis, then, the objection is, that the 

 

acknowledgement of the divine infallibility and sovereignty is incompatible with mental freedom and civil 

 

allegiance. This is the real significance of Mr. Gladstone's objection. We said, in 1854, that he needed only 

 

another rubbing he appears to have received in his late political defeat and lose of office. He now unites with 

 

Satan in asserting the authority of the human against the authority of God; for, as we have seen, his objection 

 

is no less forcible against Catholicity on the supposition that Papal Infallibility is a truth, that on the 

 

supposition that it is an unfounded claim. It says to the state and the human reason, "Ye are as gods." you are 

 

your own masters, and have no superior. The principle assumed in all the objections of anti-Catholics to the 

 

Church, as far as half a century devoted to the study of the subject has enabled us to ascertain it, and asserts 

 

the independence of the human, whether social or individual, as we began by showing.

LAST SERIES-VOL. III. NO. I. 8

The real question between the Church and her assailants, stripped of all its disguises and sophistries, 

 

is as to the divine sovereignty: Is God the Proprietor and Sovereign of the universe, and is his law supreme for 

 

all intelligent and moral agents? Yes, or no? If you say yes, your objections fall to the ground; if you say no, 

 

they equally fall to the ground; for then the mind and the state have no rights where there is no basis of right; 

 

and if the sovereignty of God is denied, there is no basis of rights of any sort. The universal dominion and 

 

sovereignty of God denied, how will you be able to assert loyalty as a duty, or the moral obligation of civil 

 

allegiance; or maintain that its violation is wrong or criminal? God's sovereignty denied, the authority of the 

 

state to bind the individual conscience, to exact obedience even as a civil duty, ceases; each individual is 

 

emancipated from all law, from all moral obligation, is free, if he chooses, to lie, steal, rob, murder, without 

 

any power having the right to call him to an account; society is dissolved, and the moral order of the universe 

 

is a word without meaning. Follow out the principle of your objection to its logical consequences, and you will 

 

find that it denies authority, all law, all right or wrong, the entire morale order of the universe; for all law, all 

 

morality, all right, all authority, rests on the universal dominion and sovereignty of God, since, as says the 

 

Apostle St. Paul, Non est potestas nisi a Deo. The denial of the divine sovereignty is virtually the denial of God 

 

himself, is really atheism; and hence the horror with which mankind, in every age prior to our own, have 

 

regarded the atheist. Atheism denies all moral order, and leaves the world to be governed by mere force, or 

 

identifies right with might, as exemplified in Frederic the Great, Napoleon I, Count Cavour, Kaiser Wilhelm 

 

and his chancellor, Prince von Bismarck; as well as in the French Revolution on 93, the expulsion from Spain 

 

of Queen Isabella in 1868, the insurrection of the mod and improvisation of the so-called Government of 

 

Defense in Paris, September 4, 1870, and the new Reign of Terror, instituted by the Communists in the same 

 

city, March 18, 1871.

But reject the satanic denial of the divine sovereignty, and, consequently, the denial of man's dependence and 

 

subjection preached by the serpent to our first parents, and assert with all Jews, Christians, and Mahometans 

 

even, the universal dominion and sovereignty of God, and you must accept the law of God as supreme and 

 

universally obligatory. It binds both the state and the citizens, the community and the individual. It is the 

 

ground and measure of all right, and whatever is contrary to it is wrong, and forbidden to be either believed or 

 

done. Under the supreme law the state holds, and this law is the ground and limit of its authority, or of its 

 

rights and its obligations. This law is therefore the ground and limit of civil allegiance. The civil power holds all 

 

its authority from this supreme law, and, consequently, it has no authority to do or command anything that it 

 

forbids, or that is contrary to it. Hence it follows that, if the civil power commands anything contrary to the 

 

law of God, its commands do not bind the subject or citizen, are not only not obligatory, but are to be treated 

 

as null and void from the beginning, simply because the civil power has no right to issue them, and the law of 

 

God forbids them. Here is the limit of civil obedience, or my allegiance to the civil power. My obligation to 

 

obey ceases when the prince exceeds his authority, or violates the law under which he holds; and if he 

 

commands me to do what the law of God-which is law for him as well as for me, and for me as well as for him

 

-forbids, I am bound to refrain from obedience, let the consequences to me be what they may, for we must 

 

obey God rather than men.

