The Vatican anathemas.  “Not only is it impossible for faith and reason ever to contradict each other, but they rather afford each other mutual assistance.  For right reason establishes the foundation of faith, and, by the aid of its light, cultivates the science of divine things; and faith, on the other hand, frees and preserves reason from errors, and enriches it with knowledge of many kinds.  So far, then, is the Church from opposing the culture of human arts and sciences, that she rather aids and promotes it in many ways.  For she is not ignorant of nor does she despise the advantages which flow from them to the life of man; on the contrary, she acknowledges that, as they sprang from God, the Lord of knowledge, so, if they be rightly pursued, they will, through the aid of his grace, lead to God.  Nor does she forbid any of those sciences the use of its own principles and its own method within its own proper sphere; but, recognizing this reasonable freedom, she takes care that they may not, by contradicting God’s teaching, fall into errors, or, overstepping the due limits, invade or throw into confusion the domain of faith.

“For the doctrine of faith revealed by God has not been proposed, like some philosophical discovery, to be made perfect by human ingenuity, but it has been delivered to the spouse of Christ as a divine deposit, to be faithfully guarded and unerringly set forth.  Hence, all tenets of holy faith are to be explained always according to the sense and meaning of the Church; nor is it ever lawful to depart therefrom under pretense or color of a more enlightened explanation.  Therefore, as generations and centuries roll on, let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of each and every one, of individuals and of the whole Church, grow apace and increase exceedingly, yet only in its kind; that is to say retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and belief of the same doctrine.”

Among other canons the following were promulgated.

“Let him be anathema—­

“Who denies the one true God, Creator and Lord of all things, visible and invisible.

“Who unblushingly affirms that, besides matter, nothing else exists.

“Who says that the substance or essence of God, and of all things, is one and the same.

“Who says that finite things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at least spiritual things, are emanations of the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by manifestation or development of itself, becomes all things.

“Who does not acknowledge that the world and all things which it contains were produced by God out of nothing.

“Who shall say that man can and ought to, of his own efforts, by means of, constant progress, arrive, at last, at the possession of all truth and goodness.

“Who shall refuse to receive, for sacred and canonical, the books of Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts, according as they were enumerated by the holy Council of Trent, or shall deny that they are Inspired by God.