“In case of obscurity or doubt concerning what is the divinely revealed truth, or whether what prompts the soul is or is not an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recourse must be had to the divine teacher or criterion—­the authority of the Church.  For it must be borne in mind that to the Church, as represented in the first instance by St. Peter and subsequently by his successors, was made the promise of her divine Founder that ’the gates of hell should never prevail against her.’  No such promise was ever made by Christ to each individual believer.  ’The Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of truth.’  The test, therefore, of a truly enlightened and sincere Christian will be, in case of uncertainty, the promptitude of his obedience to the voice of the Church.

“From the above plain truths the following practical rule of conduct may be drawn:  The Holy Spirit is the immediate guide of the soul in the way of salvation and sanctification; and the criterion or test, that the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit, is its ready obedience to the authority of the Church.  This rule removes all danger whatever, and with it the soul can walk, run, or fly, if it chooses, in the greatest safety and with perfect liberty, in the ways of sanctity.”—­The Church and the Age, p. 35.

In transcribing the above we are reminded that St. Ignatius, who was the divine instrument in establishing and perfecting God’s authority in the external order, yet left on record that so clearly had the Holy Spirit shown him by secret teaching the truths of religion, that, if all the Scriptures had been destroyed, his private revelations at Manresa would have sufficed him in their stead.

All that we have just been saying helps to answer the question why Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker did not set up systems of their own, and become Carlyles and Emersons or, especially in Father Hecker’s case, Emanuel Swedenborgs or Edward Irvings.  We find the following among the memoranda of conversations: 

“June 30, 1886.—­Why didn’t I switch off from Christianity as Carlyle did?  Because I hope that I was truer to natural reason; but chiefly because God had given me such an amount of infused lights and graces that I was forced to seek a guide or go off into extravagant fanaticism.  They were ready to encourage me in the latter.  George Ripley said to me, ’Hecker, what have you got to tell?  Tell us what it is and we will accept it.’”

The impression a perfectly “independent thinker” made on him, as typified in Emerson, is told in an entry in his diary, dated April 24, 1844: 

“I have had a few words with Emerson.  He stands on the extreme ground where he did several years ago.  He and his followers seem to me to live almost a purely intellectual existence.  His wife I have understood to be a very religious woman.  They are heathens in thought, and profess to be so.  They have no conception of the Church:  out of Protestantism they are almost perfectly ignorant.  They are the narrowest of men, yet they think they are extremely ‘many-sided’; and, forsooth, do not comprehend Christendom, and reject it.  The Catholic accepts all the good they offer him and finds it comparatively little compared to that which he has.”