But here comes up the question, how am I to know what the law of God prescribes or forbids? How am I to 

 

know where the authority of the civil power ends, and my duty of obedience to its commands ceases? Here 

 

comes in the Church, professing to be authorized by God himself to declare the divine law. This is what every 

 

so-called Church actually professes; but how can the declaration of the Church meet the demands of the case, 

 

protect the authority of the prince or state on the one hand, and the individual conscience, or the rights of the 

 

citizen, on the other, if, like all Protestant sects, she be fallible, or liable to err in defining what is or is not the 

 

Divine Law? The prince could not be sure of the extent or limit of his powers, nor the subject of the extent or 

 

limit of his civil allegiance. The prince or state might transcend his or its powers and play the tyrant, as we 

 

have seen done in England, an as is done every day before our very eyes in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and 

 

Spain; while, on the other hand, under the pleas of conscience, the subject might refuse to yield the obedience 

 

the civil power has the right under the law of God to exact, and disobedience, sedition, conspiracies, 

 

insurrections, rebellions, and revolutions follow to distract the state, and endanger its very existence. The court 

 

to define and declare the law alike for prince and subject, for state and citizen, needs, therefore, to be 

 

infallible. How, then, pretend that Papal Infallibility, which declares without error, or the possibility of error, 

 

the law of God, is incompatible with civil allegiance or with mental freedom? A fallible court might be so, but 

 

an infallible court cannot be. Well, deny Papal Infallibility, and you have only a fallible court, no authority to 

 

define the law of God and declare what it perscribes and what it forbids.

Considering that the pope is the Supreme Governor and Head of the Church, and is the Church herself in all 

 

her official relations with civil power, papal fallibility would be incompatible with civil allegiance, and mental 

 

and moral freedom, as Mr. Gladstone contends, for the pope might misinterpret the relations of the Church 

 

with the civil power and human reason as fixed by the law of God, or vary from time to time in his definitions 

 

of them; but Papal Infallibility, since the pope does not make the law, but only declares it, is not only 

 

incompatible with civil allegiance or with mental freedom, but is a sure guaranty that in no case can anything 

 

be enjoined on the state or the individual or forbidden to either, that is no enjoined of forbidden by the law of 

 

God, which neither has any right to disobey. Papal Infallibility, therefore, protects, with all the authority of the 

 

Church, both civil allegiance and mental and moral freedom. Dr. Dollinger, whom Mr. Gladstone and Prince 

 

von Bismarck so inconsiderately follow, suffers Satan to obscure and pervert his reason, in fact to deprive him 

 

of his senses, when he alleges that the definition of Papal Infallibility by the Fathers of the Vatican threatens 

 

danger to civil power. The danger could be threatened only by a contrary definition. It is only papal fallibility 

 

or a fallible Church that could be dangerous.

Some obscurity on this subject has arisen from the practice of theologians of treating the natural law and the 

 

revealed law as two distinct laws, not as two distinct parts of one and the same divine law. Thus the 

 

Archbishop of Westminster, in his Letter telegraphed to the Herald, says, or is made to say: "Civil obedience 

 

rests on natural law: revealed truth is the law of God. Society is founded in nature, and subjects are bound in 

 

all things which are lawful to obey their rulers." This is all very true, but it is neither definite nor exact, and 

 

leaves it to be inferred that the state does not hold, when society is not Christian, under the law of God; which 

 

is not true, and opens the door to the political atheism of our times, which no one more strenuously and 

 

effectively resists than the archbishop himself. The illustrious archbishop, who hardly has his equal in the 

 

Church, could never have meant that the natural law is not the law of God, because it "rests on natural law," 

 

and therefore on an authority independent of the divine sovereignty, or outside of the jurisdiction of the Holy 

 

See as the divinely appointed and commissioned interpreter of the law of God: for he knows, as St. Paul says, 

 

Nom est potestas nisi a Deo, and that the Church takes in her confessionals cognizance only of offences 

 

against the revealed law, and not also of offences against the natural law.

Society is, no doubt, founded in nature, in natural generation, but it is subject to the moral law, the natural 

 

moral law, not to physical laws only, as the Emersons, the Huxleys, the Tyndalls, etc., foolishly and wickedly 

 

maintain in identifying the moral law, the jus gentium of the Roman jurists, with the law of gravitation, etc. 

 

Now, whence originates this moral law called the natural law, and to which even natural society is subject? 

 

Whose will does it express? Who is the Legislator that enacts it? Nature? No, except by a figure of speech; for 

 

nature herself is bound by it. Nature is the creature of God, and dependent on his will, and therefore has and 

 

can have no legislative power of its own, for we repeat from the Apostle, Non est potestas nisi a Deo, there is 

 

no power (authority) but from God. Nature is not, and cannot give, the natural or moral law, and can at best be 

 

only the medium through which God, the Universal Sovereign and Lawgiver, promugalates it. It is, therefore, 

 

as strictly and as veritably the law of God as the revealed law itself.

