It was not possible that the authoritative promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility should meet among enlightened Catholics universal acceptance.  Serious and wide-spread dissent has been produced.  A doctrine so revolting to common-sense could not find any other result.  There are many who affirm that, if infallibility exists anywhere, it is in oecumenical councils, and yet such councils have not always agreed with each other.  There are also many who remember that councils have deposed popes, and have passed judgment on their clamors and contentions.  Not without reason do Protestants demand, What proof can be given that infallibility exists in the Church at all? what proof is there that the Church has ever been fairly or justly represented in any council? and why should the truth be ascertained by the vote of a majority rather than by that of a minority?  How often it has happened that one man, standing at the right point of view, has descried the truth, and, after having been denounced and persecuted by all others, they have eventually been constrained to adopt his declarations!  Of many great discoveries, has not this been the history?

It is not for Science to compose these contesting claims; it is not for her to determine whether the criterion of truth for the religious man shall be found in the Bible, or in the oecumenical council, or in the pope.  She only asks the right, which she so willingly accords to others, of adopting a criterion of her own.  If she regards unhistorical legends with disdain; if she considers the vote of a majority in the ascertainment of truth with supreme indifference; if she leaves the claim of infallibility in any human being to be vindicated by the stern logic of coming events—­the cold impassiveness which in these matters she maintains is what she displays toward her own doctrines.  Without hesitation she would give up the theories of gravitation or undulations, if she found that they were irreconcilable with facts.  For her the volume of inspiration is the book of Nature, of which the open scroll is ever spread forth before the eyes of every man.  Confronting all, it needs no societies for its dissemination.  Infinite in extent, eternal in duration, human ambition and human fanaticism have never been able to tamper with it.  On the earth it is illustrated by all that is magnificent and beautiful, on the heavens its letters are suns and worlds.

CHAPTER IX.

Controversy respecting the government of the universe.

There are two conceptions of the government of the world:  1.  By Providence; 2.  By Law.—­The former maintained by the priesthood.—­Sketch of the introduction of the latter.

Kepler discovers the laws that preside over the solar system.—­His works are denounced by papal authority.—­The foundations of mechanical philosophy are laid by Da Vinci.—­Galileo discovers the fundamental laws of Dynamics.—­Newton applies them to the movements of the celestial bodies, and shows that the solar system is governed by mathematical necessity.—­Herschel extends that conclusion to the universe.—­The nebular hypothesis.—­Theological exceptions to it.