defends what to us seem the fatal marks against Rome; but he lets us see with what force, and for how long, they kept alive his own resistance to an attraction which to him was so overwhelming.  And he is at no pains to conceal—­it seems even to console him to show—­what a pang and wrench it cost him to break from that home under whose shadow his spiritual growth had increased.  He has condemned us unreservedly; but there must, at any rate, be some wonderful power and charm about that which he loved with a love which is not yet extinguished; else how could he write of the past as he does?  He has shown that he can understand, though he is unable to approve, that others should feel that power still.

Dr. Newman has stated, with his accustomed force and philosophical refinement, what he considers the true idea of that infallibility, which he looks upon as the only power in the world which can make head against and balance Liberalism—­which “can withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion, and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries;” which he considers “as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought which is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, from its own suicidal excesses.”  He says, as indeed is true, that it is “a tremendous power,” though he argues that, in fact, its use is most wisely and beneficially limited.  And doubtless, whatever the difficulty of its proof may be, and to us this proof seems simply beyond possibility, it is no mere power upon paper.  It acts and leaves its mark; it binds fast and overthrows for good.  But when, put at its highest, it is confronted with the “giant evil” which it is supposed to be sent into the world to repel, we can only say that, to a looker-on, its failure seems as manifest as the existence of the claim to use it.  It no more does its work, in the sense of succeeding and triumphing, than the less magnificent “Establishments” do.  It keeps some check—­it fails on a large scale and against the real strain and pinch of the mischief; and they, too, keep some check, and are not more fairly beaten than it is, in “making a stand against the wild living intellect of man.”

Without infallibility, it is said, men will turn freethinkers and heretics; but don’t they, with it? and what is the good of the engine if it will not do its work?  And if it is said that this is the fault of human nature, which resists what provokes and checks it, still that very thing, which infallibility was intended to counteract, goes on equally, whether it comes into play or not.  Meanwhile, truth does stay in the world, the truth that there has been among us a Divine Person, of whom the Church throughout Christendom is the representative, memorial, and the repeater of His message; doubtless, the means of knowledge are really guarded; yet we seem to receive that message