The practice of treating the natural law as distinct from the law of God has grown out of the neglect of 

 

theologians carefully to mark the important fact, which, so far as we are aware, none of them deny, that the 

 

natural and the supernatural are simply two distinct parts of one whole, not two separate and, in some 

 

respects, opposing system. In some schools of theology the two orders are treated as two separate and 

 

unrelated orders: the one, under the natural law; and the other, under the revealed law. It may be convenient 

 

to treat them so, in our analytic or scholastic disquisitions, but they are not so separate and unrelated in reality. 

 

Gratia supponit naturam, and the supernatural order is only the complement or fulfillment of the natural. Each 

 

demands the other. Without the natural, the supernatural is a word without meaning, since, if there were no 

 

generation, there could be no regeneration or palingenesia; and without the supernatural the natural would 

 

have no end, no fulfillment, and would remain always inchoate, or a simple beginning. We do not say natural 

 

reason alone could recognize this fact: natural reason, unenlightened by revelation, can go no further than the 

 

recognition of the fact that the natural is incomplete, insufficient for itself, and therefore has neither its first 

 

cause nor its final cause in itself. The rest depends on revelation, provable by ample historical testimony.

But, if there is any truth in what we have said, the natural and the supernatural are not two dialectically 

 

unrelated orders, or, as Calvinists and Jansenists hold, two antagonistic orders, but two parts of a dialectic 

 

whole. That is to say, the divine schema of creation includes, taken as it exists in the divine decree, the 

 

inchoate and its fulfillment,-generation and regeneration, and glorification as the crown of the whole. The 

 

natural law is then only a distinct part of the one divine law, and is as much the law of God as is the revealed 

 

law itself. Grant, then, that the state holds from the natural law, it, nevertheless, holds strictly from the law of 

 

God, which is, as we have said, the ground and measure of civil allegiance, as also of the so-called rights of the 

 

mind. The law of God can never be in contradiction with itself; and therefore, whenever the civil power 

 

commands any act to be done that contradicts the law of God, whether the natural law or the revealed, 

 

obedience is not obligatory, because it is commanded by no legitimate authority.

The whole Gladstone and Dollinger theory, on which is based the objection to Papal Infallibility, rests on the 

 

false assumption that nature is not under the law of God, and that what holds from nature holds from an 

 

authority independent of that law. The objection assumes that natural morality. and politics, which is only a 

 

branch of ethics, are independent of the divine law; of the state and civil order, in politics. But this assumption 

 

is atheistic, or, as we said more than twenty years ago of Gallicanism, at least Manichean. There is no 

 

morality; no politics, independent of the law of God, as there is no existence independent of the creative act of 

 

God. Hence their doctrine, that the rights of the civil power and the rights of the mind do not depend on the 

 

law of the God, and therefore do not come within the jurisdiction of the Church, is untenable, un-Christian, as 

 

well as illogical, as Gallicanism always was. The pope has necessarily jurisdiction under the whole law of God, 

 

otherwise the Church, of which he is the visible head, would not be Catholic; therefore he has jurisdiction 

 

under the natural law no less than under the revealed, and declares it under either division, infallibly, if 

 

infallible, as declared by the Council of the Vatican. This follows necessarily from the fact that the law of 

 

nature and the revealed law are not two laws, but two distinct, yet integral parts or sections of one and the 

 

same supreme law of God.

There can be no divided allegiance, no antagonism between obedience due to the pope and allegiance due to 

 

the civil power, for, if the pope be infallible, he declares as the law of God only what is the law of God; and no 

 

civil allegiance not enjoined by that law is or ever can be due the civil power, and that which is due under the 

 

divine law, the infallible pope cannot fail to enjoin upon all the faithful. There can therefore be no conflict 

 

unless the civil power, as in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, exacts an obedience not it’s due, and 

 

violates by its acts tyranny the law of God. Papal Infallibility is, therefore, dangerous only to tyranny which it 

 

resists with all the moral power at its command. Civil rulers may despise moral power, and attempt with their 

 

armed legions to ride roughshod over it; but with only transient success, for the Lord God Omnipotent 

 

reigneth. The Archbishop of Westminster's assertion, that subjects are bound to obey their rulers in all things 

 

not unlawful, means in all things not forbidden by the law of God. This is the doctrine of the Church in all 

 

ages. Subjects are bound to obey their rulers, therefore, for conscience' sake.

The Herald thinks the archbishop's reservation is that of the "Higher Law" of the abolitionists. Prudentius in its 

 

own columns, has answered the Herald; and we have only to add that the abolitionists, in their doctrine of the 

 

"Higher Law," erred by appealing from the Constitution, not to the law of God infallibly declared, but simply, 

 

as good Protestants, to the individual reason or private judgment, which is below, not above the civil power, 

 

and conceals the principle of modern revolutionism. The abolitionists also maintained that a senator, for 

 

instance, has the right to use the authority with which the Constitution invests him, and which he has sworn to 

 

defend, in contravention of its positive injunctions, without resigning his seat in the senate. The fact is that the 

 

law of God is not, strictly speaking, a "higher law," for there is and can be no law that conflicts with it. Acts 

 

that contravene it are violences, not laws. The civil courts even refuse before the doctrine of the supremacy of 

 

the civil power came into vogue.

Prudentius has also set the Herald right in regard to its assertion, that faith is simply a sentiment; which is pure 

 

Beecherism. The Herald has latterly had some very able and statesmanlike editorials; but its indifferentism in 

 

matters of faith, and its lack of proper theological questions. A man is not necessarily a theologian because 

 

born of Catholic parents, or educated in a Catholic college.

Unhappily, what we call the age has lost sight of the spiritual or moral order of the universe. The scientists 

 

resolve the moral law into the physical laws of nature, and God the Creator into mere Force or blind Energy. 

 

The politicians emancipate the state from the divine law, and assert its freedom to do whatever it pleases, if 

 

able. The limit of its Right is only in limit of its Might.

Thus far we had written, when we received from the Messrs. Appleton the American reprint of Mr. 

 

Gladstone's pamphlet, with the replies of Archbishop Manning and Lord Acton. After reading the pamphlet, 

 

which strikes us as very weak and ill-tempered, we find on the main question nothing to alter in what we had 

 

written. Mr. Gladstone utterly fails either to prove that the Church has forfeited her "proud boast of Semeper 

 

eadem" by the decrees of the Vatican, or that Papal Infallibility makes every Catholic a mental and moral 

 

slave, or is incompatible with the allegiance due to the civil power. He has only shown that some disclaimers 

 

of English Catholics during the struggle for Emancipation are not in accordance with their present claims on 

 

the part of the Church or the Papacy: but this is nothing to the purpose, for these claims, as Lord Acton shows, 

 

were always made and known to be made by the popes, and never disclaimed by them. The Council of the 

 

Vatican has made no change in them, one way or another, The disclaimers of English Catholics, to conciliate 

 

the English government, never were of any authority, for they were never confirmed by the pope, and they 

 

never deceived the English government which never trusted them, but imposed a special oath on Catholic 

 

members of Parliament. Mr. Gladstone has no right to complain if he finds a change in the tone of some 

 

English Catholics, or finds them even insisting on claims which he persuaded himself were abandoned, since 

 

he knows, or ought to know, that, though the Church may not at all times and under all circumstances exercise 

 

all her rights, yet she never abandons a claim she has once made and could not without denying her own 

 

infallibility. His real complaint is, not that the Church has changed, but that she has not changed, and really 

 

remains, as she alleges, semper eadem.

Mr. Gladstone's charge is twofold: 1st, against the Church Universal; and 2d, against the Catholic subjects of 

 

Great Britain. To the first we have replied at length, and shown that an infallible Church or an infallible 

 

Papacy cannot, in the nature of the case, be hostile to civil allegiance, but enjoins obedience to rulers in all 

 

things not forbidden by the supreme law of God, which binds alike the prince and the subject, the state and the 

 

citizen. To the second, we have little to say, except that we are glad to find English Catholics speaking out as 

 

Catholics, boldly in conformity with their Catholic principles, and no longer speaking as Gallicans, or 

 

subordinating their religion to their English prejudices. No good ever came from the Butler policy of trimming, 

 

or attempting to explain away certain features of the Church foolishly objected to. We never had any 

 

sympathy with that policy. We have little respect for the Catholic who lacks the courage of his principles. 

 

Archbishop Manning's influence is great and thoroughly Catholic. He knows not what it is to trim. We are glad 

 

to hear, and we hope it is true, that he sent not long since a circular to all his clergy, to be read from the pulpit, 

 

declaring, which is true, that no one who denies the Papal Infallibility, as defined by the Council of the 

 

Vatican, is a Catholic. It is time to end the senseless babble about Ultramontanes. All Catholics are 

 

Ultramontanes, and anybody who is not is not a Catholic, let him call himself what he will. Mr. Gladstone, if 

 

he believed in the sovereignty of God, would see the weakness and absurdity of his pamphlet. There is no 

 

obedience due to the civil forbidden by the divine law.